have you ever had to push push push push? biketrouble oh yeah!

Feeling energetic, I hired a push-bike and headed out of town. Where I was going, I didn't know.

After ten minutes of aimless cycling I decided I needed a destination. Fortunately, a road sign pointing to "Kowangsi Falls" appeared shortly afterwards, and I was set -- even if I was skeptical about visiting a waterfall again. I figured that if I could maintain a steady fifteen k/hr and provided the falls were within forty five klicks, I'd be okay. The first assumption was swiftly derailed when the route took me off the pristine highway and onto some dirt track. Along the dusty, pot-holed road, man and machine rattling in equal measure, my speed slumped.

And that was before the sun rose higher and the path got steepened! I consulted my Lonely Planet and found out that the falls were a paltry thirty two klicks away -- no problem. I must've riden at least ten already, so I pressed on, invigorated. Jeeps full of youthful travellers, lithe and tatooed, swept past, probably wondering who the idiot on the bike was. In turn, I wondered what was wrong with the youth of today. There they were, crammed onto hard benches, inhaling petrol fumes and dust, and missing out on the joys of physical exertion.

Fools!

Except, by the fifteenth kilometre I didn't think that anymore. What was I doing? My shoulders burned, my water was finished, and my ride was falling apart. The front brake, envious of the back brake which hadn't been working from the off, snapped, leaving me with no means of stopping except the old-skool foot on the tire trick. Then the rear bracket began to disassemble itself from all the jiggling...

Too proud to flag for help, I carried on, determined to make it under my own steam.


Luckily, fate intervened and saved me from heat exhaustion and/or bike homicide -- one of the jeeps that passed carried a couple from Hawaii, Brad and Sarah, I'd met a few days earlier. I waved in a nonchalant manner that surface-conveyed "I'm absolutely fine", but screamed underneath "Please help!". At first they didn't stop, disappearing round the next bend, and I cursed myself for my stiff-upperlippedness, but a kilometre further on I found them waiting at the side of the road. We hoisted the wheeled contraption onto the jeep's roof and I joined them in the back, grateful for the shade and the breeze and the water.

Kowangsi Falls didn't disappoint. It was multi-levelled, climbable, and studded with places where you could swim, dive, relax and watch. At the foot there was a deep pool where you could get under the falling water and have your body and head smacked about. I messed around here with the Hawaiian couple, dive bombing, and checking out Sarah who looked a lot like Denise Richards. Shame I didn't have the balls to take pics of his girlfriend right in front of him. However, this was somewhat remedied later when I came across four Swedish girls posing in one of the mini-falls higher up. What with all my ogling and rope-swinging and ascending, by late afternoon I was knackered.

Needless to say, I took the jeep home.