Antique Bikers

A few weeks ago, I met ‘Bung Karno’. We had a quite long talk. We discussed much about old bicycle or onthel. This ‘Bung Karno’ is the treasurer of Komunitas Onthel Batavia (KOBA).

Every Sunday morning around the circle of HI at Jl. MH Thamrin, Jakarta we could see a group of people wearing old-fashioned costumes gathers with their old bicycle. They are the members of KOBA.

This ‘Bung Karno’ is actually named Chandra, who is famous with his ‘Bung Karno’ outlook performance, complete with the costume and accessories such as the hat, glasses, pins and hand stick.

Basically, the members of KOBA are united by the same kind of hobby. They love having and riding onthels. But then it’s not only onthel that they are crazy about. They always try to harmonize the old time atmosphere on onthels with the costumes they are wearing when they gather.

Onthels represent the era of early beginning of the 20th century. It firstly came to Indonesia in 1910 used by the Dutch people in Indonesia. It was an effective and helpful mean of transportation at that moment.

All the things identical to that era inspire the members of KOBA to bring out and wear on anything thay have to fit the idea of onthel.

Not long after meeting Mr Chandra, I came to also to the celebration of KOBA 2^nd anniversary in Gedung Juang 45, Jakarta. It was an exciting moment as now in 2007, I could see a very different view when hundreds of people were riding their onthel. I saw men wearing light brown jacket and knee-length of pants with the same color and black boots. There was also a man with a full costume of doctors in the year before Indonesia proclaimed its independence as a nation. Then, I catch up much of the KOBA members wearing uniforms of Indonesian troops. In the same time, other guys were wearing regular civilian costume and holding Bambu Runcing (Sharpened Bamboo), a famous traditional weapon used by Indonesian people in the battle of war before 1945. And it was completed with others who were with a Dutch long dress, an old european young boy outfit, and even those who wore white costume of Dutch administrator in the war time.

Mr Chandra said that after all we can see that KOBA members are not only onthel lovers, but also a wider antiques fans. That is why it always becomes an eccentric moments everytime they gather or have a celebration.

As onthel lovers, KOBA realize that they need to preserve those old bicycle and Indonesian antiques things as a whole. “We try to keep it as much as we could, preventing any way of bringing them out of the country,” Chandra explained.

KOBA is like an old brother to other similar communities across Indonesia such as Bogor, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya and several cities in Sumatra, Kalimantan and Sulawesi. But then KOBA has also turned into a kind of wide Indonesian brotherhood. “Finding a friend and best friends is quite difficult. But getting a single one enemy is easy,” Chandra said wisely. Together they are having time every Sunday at Jl. MH Thamrin, going out of Jakarta bringing onthel, hunting any kinds of antique, sharing any family matters, and being involved in several national and local events or celebration. “By this organisation, we share our hobbies and build a closer relationship as Indonesian as well,” Chandra proudly said.

*photo taken from Mr Chandra’s collection

Knight Riders

When it goes to the topic of global warming, what is it exactly in our mind? Do we think that such topic is nearly related to our daily activities? I myself would stop thinking more deeply on this and let the topic remain in the idealistic ways, which I’m not sortly taking.

However, unintendedly I found that this community is getting bigger. It becomes much easier to see people biking even on the main road of Jakarta, who happens to be the member of Bike to Work community. Just like mostly other citizens of Jakarta, they are doing their activity, go to their office all around Jakarta. But instead of taking cars, motorcycles or public transportation, they choose a bicycle to help them reach their office.

I luckily met Mr. Toto Soegito, the chairman of the Bike to Work community. “We used to be a small group of mountain bikers. On every weekend, we went to the places where we could still get a real fresh air. Then, in terms of having Jakarta as one of the most polluted city in the world, we thought of biking also in Jakarta to go to our workplace just to reduce the pollutions there,” he storied the historical background of this Bike to Work community. “It was hard at the beginning. Everybody said that we’re crazy for biking in Jakarta where it’s highly polluted, hot, and messy traffic. We just thought that we need to tough, and you can see that we’re now much bigger in number.”

“There were only about 150 bikers and a few journalists involved with our first campaign in 2004. But we continued the campaign every month after that until the formal declaration of Bike to Work community in 2005. It was because we were setting the goal of having a priority lane of bicycle on roads of Jakarta,” he continued.

The goal is quite simple, but it need a political support from the government. They chose a perfect way since the first time as they invited the top level person from the local governmnet. It was Fauzi Bowo himself, who is recently elected as the future Governor of DKI Jakarta, who supported them by joining the campaign of getting bike to go to work. “Getting some public figures in our campaign is really helpful, but I can’t expect from them who would take it only as a single-time-ceremonial event. Fauzi Bowo and Andi Malarangeng (Presidential Spokeman) are only some of public figures that sincerely committed to join and support us. Recently, the Minister of Research & Technology, Mr Kusmayanto Kadiman joined the club and took us in his first trial of biking to work,” Toto explained.

From that picture, people are invited to try. Having 150 bikers on the very first campaign, getting bigger to 600 on the declaration in 2005, the number is increasing more and more until now at least 2000 members of Bike to Work community are spread across Indonesia. It hasn’t stopped actually since the campaign is still going on. People are continually inspired by members they see biking on the road, or by the member experiences storied in the website. “Our members are showing the truth fact that they are healthier than before,” said Toto. “We never force anyone to join us. Basically, we just enjoy the thing and being truly honest about it, then anyone will see all, inspired by us and finally join the club,” Toto added.

Toto said that more people are supporting Bike to Work. Numbers of buildings in Jakarta spare more parking spaces for bicycle since they think that they need to support this biking habit. Moreover, some of them have set up a special bathroom shower for bikers.

Beside personal reason of getting healthier, bike to work members are aware of environment issues. “We are welcome for anyone to be healthier, to have more concerns on environment. Assume that 1 person per car. It means that 10 people biking reduce 10 cars on the road. It goes to the reducing the use of oil gas. That’s the way we spend less our state budget. Just imagine the effect,” he pictured. This is where I realize how global warming issues connect to our daily stuff.

He always gladly says that it is very nice to be a member of Bike to Work. “We all feel like big families. It’s nice to biking all together, having chances to see all things on the journey in more detail, saying hello to each other to other bikers. Something that rarely happens if we take other than bicycle. It’s nice to meet the member without seeing what our background is. Someday, when we’re all biking, we are going to be a real big family,” he convinced me.

“So just try biking, firstly on weekend or Friday so you can have a rest the day after. Just start from you, start from a short distance, and start now,” he said about how to start biking. “Always remember that life don’t stop at us. We’ll have children and grandson. The next generation deserve to live in this world properly. We need to inherit them a good environment," he ended the conversation.

(please feel free to visit www.b2w-indonesia.or.id)