Saturday, August 29, 2009

critical what??? mass???

till a few year back i used to get impatient every friday afternoon thinking about plans for the evening, always had a handfull of options - movies, beer, an expensive dinner, a road side dinner, long drives and very long drives.
well things have changed a bit. and certain things haven't changed much. yesterday was again one of those friday afternoons and i was already impatient. it was the last friday of the month and i had to be there. had to reach central delhi by 6 o'clock. vijay chowk to be precise.

where is vijay chowk?
the big chowk outside rashtrapati bhawan.

to do what?
to attend the critical mass

what?
the critical mass.

come again?
the critical mass.

what's critical mass?
on the last friday of every month, around six in the evening. a group of bikers come together and pedal through the busy, traffic laden city streets.


but why?
well to let the people know that there are bikers who do exist. and they are a part of the street as much as anybody else. still you can check out wikipedia, wiki knows it more than i do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass

so?
ya, i made it reached almost on time. to find out people doing a warm up session. some new faces mixed with the old ones. few faces who where just names till yesterday.
a nice round of polite conversations.
learnt from the seniors how to take help of patience and believe in the mission to make it happen.
and finally we started. all of us trying to make two parallel rows to ride along. nicely and slowly took two rounds of india gate circle. it was amazing to wade through the forever flowing traffic. the honking. the screeching. and what not.
i almost had a fight with a car driver who jumped the red light more or less hitting me. well nothing such happened, i never got hurt neither did i fight with him. but that's the point people don't bother to see things around them while they drive specially smaller vehicles.
after two good rounds of india gate we took on to kasturba gandhi marg. not much of traffic till we reach CP outer circle. did a full parikrama of the outer circle before entering the inner one. the road as expected was heavy on traffic, but i'm sure there would be loads of driver who must be feeling jealous to see us easily making way through the traffic as they stood waiting for the others to move. barring the pollution levels being very high riding in CP was fun. after completing the inner circle we took on to baba kharak singh marg. our initial plan was to go back all the way back to vijay chowk with the rest of the group which we could not do as my friends had to give back the bikes to patel chowk metro station from where they where hired.
now we are standing and waving good bye to those who are on there way back to vijay chowk to finish the 12th delhi critical mass.

it's time for us to pat our own back and celebrate success and look forward to next months last friday for the 13th delhi critical mass. once again we all will be at vijay chowk at 6 o'clock on 25th september.








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Thursday, August 20, 2009

kanandale in kerala

did a driving trip to kerala, managed to take my cannondale along. most of the time it snugged in the back of my car, but once in allepy (alapuzzha) i spent around 4-5 days only on my bike. a small town. the National Highway - 47 piercing right through the town which runs all the way to kanyakumari. the town maybe small but mostly busy with people on the main streets, not only streets one can find canals and water bodies taking a lot of traffic in and out of the town. though the traffic is by no means maddening just that there are people around giving the place a fine character. it was and excellent place to ride the bike. a couple of times i rode to the nearby villages through paddy fields, coconut trees, lakes and ponds. not just coconut trees the place houses few beautiful churches and pretty old buildings. well my kanandale (cannondale) had a great time in those excursions.










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