The first long ride

Was lucky to check my email on Saturday evening and I see this mail from a person called Rekha and that she had planned to ride on Sarjapura road the next morning i.e. Sunday at 6.30am. First reaction: wow, so there are girls in this group – BBC www.bangalorebikersclub.com . Next – 6.30am?? on a Sunday?? I, being a person who firmly believes that it is criminal to be up before 10 on a Sunday morning and that Sundays are meant to be lazy, found it very hard to accept that I would have to be up by 6 the next day if I had wanted to go on the ride. So, I did reply her back, I always thought it would be a PYT, but added a line at the end requesting her not to wait for me because there is a very high probability that I might be late.



The next morning day gave me 3 wonderful surprises. The first was that in my excitement I did manage to get ready by 6 and not just wake up. This reminded me yet again not to sweat the small stuff. 0630hrs I was at the start point to find an elderly lady waiting there on a Gary Fischer bike with a backpack, water bottle, pump, knee guards and of course the helmet. For a moment I didn’t say anything. A minute passed and I thought she was one of the riders and was waiting for Rekha to arrive nevertheless I casually asked her if she was waiting for Rekha. To my utter surprise, she was Rekha, Ahem! Well, okay ladies to ride bikes and yes they ride well but this was something I was totally unprepared for. Grey haired, orange t shirt, shorts, knee guards, gloves, helmet, a backpack which I was sure had a lot more than met the eye and a 12yr old Gary Fischer mountain bike which had been to Ladakh just a couple of months back. The rider turned out to be the India Head for some division of Accenture. A little later we were joined by Ravi and Sanjay and we assumed no one else was coming so we started off.



Though it was early in the morning the road was a bit busy and we couldn’t ride abreast of each other till we were out to roads with fairly less traffic.