Steve Cycles The World: May 2017

A scenic bike route, great Hong Kong April weather and an awesome team made for a memorable 15 mile scorch.

I capped off my week working in HK with a scenic ride from Tai Wai to Ting Kok with one of the original scorchers and our team from work. This was the first partial reunion ride of 2 of the original 3 founding scorchers.

Strava Link: https://www.strava.com/activities/962187162

The day started out having a bit of breakfast and sorting through GoPro accessories to see what would work. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I had left an extension clip for the chest harness or as we dubbed it, "a manziere" training bra that it looked like when I strapped it on. Another reason why I think it is fortunate that I left the chest harness attachment at home is that it forced me to use the selfie stick. This allowed me to produce very stable video with a lot of flexibility to capture any direction I wanted. This would have been very difficult if it was mounted to my body. In addition, the selfie stick ranges in length from about 8 inches at its most compressed to 37 inches when it is fully extended and let me record some very nice top down filming.

go pro crazy - and i was still missing a piece :P

The voice control on the gopro black made it pretty easy to start and stop the video, take pictures etc. This was all great practice of the equipment for Scorch 2. I already feel that with two rides under my belt with the go pro, after a few more, I'll have it all worked out regarding what works and what doesnt work :) The one obvious downside to the selfie stick is that you have to take one hand off the handlebars.

The traditional passing of the
breakfast milk tea to your left - or right?

Davey working his rental magic

After our eggs and oatmeal, which was deliciously sugary, we headed off to rent some top of the line bikes for our cycle. All of the frames were pretty small and in need of some basic maintenance. I would rent from them again since it was only 80HKD for the full day [ $10.16 ], but I would spend half an hour with a wet rag, some degreaser and a little lube before I headed out. I know they should do it, but for minimal effort, it would greatly have improved the ride. Thankfully my bike shifted both front and back really well. My back brake was way too tight and the front way too loose. With a few miles of practice I seemed to get the hang of it. A few of the guys had some minor gear shifting issues, Matt had to get a longer seat post [ I should have gotten one too - that tells you how small the frames were! :) ] And of course Matt ended up taking off one of his brakes. I think he just likes to live life dangerously - I think i heard him say under his breath "a real man doesn't need two brakes"

So we set out along the bike path that followed the Shing Mun river until we hit Plover Cove and had to return the bikes. Along the ride we saw young children on scooters and bicycles, old people riding on tiny pink fold-up bikes, experts decked out in way too much spandex for the path and everything in between. People were riding all forms of bicycles ranging from local brands, old ones, new ones, fancy Bianchis to a myriad of folding bicycles. If i were to generalize on the types of bicycles most of the riders were using, it would be either road bikes or folding bikes. There were much less of the mountain bike variety in use, except for the ones we rented, and I dont think i saw any BMX style either.

Another option we could have used was the gobee ride share. http://gobee.bike/ . Matt mentioned they were having some local issues, so the last thing we wanted to do was get a bike that was sabotaged and fall in the river. :)
Image result for gobee bicycle

Along the way we raced an older Chinese man who was riding a tiny pink girl's folding bike and could really move on it, we saw dragon boats, a lady waving her arms around, some beautiful mountains, and the Tsz Shan Monastery. One interesting item was that most people had either gadgets or music on their bicycles.

Some info on the Tsz Shan Monastery: https://www.tszshan.org/home/new/en/#page_Intro As per wikipedia:
"Tsz Shan Monastery (Chinese: 慈山寺) is a large Buddhist temple located in Tung Tsz, Tai Po District, Hong Kong. Within the Tsz Shan Monastery, an outdoor bronze Guanyin statue, 76 meters in height, is the second highest in the world."

Getting up to the monastery was quite a climb. Thighs were burning, but we all made it up either on the bike or pushing. Once we got there they asked for tickets and when we said sure we would like to buy them, they said you have to buy them 1 month in advance.😐 We snapped a few pix and took our hands off the brakes. I got up to almost 35MPH which made the climb up that hill worth it 😊

No cycle would be complete without a little drone flying. We stopped at Pak Shek Kok Landing which is a fishing pier and Matt amazed the locals and at one point an older man wanted his selfie taken with the drone. He had his hands raised up with the drone over his head. I should have taken a snap! He had looked like he stepped in to the future and won the HK lottery. 😊

We made it to the end with minor scrapes from loose cable wires, some sore thighs for the newbies and a beautiful set of memories. The last stop after we said our goodbyes was to have McDonalds in the tech district where I loaded up on wires, gopro accessories and a new battery pack.

Thanks to the team in HK. Was a great week before the bike ride and the cycle just capped it off!