I ventured into this sport half a year ago - March 2008 to be exact. Tried out this sport on a borrowed scandium bike from a friend for a few rides before I decided to get a bike of my own. My first bike is an Ellsworth Id which I bought second hand from a mountain biker in Muar. It has pretty good specs - XT groupset, Romic suspension andFox Vanilla fork. Well, hopefully that will keep me from upgrading my bike for a few months.
Looking back, I think this quite a hardy bike. Crashed a couple a times week in and week out due to my over eagerness to push the bike and myself to the limit. The bike has thus far came out of all my crashes unscathed. I later found out this bike was actually a XC oriented freeride bike. I have no idea what is freeride when I first bought this bike but later found out that freeriding involves some very aggressive riding - bombing downhill, jumping over obstacles, blasting downhill at full speeds and bikes built for this genre of mountain biking are usually very durable and are a tad heavier than XC oriented bikes - which explains why I have the heaviest bike in my cycling group. A hardy bike is what I need actually - I might have broken or cracked any light XC bike by now judging from the number of "dramatic" crashes that I have gone through. Oh well, what doesn't kills you makes you stronger!
To date, mountain biking has been a weekly ritual to me if I'm not out of the island. I have thoroughly enjoyed the fellowship and the journey back to the heart of nature that comes with each ride. It is something that I look forward to every weekend and it is somewhat a short weekly vacation for me to relax ad unwind. I have seen more of Penang in the past 6 months than the past 5 years I have staying here. I have tasted many new foods and met many people in all the trails that I have been to. Moutain bikers are a bunch friendly lot. I have never fail to be greeted by mountain bikers everytime I pass one at the trails. Something tells me I'll be in this sport for a long, long while...
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