A TALL ORDER
Team JAFT arrives spot on, but in a
different direction. We asked ourselves,
“how on earth did they get here? Weren’t they right behind
us?!?” I swear, they have some teleporting powers and probably just
“wonder triplet-ed” it (as opposed to “wonder-twin”ing it).
Never mind. We’re so glad to see them! J
Looking up,
we locked eyes with the bridge that was waiting anxiously to be climbed!
So….this is the infamous jumar (ascending device) station. Climbing
unfortunately wasn’t exactly our forte and we were covered in dread,
grime and sweat!
Rina hooked
up first, fiddled around with the foot loop, locked in her carabs, and
up she went. Becks and I were holding her ropes taut and trying to read
the map at the same time.
It was at
this moment that Joanne came over to answer Beck’s queries as to
whether we had taken a wrong turn earlier and why there was no follow on
bearing marking etc….I couldn’t remember what the answer was, but I
certainly remember her telling us it didn’t matter coz we were in the
lead for the ladies team and were at no disadvantage, save for the fact
that we’d expended more energy than if we’d gone the intended route.
We could not hide our excitement, but we were
wondering where all the ladies teams who were ahead of us disappeared
to? *scratch head*
Before we knew it, Rina gave out a cry of pain
upon hitting the slightly overhanging concrete slab at the top of the
bridge. A few “oooo”s and “uhhhkkk”s later, she disappeared from
sky-view and appeared right beside us.
Following this was a repeat
performance by Becks, and then myself. I must say jumaring after all
that running, biking and getting lost was definitely a tall order (pun
intended)…but I’m glad we didn’t flake out!
Looking
back, this wasn’t half as bad as the spaghetti rope uphill climb we
encountered at the next leg.
Next in line,
the Team Biathlon! Rina, the Amazonian Biathlete, volunteered to
“bi” all of us some time by running the full to-and-fro distance.
Becks started running the first leg to the next CP. I was eternally
thankful, especially since I was the weakest runner and was wearing
heavy trail running shoes. So, I carried all their barang barang and
rode off under the hot sun along Zhenghua Park Trail, wondering what
lies beyond…
The Return of
the Ropes was screening at the next station…and we were about to jump
into that show, feet down! This time, they secured my Firefly with a
rope, and waited for Becks to abseil down before we lowered Firefly
down. I guess they scrapped the idea of allowing us to abseil down with
our bikes….how I was so looking forward to executing our various
methologies! Rina was next, and she astounded the marshall as he
remarked how fast she was careening down the rope. I was last to go, and
picked up after them as they took a head start down the longkang.
Mirroring us on Lorong East Lonkang was Team
JAFT, and we traveled along Zhenghua Park longkang, meeting at the
mini-Ayers-Rock-Imitation bottle neck and heading onto the “spaghetti
noodle” ladder ascend horror stop!