After toiling since May 2010, CA's blog revamp project has finally been completed. It wasn't as easy as I had expected in the beginning. It was time consuming and up to a point daunting especially when facing complicated script errors. I was lucky enough to have kept a few backups as roll-back plans.

Next revamp will happen in a year time....err maybe two. Thank you for your support and patience.

Date:October 24th 2010
Route: Sungai Long
Riders: Zack, Zam Besar, Nizam & Faizol

The original plan was to ride to Mantin. Due to certain circumstances, I had to do Sg Long instead. Zaha, Farizal and Cikgu Sham however continued with the plan.

Wet Sunday ride...

It was a dark and windy Sunday morning with loads of nimbus clouds hovering over Kajang, Putrajaya and Semenyih. It already started to drizzle lightly when Nizam and I cycled our way to the Sungai Balak RV where we met up with Zack and Zam Besar.

We continued cycling through the SILK highway up until the Sungai Ramal toll plaza where we made a brief stop to check if Cikgu Sham was there. We then continued cycling and took a quick "bio-break" at Bukit Kajang's toll.

Here you go guys, the videos in HD.

It took me while to get this done. It's a lot more complicated than a MotionJPEG video like we used to have. The whole process of encoding the videos into MP4 files and uploading them to YouTube is an effort by itself but its worth it.

The breathtaking view while coasting downhill shared in HD. I hope you guys enjoy watching them as much as I enjoy recording them.

Note: The video parts are a bit confusing. I'll fix this later.

Video #1: Coasting downhill from the Peak



Video #2: Coasting downhill from the last hill after Sungai Long's Toll


Video #3: Cycling through the SILK highway towards Sungai Ramal


Video #4: Cycling through the Cheras flyover heading towards Cheras Jaya

Route: Sungai Long
Riders: Zack, Farizal, Zaha, Suhaimi, Nizam and Faizol

Its a gloomy and Saturday morning. This time around I brought my brother (in Law) Nizam who’s studying in UPNM to join the ride.Zack and Farizal were there at the 1st RV when we arrived. We hit the road shortly afterwards and rode casually through Sungai Ramal, Bukit Kajang and made a quick stop at the 2nd RV where we regrouped with Zaha.

This one missed the boat. It's shot during the Meriday Ride while coasting downhill from the peak.

I decided not to do the "AudioSwap" and keep the original background sound. This way you get to share the exhilaration of coasting downhill from Sungai Long's highest peak.

Date: Saturday, Oct 16th 2010
Route: Sungai Long

I had the feeling that this ride was not going to be "plentiful". Worst come to worst, I know for sure that the "hardcore" bunch would ride on a sunny Saturday morning. Avid riders such as Zaha and Farizal will ride 9/10 of the time.

While crossing the SILK highway, I heard a distant shout from the opposite Cheras bound lane. At first I couldn't identify who it was but I soon realised that rider was Farizal in a new outfit, non other than Merida jersey.

After a brief chit-chat and few photography session, the two of hit the road and rode casually through the rather busy SILK highway heading towards Kajang Prima.

It's already 7.00am and it's a gloomy Sunday morning. Did a final check on my bike especially the pressure, drivetrain and brakes  for safety and piece of mind while cycling.

Date: October 9th 2010
Route: Sungai Long
Riders: Dr. Azlan, Sham Discovery, Farizal, Zaha, Shamsul, Romzi, Suhaimi and Faizol

"Syawal" is officially over but there are people who still host open houses. There’s no telling when this event will subside. I hope we can do a ride to Mantin sometime  next week.

It was a rather lovely sunny Saturday Morning. Its just too bad we couldn't do a long distance ride.
The route is simple enough, the Sungai Long dragon back route.  We (Sham Discovery, Dr. Azlan and I) started off with a pretty decent speed at 26-28 KM/h while on the 0 Km.  Just to quench the curiosity, the 0 km starts from Sungai Long RV up until the Sungai Chua clover leaf's peak.

My dream bike, the TREK Madone 5.2

So what is the best road bike out there? Which brand? Full carbon-half carbon or alloy? Italian or American made (Well...most of the lines except for the really high-end are made in Taiwan or China anyway). Some even say the group set is the key differentiator.

Group photo @ the 2nd RV.

Route: Sungai Long
Riders (from left): Zaha, Farizal, Romzi, Zack, Najib, Cikgu Sham, Syam, Azmi Cevello and Dr. Azlan

Last Saturday evening I received a text from Cikgu asking if there was a ride plan on Sunday. Given the current variables, the monsoon season, long list of  open houses and weddings, it's a bit difficult to plan a ride in advance especially for long distance.

Missing the Sunday ride would be a blow to my fitness recovery plan as as I already missed Saturday's due to "undisclosed reason".  The ride was set and it's Sungai Long, the safe plan. The thing about this route is that its easily guesstimated with a slight degree of variations.

Sourced from GoPro website: Handle bar mountable camera,

Gadget lust is something of a phenomenon nowadays as proven by Apple's Iphone 4 recent launch quite recently by our local telcos and soon the much anticipated Ipad. Hard to say which is what and why but is pretty much like buying the "lifestyle" instead of just the product.  The were people who queued up at "ungodly" hours just to get their hands on this "magical" device.

It's amazing how strong the brand loyalty is. The widely discussed Iphone 4's "AntennaGate" issue has not deterred the "die-hard" fans from buying it. Even when they knew that Apple is coming out with the "white" Iphone 4 that is supposed to fix the current antena design defect. This scenario reminds me of a law called the Diffusion of Innovation. According to this law, we all sit at the different timescale such as the innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards (the last ones to adopt anything, in fact the reason why these sets of people buy dial-tone phones is because they couldn't find the rotary phones anymore).  I guess it safe to say that those who bought the Iphone 4  are in the 1st and 2nd categories.

But I digressed.