Big Surprise

"Undiscovered" land in tiny little Singapore! Now that's a surprise.. Trails with technical features for mountain bikers...now that is an even bigger surprise.

Woke unusually early for me this Sun morning and was gonna settle for a tame Park-Connector Ride. PSI climbed again so we aborted... but an old friend pop into my FB status and ask if I was interested in building a couple of ramps for beginners... little would I expect the "find"...and its literally right at my doorstep... I pass it everyday but never ventured in thinking there would be nothing beyond the treeline.

And my respect to the HOOT gang.. All retro ti bikes tricked out or era specific to the hilt.

I was the odd one out today with little alu Guapie.

Solid wood pallets thrown out-- now that's a blood y rare find in a place where every piece of wood gets scurried away in the blink of an eye... Well we hesitated no time to load everything up on the truck.

Ah.. eye power time again... but then there's only 1 hammer, 1 handsaw a crowbar and a tiny little axe.. The latter turn out to be the most useful tool of the day besides the shovel.

The first baby ramp was up pretty quick... just had a lot of "runway" to clear as we realize late after packing the ramp in that we need more approaching speed. Given the terrain and we didn't want to park this in the middle of the trail and inconvenience others.. we had to sacrifice and compensate a little in terms of approach angle.

Ok, completed and certified newbie safe.. on a xc setup. No less

I probably shouldn't be posting this. Half naked middle aged man with no gears doing it 80s klunker style with bike geom of  the same era too :) Sorry boys sometimes we old skoolers get too carried away and forget  wrapping up in politically correct mtb garb or note the flavor of the month.

Ok this one is me.. I got videos after the rest decided shots weren't enough...  Thought.. despite the lack of straight lines.. this ramp does feel pretty good and should be confidence boosting for newbies. We aim the landing right into the center of the trail and it rolls out perfectly down to the open space below...

Finally Frankie showed up after I told him in my excitement of today's find and off we went further into the trail(s) which I had partially ridden out earlier...

Looks tame from here.. but a tad tricky esp in this dry dusty weather..

Here's how it actually look from the other direction. On the right of this vid, its a 6ft natural drop off. No not roll in.. All the big air people rejoice... only thing is you have limited run out on landing. Will still be do-able for the skilled ones.. I chicken out of that as I have no guards and only an xc lid today.

Now my excitement really spiked when I suddenly came into this section after a blind corner... Awesome steep roll. And the best part--- we came across another 6-7 more similar ones.... Only problem is if you hit 3-4 of them-- as you loop back u have to push up the remainder... Still :)
Then looping in reverse to roll down the ones you push up and vice versa.

Another steepie that got Frankie track standing a bit before coming down.

Finale... well not really but it ends and turns back into the trail leading back to our starting point. If it was a little longer I would say the cline and the techie points from those horizontally laid concrete bar would qualify this section as a WC DH starting down ramp. Yes, I did it at high speed. Gives a nice rush.

Ok back to where the rest of the guys were hammering away on the second ramp. Bigger and definitely scarier looking for any newbies. In fact with my messed up right side.. I had to think quite a few time how to approach it.

And the finished product.. Looks a bit like a kicker from approach but it won't. So you have to loft a little and roll the wrist back to get nice air and land slightly front down on the slope in front that plays out perfectly as a tranny receiver. No pics.. too cooked under the sun bty 3:20 pm and all the juice in our phone batt is too low to even allow taking a pic...

Some test jumps and a couple of riders that pop out of nowhere had a pop on it too Yes and its solid enough to even take a MX weight ramping over it...  Gotta love solid wood.

I haven't had this shit-eating ear to ear grin in a long time. Not since I hacked my own " off-camber flow trail" right in front of my old place but just so barely ever away and unnoticeable from anyone within 5 meters of it.

Let's hope everything won't be destroyed by next week when we are back... There's really nothing more I hate seeing than deliberate destruction of props that's harming no one...


For the record -- nothing's illegal as we came across no posted signboards asking people to backoff. There are a lot of other trail users of one form or another here. So all those internet trail police out there, please don't start knocking on my blog. eh ;)