Class Apart- 8 people 1 thrill.
Disclaimer: The first paragraph of this write up may have excessive use of punctuations. Each of these are intended to add the sufficient and necessary expression for the situation. Kindly bear with the same.
If you have ever been in the "working class" catagory of people you would know that in India the official working hours are 9am to 6.30pm, whereas the actual working hours are 2 pm to 8.30 pm. So you generally end up being in your workplace from 9 am to 8.30 pm which is incidently -The whole day!!! Fridays are generally kept 'flexible' so that you 'MAY' leave office by 6.30pm for a 'longer' weekend!!! This being the backdrop, lets take a ride of a crazy weekend of 8 such working class poeple. In interest of ease of writing, names will be replaced by initials. The 8 initials are -N-,-D-,-R-,-S-,-V-,-M-,-J-,-K-. Except -J- all others work for the same company.Story is being narrated by D.Here it goes...
It was Friday evening. 6.00pm. I was at my desk finishing up with my work for the day. I called everyone to confirm if they were ready to leave. They all were. Wow! That felt good. Just half an hour more and we would begin with our meticulously planned adventure ride. 6.15 pm. I was wrapping up. Closing down my system. My computer flashed the message "Shutting down" when my desk phone wrang. It was my project teammate. I answered hoping that there won't be anything that will keep me back after 6.30. We had a bus to catch after all. The voice on the other side said, " Deepti, I am going to be on Holiday in the next week. I need to handover the work. Can you come to my desk?" But then determined to leave at 6.30 I picked up my bag and quickly went to his desk . The bag in my hand said it all! He smiled at me and ran through the pending work, in 15 minutes exact! I flashed back a grateful smile and rushed, taking -N- along, to the bus parking area of the company. Within 5 min 6 of us were on our way to the cycle shop.
In an hour or so we were at the cycle shop. What we spoke about in the bus is a different adventure altogether. Let me keep that for later. So finally the adventure began. We had booked 6 cycles. Hopping onto them we rode for 15 km to -R-'s place taking multiple long stops on our way. -M- caught up with us close to -R-'s place on his bike. At -R-'s place we had food that we had picked up on our way. After dinner at 11.30 or so -N- and me went back to my place. The others stayed back at -R-'s. Friday ended with a leisurely cycle ride and a fun filled dinner. Well? Whats so adventurous about riding a cycle on a friday evening to a friend's place??? Ah, the real adventure is yet to come...
Why we did all this on friday evening is because we had a cycle trip planned for saturday. We just needed to park the cycles at his place on friday. Crazy? Not yet...
Saturday morning we started from Chandi Chowk. Headed to Pirangut, the gradient was fairly undulating giving us regular patches of upslope and down slope. Up slopes were testing in some places. When I say testing, it means, you are peddling with the lowest possible gear engaged but the cycle refuses to move more than 2 inches for every stroke and your legs hardly want to move. You still do not get down, trying to thrust forward and complete the up slope as soon as possible. Suddenly your body seems to be very heavy. TESTING!!! The initial 10-15 km were rapid.
Then came the down slopes. Down Slopes is actually very mild to describe it. They were ghats. Gain some momentum before the road slopes down and just let go. No peddling, no strain. Wind hitting against your face. You are at 40-45 km/hour. Mountain on one side and valley on the other. The valley is full of greenary. Its scenic but you don't want to stop for photography. The speed is overwhelming! You can feel your body going light as if gravity has just vanished and you float down the ghat along with the wind. You can feel the blood rushing in excitement inside your blood vessels and its existance makes you even happier. Woho!
It was the residual momentum of a similar slope that we were carrying as we came down and joined a plane road when we came across potholes. To maintain the momentum I dogged the potholes my eyes on the road below. Just in time I looked up to see a vehicle coming straight into me. I changed course quickly but the potholes were adament. BREAK!!! the cycle skid side ways and I jumped down just in time to balance it and myself. OH MY GOD!!! What fun! Not a fraction of a second was there fear inside me. Pure thrill.
Half way through we stopped for a small break. Reviving ourselves with 'wada pav' and 'misal'. We turned back towards Kadakwasla. The latter half was a plane mostly. The route went through fields and villages, riding peacefully in nature's lap until we came to Khadakwasla. The Dam is on the Mutha river where the chowpati is a tourist attraction. It was time for some corn (butta- no other word can completely describe the fun in it) and tea.
We had covered almost 60 km in the 6 hours of our ride. Now the last 10 km to the cycle shop again into the city were the most demotivating- reason being the traffic and pollution. Neverthless we returned the cycles and ended our day with god knows how many glasses of mango milkshakes.
