There and back again – A rider’s tale

Everyone comes up with a freaky idea now and then but then most of such ideas get pushed off as being outlandish. Sure…we live in a civilized society now. But then also some ideas just remain in the back of the mind even if deemed freakishly outlandish. A road trip was one such gamble that I took about a month back. Haha……once u do something that u cherish it leaves you with a very warm and contented feeling for sometime.

All bullet riders yearn to go on a nice and comfortable long ride to really feel what its like. My greed took the best of me then and I started planning a ride that would be long and not too exhaustive. God bless me for being in Chennai….I picked Pondicherry. Its about 150 kms off (100 miles) and can be done in a day. No trouble. I picked a Monday so that there wouldn’t be traffic and I can enjoy my road space. I had picked a suitable alibi also to account for Monday and polished my bike all day on Sunday till the paint shimmered and the chrome shone.

It began to rain on Sunday night and I felt all plans were washed out and almost called it off. Monday morning dawned clear and pleasant with perfect and highly favourable riding conditions. My cousin was to ride pillion with me since he was also equally jobless. The bike was ready and after checking fuel and engine oil levels we rode out by 7.30 am heading straight to east coast road. We had a couple of apples and sandwiches for the road and the machine thumped along elegantly as time rolled by.

This was my first inter-city trip on the bullet and I was very thankful for taking my riding jacket along; it protected me from the howling wind - stream during the onward ride and from the hot sun during the return. Several photographs later I reached Pondicherry by 10.30 am riding at a constant 80 kmph (~50 mph). Now some experiences were amazing……when an equally fast vehicle travelling in the opposite direction crossed me the air flow was super and very rarely caused some wobble but then the bike was rock steady on road. I kinda felt bad for my cousin though….no helmet and no jacket; must have felt like a toad in a storm sitting behind me for 3 hours at such speeds.

After lunch and lounging around at the beach there we decided to head back and left around 1 pm but not before I cashed in on the cheap fuel. I nosed the bullet towards Chennai and we made good time riding along the coast. The return trip bore witness to a nasty road accident that had occurred just a few minutes before I crossed that place and we saw two cars lying on either side of the road and both had turned turtle. Retrieval operations were going on and an ambulance zoomed past me shortly.

Well anyway the ride was very enjoyable even though I knew that a lone rider is the biggest risk on a highway. We had loadsa fun even though I knew that there’s nothing more dangerous than such speeds on a highway. Please do me a favour and suggest more places that I can ride to next time.