BikeJava2011: BikeJava Day 3: The Long Ride.

May 25th, 2011

The BikeJava team departed the picturesque landscape of the Pasir Bancir Village (Cisadane upriver area). We took some time taking photos where touring bikes rarely venture, at least in mine and Heather’s experiences. The BikeJava team left around 6:30 am and finally reached our destination around 8:30pm. Sorry Lucy, another night ride! In total, we covered about 100km of extremely hilly land from Sukabumi to Bandung. On the way we met some of the Sukabumi Bike2Work organization. They were extremely generous, but we were only there to pass through to our next volunteer site – Batujajar. Sorry we couldn’t stay longer Sukabumi Bike2Work!

From Our Temporary Residence to the Road.

Go Team BikeJava.

'A Little Help From Our Friends'.

Sukabumi Bike2Work Chapter

Yunus, one of the members accompanied us to the Sukabumi/Cianjur border where we went our separate ways. The one thing that kept us going uphill was knowing that there had to be a downhill. Tilla shared a good piece of Javanese advice: “Alon-alon asal kelakon”, ‘slowly but surely’. It gets tough sometimes especially when looking at the top of the hill starts to strain your neck because it’s so high. The rain forced us to take a long break to sip some ginger coffee and work on a song for SMPN3 – Batujajar, our next destination. We were told that the students would sing an English song for us and so we should learn an Indonesian song. We went with a Sundanese song about a hero!

Heather Gowes-ing

"Gangsta" Mas Wang Ridin'.

Almost There? No.

At around sunset we were still around 35 km away from our destination. We knew it would be tough, but in order to make it to the school on time and teach the students we pushed on through the mountain west of Bandung. Our psychological response was singing delerium. Heather sang the “Hi-ho” song but with new words changing it to “Ayo” (let’s go or come on), I was muttering some ridiculous nonesense, and Mas Wang started (just a little) singing our BikeJava song that we created the night before. In Pasir Bancir I was playing around with the guitar when Heather jumped in and sang thus producing the BikeJava song.

Mas Wang Preparing for Another Uphill Battle.

Cheesy Photo, But I Like It.

Stopping for a Breather.

At around 8pm we finally met Aji from SMP3 – Batujajar. He took us straight to the school via small boat and then a bike ride through badly paved roads and corn fields. Our place to sleep was the school library! I never thought I’d be crashing in a library with my bike. It was spacious and comfortable. I’m extremely glad I can sleep on the floor without any discomfort. There were still children there until 10pm practicing their song for our visit.