If you have ever been in the "working class" catagory of people you would know that in India the official working hours are 9am to 6.30pm, whereas the actual working hours are 2 pm to 8.30 pm. So you generally end up being in your workplace from 9 am to 8.30 pm which is incidently -The whole day!!! Fridays are generally kept 'flexible' so that you 'MAY' leave office by 6.30pm for a 'longer' weekend!!! This being the backdrop, lets take a ride of a crazy weekend of 8 such working class poeple. In interest of ease of writing, names will be replaced by initials. The 8 initials are -N-,-D-,-R-,-S-,-V-,-M-,-J-,-K-. Except -J- all others work for the same company.Story is being narrated by D.Here it goes...
It was Friday evening. 6.00pm. I was at my desk finishing up with my work for the day. I called everyone to confirm if they were ready to leave. They all were. Wow! That felt good. Just half an hour more and we would begin with our meticulously planned adventure ride. 6.15 pm. I was wrapping up. Closing down my system. My computer flashed the message "Shutting down" when my desk phone wrang. It was my project teammate. I answered hoping that there won't be anything that will keep me back after 6.30. We had a bus to catch after all. The voice on the other side said, " Deepti, I am going to be on Holiday in the next week. I need to handover the work. Can you come to my desk?" But then determined to leave at 6.30 I picked up my bag and quickly went to his desk . The bag in my hand said it all! He smiled at me and ran through the pending work, in 15 minutes exact! I flashed back a grateful smile and rushed, taking -N- along, to the bus parking area of the company. Within 5 min 6 of us were on our way to the cycle shop.
In an hour or so we were at the cycle shop. What we spoke about in the bus is a different adventure altogether. Let me keep that for later. So finally the adventure began. We had booked 6 cycles. Hopping onto them we rode for 15 km to -R-'s place taking multiple long stops on our way. -M- caught up with us close to -R-'s place on his bike. At -R-'s place we had food that we had picked up on our way. After dinner at 11.30 or so -N- and me went back to my place. The others stayed back at -R-'s. Friday ended with a leisurely cycle ride and a fun filled dinner. Well? Whats so adventurous about riding a cycle on a friday evening to a friend's place??? Ah, the real adventure is yet to come...
Why we did all this on friday evening is because we had a cycle trip planned for saturday. We just needed to park the cycles at his place on friday. Crazy? Not yet...
Saturday morning we started from Chandi Chowk. Headed to Pirangut, the gradient was fairly undulating giving us regular patches of upslope and down slope. Up slopes were testing in some places. When I say testing, it means, you are peddling with the lowest possible gear engaged but the cycle refuses to move more than 2 inches for every stroke and your legs hardly want to move. You still do not get down, trying to thrust forward and complete the up slope as soon as possible. Suddenly your body seems to be very heavy. TESTING!!! The initial 10-15 km were rapid.
Then came the down slopes. Down Slopes is actually very mild to describe it. They were ghats. Gain some momentum before the road slopes down and just let go. No peddling, no strain. Wind hitting against your face. You are at 40-45 km/hour. Mountain on one side and valley on the other. The valley is full of greenary. Its scenic but you don't want to stop for photography. The speed is overwhelming! You can feel your body going light as if gravity has just vanished and you float down the ghat along with the wind. You can feel the blood rushing in excitement inside your blood vessels and its existance makes you even happier. Woho!
It was the residual momentum of a similar slope that we were carrying as we came down and joined a plane road when we came across potholes. To maintain the momentum I dogged the potholes my eyes on the road below. Just in time I looked up to see a vehicle coming straight into me. I changed course quickly but the potholes were adament. BREAK!!! the cycle skid side ways and I jumped down just in time to balance it and myself. OH MY GOD!!! What fun! Not a fraction of a second was there fear inside me. Pure thrill.
Half way through we stopped for a small break. Reviving ourselves with 'wada pav' and 'misal'. We turned back towards Kadakwasla. The latter half was a plane mostly. The route went through fields and villages, riding peacefully in nature's lap until we came to Khadakwasla. The Dam is on the Mutha river where the chowpati is a tourist attraction. It was time for some corn (butta- no other word can completely describe the fun in it) and tea.
We had covered almost 60 km in the 6 hours of our ride. Now the last 10 km to the cycle shop again into the city were the most demotivating- reason being the traffic and pollution. Neverthless we returned the cycles and ended our day with god knows how many glasses of mango milkshakes.
We had forgotten that we were the same 9 to 6.30 working class people here doing the craziest thing ever. What a ride! This is what "refreshment" is defined as. Its a class apart.
reminds me of an article that generally comes in sunday magazine of "the hindu",which tells about tour and travel......well penned....i think i should have come to the cycling ...if not for fun....atleast for another 'V' in your article......you can even describe more about the nature....we dont feel bored
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