NTU Riders Charity Bike Wash

The NTU riders have organized a Charity bike wash for the Spastic Children Association on the 23rd January, Saturday. It was conducted at Pasir Ris. It was quite a welcoming idea as several of us head down for the event. There were some accessories on sale like the "Helmet Boys". It was quite an amazing thrill to see the number of bikes that turned up for the event.

The ducati group, the Hayabusa groups, several Class 2 bikes. There was also a lady Ducati rider and she's definitely one of the few ladies to ride the Ducatis with the guys. They make quite a sounding entrance with the V-twins shaking the ground of the building. Managed to talk with some of them.

At the end of the day, it was all for a good cause and hoped that the benficiary will definitely gain from the charity event. Clean bikes + Doing charity, Everyone goes home happy. Below are some pictures of the event. See you guys soon! Ride Safely!

NUS Riders / NUSMS Night Cycling Event

The NUS Riders was priviledged to have been invited to marshal the NUS Muslim Society Night Cycling 2010. The event was on a Saturday Night and we have agreed to provide safety marshalls to help the cyclists around the stipulated route. It was an overnight event and was the very first official road marshalling event for the club.

There was about 160 cyclists and we have roughly 12 marshals to guide the entire operation. We were definitely lacking of manpower for the operation, however, we have to still make do with the numbers. Haikal, vice president was the man for the night being the point man, coordinator and despatcher for the event. We met up about 9pm at ECP macdonalds and have a briefing from Haikal. After which we went around to do a walkthrough of the route. Unfortunately, upon doing a u-turn at the ROM entrance, Norisha took a slip and fell down with her CBR400. We managed to rush to her attention, while sadly, another Super 4 took stationary fall, due to parking on a slope.

Luckily, no one was injured by the mishaps. The convoy carried on while I accompanied Norisha until her friend arrived and bike towed. After sending her off, we got news another Super 4's battery was flat and could not start. We were then left with 10 men for the entire operation. The entire route starts from ECP, Nicoll highway, Suntec, Mount Faber, Sultan Mosque through town area and finally back to ECP. It was quite a tough route compared to previous night cycling events, as the convoy will be travelling alongside the roads and at major roads in town area.

Upon flagoff, we have manage to secure the roads safely and positioned marshalls on the stipulated junctions. The convoy was unexpectedly long and we have to constantly cover the next junction after the last man have passed the last marshall. Along the way, the marshalls managed to take periodic breaks and pictures in between, with plenty of jokes from the riders especialy Ferrino. It definitely helped the riders overcome the fatigue level at 3am in the morning.

However, another marshall had to leave midway and our man count have to be further reduced and we had a little trouble upon reaching Lavender Road. Apparently, the convoy have to merge with a heavy 3 lane roads and we have to hold up the entire convoy to ensure enough placement. This has made the cyclistS rather impatient in addition to their level of fatigue. Hence, upon releasing them, they have made their way straight, with several uncontrolled junctions as the convoy size gets too big to handle. This was partly due to the shortage of manpower that we encountered, however, the cyclist have managed to cross each junctions safely with no incidents.

At the end of the day, we managed to return all the cyclist safely without any incidents. It was about 6am when the entire event finished and the riders as well as the cyclists were all definitely tired but happy that the event went smoothly, with only a bit of miscoordination at the end. It was indeed an eye-opening experience for all of the riders and hopefully, that the next marshalling event would be better in terms of manpower and coordination.

From the organizers and myself, I would like to thank all the riders that came down to help out in the marshalling as the safety of the event would be at jeopardy without your help. Hope you have enjoyed yourself and learnt a thing or two about road marshalling. See you guys again for the next event!

Friday Night Dinner with Suran

It was a Friday Night dinner meetup at Arnold's Chicken at City Square. More importantly, we met Suran, our popular President-to-be, as he is flying off for Student Exchange for 6 months in Estonia. He had a bad accident a few months back and had to undergo intensive surgery and recently another operation before flying off for SEP. He will take a while to fully recover from the incident, but please be assured that you'll definitely have our blessings and prayers. Prolly get back to biking sumdays.. Heh heh..

Amazingly, many people turned up for the dinner. When we reached there, the queue was definitely long! Didnt expect it to be that long though. However, the food there was delightfully tasteful, with affordable prices at that. We ended that night off with happy faces and well wishes for Suran in his SEP.

Hopefully, he'll get acquainted and bring back several estonian chicks for the single guys in the club. Kidding Bro. Have a good trip ahead and hope you have a safe flight back! See ya in 6 months time!!

Desaru Beach Trip

NUS Riders Desaru Beach trip was held on 9th January. The pre-semester trip was done to let the riders have a good break and short tour before the school starts. Initially, plans included a stopover at Kota Tinggi waterfalls and then going over to Desaru Fruitfarm, Desaru beach and pengerang for seafood. But apparently, the locations are quite far apart and due to a day trip, we were limited by the time factor. After driving with Haikal for the Recce, we decided to skip Kota Tinggi and Desaru Fruit farm and just head to Desaru for more beach time.

The morning started with the meetup at Woodlands Ave 1 Esso, and a short breakfast at Al-ameen Marsiling. After having our prata, we headed of to Desaru via Tebrau / Kota tinggi highway. The journey was about 90km from SG and the traffic was thankfully light towards Desaru. We chance upon several big bikes (several hayabusas). Awesome machines. Saeed obviously couldnt resist.

Upon reaching the beach, we immediately unload and changed to splash in the big waves. Apparently, there were red flags indicating strong currents and we're told that recently, 2 swimmers drowned and that we were to swim at our own risk. Heck, those are not going to stop us. We braced the waves prolly about 2-3 metres high. It was indeed exhilirating but still we were cautious througout.

After that, we relax by the beach and played "Tebu" (actually taboo pronounced intentionally by Hafiz) where we formed teams and described words but not being able to use "Bike" or "motor". It was indeed a very funny game as we find ourselves repeating those forbidden words again and again. Quote from Saeed, "Vehicle, vehicle, vehicle, vehicle... Bike!".

After a while, we went on to play the nearby Go-Kart, which was going at $35RM for 15minutes. It was actually a small road circuit and only a max of 4 players are allowed to play at one time. It was definitely worth the 35rm, we took turns to outrace and outcornered each other during the circuit. There were of course "incidents" where drivers, knock each other off, and crashed. Luckily no one was hurt, well, all in the spirit of competition. :P

Soon after the adrenaline-pumping karting, we headed for a late lunch at the nearby seafood restaurant, overseeing the beachline, and headed home. We initially planned for a stopover at the nearby "Special Chendol" stop, which apparently was closed as it nears 5pm. Nonetheless, we had a final pitstop at the bike wash and had a small dinner at the coffeeshop reminiscing the day. It was definitely a trip well spent, before the start of the semester!