Souvenir From Hambalang

Technorati Tags: cycling,travelling,neighborhood,sport

Saturday Dec 13th, 08, another trip for another great panorama.

May be some of you do not know where Hambalang hill is. It’s between Citeureup-Cibinong and Sentul. The highest part of the hill is about 700 meters from sea level.

This place has been a cycling track for years. I don’t know exactly when the first time is. Hambalang, Bukit Pelangi, Gunung Pancar & Sebex are in line hills where become favorites for mountain bikers. They have many type of tracks, such as Cross Country (XC), All Mountain (AM), & Down Hill (DH).

This is my first time to Hambalang, although it just around 20 Km from where I live but the chance to go there is substituted with other places. That’s OK, finally I got the chance. I rode along with T2, Widi, Anang, Feby, Ismail, Edi, Andre, Romli, Mrs. Toni & Toni Kamurang. The last three names are considered as the host. They were the guider of that trip; they ‘grew up’ at that hills. Mr. & Mrs. Toni have a bicycle store at Citeureup where most of bikers around Jakarta put their names as one of reference for buying & assembling bicycle. The store is Kamurang Bike.

The trip was started from our place in Cibubur at 06.00 am. We went to Toni’s store at Citeureup. It was 07.00 am. when we got there. It’s surprising me when I found out that Mrs. Toni would go along with us. I thought her age is in the mid of forty, and I didn’t think she will be able to go to the top of the hill.

The track is just like what I thought, climbing is the menu for that day. We had never ending climb for about 4 kilometers. It’s been a long time for me to have another climbing track since Curug Panjang. So I must rewind the memory to find out the right technique to climb. I was so surprise to see Mrs. Toni who could cope the track easily like she has “a long breath”, while I had to stop for some times. I felt like I ran out of breath. But the eager to be on top was the main reason why I keep on fire. Then I decided to control my pedaling technique as light as possible. I set the front gear to the smallest one, and the rear gear to the biggest one. The speed became very slow, but it was succeed to bring me to the top.

A simple menu was waiting for us at the small ‘warung’ at the top of the hill. The menu is consisting ikan asin, eggs, sambal and kerupuk, and not forget to mention for the special one: pete. This pete was bought by Toni on the way up. He bought it for only Rp 750,- per length…what a cheap one. He bought more than 20 length. May be you won’t believe if I say that those menu was very delicious. May be because we ate them through a hard journey. Big laughs were there after the meal, and finally I got the answer why Mrs. Toni was so super. It was Mr. Toni who told us that she was an ex-athlete for 400 meters sprint run for the local district…hihihi…No wonder!!!

After taking few pictures we went down with smiles on our faces. The downhill session was so exciting. Usually every bikers are very happy to have descend ride. It just like having bonus after the climbing session.

Total distance we had that day was 40 Km, and total duration was 6 hours.

By the way, I still have some extra pete. Do you want some? This is my souvenir for you.