Entertaining Colleagues

For the last two years my team has feverishly worked on a large, global project my company has slowly rolled out region by region.  In October, it is Indonesia's turn, which means employees from around the globe are visiting us in Jakarta.  My boss and several of my North American peers came out in early June, and I wanted to give them a taste of Indonesian hospitality.  In addition to our standard hosting of a traditional Indonesian feast, I also asked my team to arrange a more adventurous outing.  They selected mountain biking near Puncak Pass followed by everyone's favorite:  Taman Safari.

The logistics of our biking trip were rather interesting.  To reach Puncak Pass from Jakarta, we have to drive for two hours through Bogor, then up a winding mountain road to the top.  From 8 AM until 2 PM, the winding mountain road, which is barely wide enough for two cars, is one-way uphill.  From 2PM until 8 PM, the road is one way downhill.  All other times it is bi-directional.  Our biking adventure was to start near the summit, and wind its way down to Taman Safari, where we would need our drivers.  This meant our drivers, in order to be able to drive back down the hill after dropping us off, had to leave the summit far enough in advance of 8 AM to reach Taman Safari before the road changed.  So our morning began at 5:00 AM so we could arrive at the biking launch point by 7 AM.

We arrived shortly after 7 AM and donned our riding gear.  The biking company provided bikes, shirts, helmets, knee pads and elbow pads.  We gathered in a circle for a brief prayer for safety, followed by a safety briefing in which they explained not to use our front brake too much or we would fall over the front wheel.  We tested that our bikes all worked and we were off.

Our ride was split into two sections, each expected to require up to two hours to traverse.  The first section was through jungle (environmentalists prefer the less-dangerous sounding "rain forest") and tea plantations.  Technical requirements (steering, braking, balancing, etc) were high in the first section.  The path was narrow and muddy.  Several times we had to dismount and walk our bike over difficult to traverse boulders and narrow stream beds.  A few locations had sheer cliff to our left, and twenty meter drops to our right with barely two wheels worth of width on the trail.  We all made it through safely, though not without mishap.

As we drove through the tea plantation, a root jutting out onto the trail managed to find its way between the spokes of my front tire.  My bike came to an immediate halt.  I didn't.  I learned the hard way that tea plants appear much softer than they actually are.  I landed hard on my left side.  My back started to spasm and I knew I would have several large bruises by the end of the day.  Thankfully, nothing was broken and I was able to continue.

At the midway point we stopped in a small vacation village for drinks and snacks.  The technical portion of our trip took just over an hour, so we were ahead of schedule.  Our break lasted roughly thirty minutes and we began the endurance segment of our trip.  While the technical portion was 90% downhill, the endurance section was 30% uphill.  Leaving the vacation village, we first had to travel roughly a kilometer up a seven percent grade.  Most of our team had to dismount and walk the bike, unable to manage the bike.

We then rode downhill most of the rest of the way to Taman Safari with one exception.  About halfway to the zoo we encountered a hill so steep that cars required a running start.  I don't think anyone managed to ride up this incline.  The rest of the trip was an unventful, relaxing coast downhill on paved roads.

When we neared Taman Safari, several groups of children ran to meet us, hoping we would pay them to ride our bikes to the finish line.  They targeted the heavier members of our group with a little more fervor than the rest of us.

We took our final break before the zoo.  The second leg of our trip required thirty minutes.  We finished the estimated four hour ride in just over two hours.  We couldn't leave the area until the road changed directions at 2 PM, so it was good we had plans to see the zoo from the beginning.  We cleaned ourselves up the best we could with a bucket and ladle, drank some fresh made juice, then made our way to Taman Safari.

I won't go into details of our Taman Safari trip.  I've written of it several times on this blog, and the experience is always the same:  First timers leave in awe, and it never gets old.  We drove through the feeding zone, fed watermelons to elephants, visited the petting zoo (though my colleagues were far more nervous than I ever was - maybe the growling scared them), and waded out to the waterfall.

We left Taman Safari and I arrived home by 5:30 PM.  Another wonderful experience in Indonesia.