Saturday, April 5, 2008

Wow - 20K Bangalore Biking

It was 7.30AM and I was contemplating whether I should go for cycling or a run. I was anyway to run my first run at RFL tomorrow and thought cycling would a good idea. At around 8.15AM vroom I went onto the inner ring road and had no clue how long and where I was headed. Just as the inner ring road ended I hooked onto the airport road towards Victoria Road and I could see so many cops (both traffic and regular) regulating traffic at every possible "gulli" and I just biked with my cycling helmet and fasttrack goggles. Then I took over a deviation to MG Road and then onto Manipal center and then kept going straight on the parade grounds. This is probably the only stretch where you have a bay for cycles and now I could see all the incoming traffic were stopped and probably the road in which I was on also looked deserted.

Every traffic cop wanted to talk or identify with me and they were signaling, smiling, staring and what not. Probably it was my professional cyclist attire. Then one of the cop almost a kilometer away was signaling and as I could see no one around for miles I thought it could be me. As soon as I neared towards him, he was like "Go fast, go fast" and then I upped my speed. I guess the VIP was about to hit Raj Bhavan road and then I realized that I must take a deviation near the GPO towards Vidhan Soudha. A fellow cyclist who was on roadster model just a little ahead was stopped by a traffic cop for not heading to him and deflated his tyre. I was just behind, but I don't know what he thought and he didn't do anything to me and I also rode as if I was professional and I bike almost daily through this road. Now I headed towards to Hudson circle and then towards Mallya Hospital and then onto St. Marks road and then took a right at Bangalore Central and then towards Hosmat Hospital and Vivek Nagar and then to my cycle shop at Ejipura.

The cycle shop was closed as I had to refit some paraphernalia. Then I moved onto Sony World junction and my bike slowly started to disintegrate and all the parts where caving in. So decided to walk to the nearest cycle repair shop near Maharaja and found out that the nuts required some special tools which he did not have. Went back home and luckily Biswa's "Perima" had made some breakfast. After quick stretching and bath it was a nice quick meal. Biswa and co left for the day and I was expecting the cook around noon and feel asleep at 11.30. Woke up with heavy stomach at 2PM to realize that the cook didn't come and fortunately Ritesh checked in and he was also going out for lunch and thankfully we went to a Bihari hotel, "Prayag Raj".


Prayag Raj, is near the JNC college in Koramangla 5th Block. You get to eat "litti" (or Lithi) on Sundays here and Ladoos in BTM is another place where you get Satoo paratha. Then I had a plain pomegranate juice and after getting some cash at the ATM we were back home. Decided to fix the handle and other stuff at the cycle shop and decided to walk couple of KMs with the cycle. The shop guy has an amazing service and with 15 minutes I was thing perfect and the boy said "No sir, no need to pay" but just tipped him and had pleasant ride back home and realized now that the rent had to paid to the landlord. Since I had nothing left on my plate for the day took the original bike (my pulsar) and enroute bought some shorts at the Yonex shop in the Prakash Padukone Badminton academy. Since my dad is well known there I got a good bargain as well.

Honestly I must have ridden more than 20K and it reminds me of days in "Roadster" model cycles that I used to go to tutions with my pal Kireeti and to school. Things have changed so much since then.

Had nice ride and have got a 6AM run so need to get up by 5AM tomorrow and might catch up with Abhay for the rest of two days as it is a long weekend with Monday being Ugadi.

Happy Cycling !
(BTW it was one hour and forty five minutes of cycling)

3 comments:

KV said...

Thanks for reminding me of my Hero jet days! Sure, those were the best days of my life!

Unknown said...

good u r spending lots of calories :-).... as well saving petrol .
U r bike reminds me of my Hero Top Gear.

Pulkit said...

Kudos man! 20 kms! staggering stuff. Let's 'bike to work' together sometime. These days, I got some knee pain and, hence, have been taking buses. May be, in about a fortnight's time.

I am seriously thinking of putting a sticker somewhere on the cycle which reads something along the lines of "Long live the environment!" or "Conquer pollution before it conquers you". While cycling to office is cent percent pollution-free, there are a host of other little things we could do to keep our CO2 meters down. These could be as simple as shutting off our computers when not to be used for the next 2 hours (at least after work everyday), taking care of needlessly switched on lights and leaking taps, picking vehicles based on mileage rather than looks and so on.