27 June 2010
The foul morning weather Kay-Oed a few riders. As happened many times in the past, the weather would change for better in a flash.. It was a Sunday, and when the mind was set to put the ride gears on and hit the road, that what I had to do. But I can't help yellin' "dammit ...why choose Sunday to rain?" Dan's sms woke me up at 6:00am. He was not sure as it was pouring cats and dogs at his place. When Zain called in to call off his and Fadil's participation, we were down to 4 bikers which was finally down to 3 bikes when Bin decided to sleep in too.
Slowly, I rode up to the double Shell to wait for Ivan and Mohan. It was still early and the cloudy sky was slowly clearing up..good. Ivan pulled up moments later. Oonta showed up to remind us that his daughter is getting married the following weekend.
We waited almost 45min before Mohan showed up in his rain suit. We figured it would be too late to shoot all the way to the hilltop as the gate would be closed for up-hill traffic when we reach Gap. Never less, we proceeded to Gap via Ulu Yam. We had a brief stop at our regular noodles restaurant at Ulu Yam to fill up the tummies.
With just the three of us, we rode a fairly brisk pace. Ivan was still suffering from the post-accident syndrome and his ride pace around the bends was erratic and at times chaotic. When we reached Gap, the single lane road to Frasier Hill was serving downhill traffic. The air at Gap was always fresh giving a sense of tranquillity. Mohan prompted us to park at the road side tea house and we promptly ordered some teh tariks. We thoroughly enjoyed the moments. For reasons that were hard to describe, with our three adventure bikes parked near our table, we wished time would stop for a moment for us to gaze at our bikes and savour our teah tariks. Yeah, we could do that easily at home.. but it simply would not be the same. Incidentally, we met a nice couple with their two young kids. Dr Ling came our to our table to introduce himself and later confessed that he was keen to take up motorcycling.
With the road fairly dried up, we up the pace to Bentong. The prep talk by Mohan worked on Ivan and his pace picked up considerably. The twisty road was chomped up easily by our GS. At noon, our little group stopped at the famous ice-cream palour in Bentong. The surprise of the day was Zain taking the chance to wait us out at Bentong. He decided to hit the road as the miserable morning grew to a beautiful mid Sunday morning. The 3 bikes group grew to four when we headed back to KL.
Alas, it rained again as we approached Genting Sempah. Thankfully, we managed to take shelter at the gas station before the rain hit us hard.
As it seem like the rain god was toying with us, the rain stopped barely 2 km after Genting Sempah. But the rain already got us into wearing stuffy and hot rain suits.
