March 20, 2015
Difficulty finding motivation: The long and boring road
The road south continued to be dull and uninspiring. I was desperate to get down to Singapore and start my search for a boat that could take me to Australia, and, having set myself the target of arriving there on the 24th of March, I needed to cycle about 120 kilometres per day to make it. On the 20th I went all out to achieve that distance goal. This went okay for the first half of the day as I made good progress, but things started to go wrong around noon when I was tempted into one of those air-conditioned malls. Time was lost here of course, partly because my laptop was so temperamental that it took the best part of an hour to connect to the free wifi connection, and partly because finding the motivation to go back out again and ride a bike in the hot sun was difficult.
Ten kilometres after I rounded up the courage to get moving again I was further delayed by a rear wheel puncture. By this stage all of my tyres were on their last legs and I decided that to ensure we all made it to Singapore the thing to do was switch the front and back ones, so that the very worn one was on the back taking the brunt of the weight and the extremely very worn one could take it easy on the front. At least I had a decent place to stop and do this laborious process in the shade where it seemed that no one would disturb me. But, of course, it didn’t work like that, and no sooner had I got both the wheels off the bike than a small truck pulled up alongside me. A man of Indian appearance who may well have been from Bangladesh got out and came over and stood right next to me, his big white eyes staring. He spoke no English, and didn’t seem especially friendly. I thought he might offer me a lift, or try to help somehow. But, no. He just stood and stared as the stressed out white man continued to fiddle with his tyres, now with the additional complication of this rather rude invasion of private space.
The man finally left, the bike got fixed, I got going again, but the 120 kilometre target was never going to be reached. As I set up camp by the beach again that night I decided that the best thing to do was put back my Singapore arrival date by a day. It wasn’t worth getting so stressed trying to make it by the 24th. It was too hot and the road too uninteresting. And so for the next couple of days I settled for putting in mere 100 kilometre shifts on the long and boring road.
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
On the morning of the 22nd I was thinking about how I hadn’t met any other cycle tourists in Malaysia. Such is the popularity of the pastime these days I worked out that, with the exception of my brief three days in Vietnam, this was the first country since Armenia in which I’d met no other touring cyclists at all. Presumably that was because everyone else had been sensible enough to realise how dull this road was in advance. But just as I was thinking these things what should I see approaching in my mirror but two cycle tourists.
Gerard and Marja were a retired couple from the Netherlands who were cycling down through Thailand and Malaysia, and we stopped for a drink and had a nice chat about it all. “Boring isn’t it?” “Yes, it is a bit.” They were, like most cyclists, much faster than me, and they soon disappeared ahead, although I caught them up again when they stopped for lunch and we ate together. They were just lovely, and I was grateful as it provided me with some respite from the monotony.
20/03/15 – 113km
21/03/15 – 102km
22/03/15 – 101km
Today's ride: 316 km (196 miles)
Total: 39,751 km (24,685 miles)
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 6 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |