Disclaimer right upfront – this blog does not refer to yesterday’s ride, especially Rajesh Tiwary’s teeny weeny puncture filled ride 🙂 but it’s inspired by it.
Yesterday five of us from Gurgaon started off on a ride to Sanjay Van. Just near Ghitorni metro station Rajesh Tiwary’s bike had a puncture, then another, then another and no glue or puncture patch worked. Jasbir went ahead and suddenly didn’t find any of us and thought to himself, “I couldn’t be that fast !!” and turned back to find us 🙂 finally ofcourse we spoilt Rajesh’s son’s Sunday morning and asked him to come rescue his parents !!
This mini puncture fest reminded me of the mega puncture fest we had in one of our rides way back in 2009. In August 2009 we attempted the survivor ride – about 29 of us, mostly folk who were doing that ride for the first time. We were early in our cycling lives and rather innocent – we didn’t have slime in our tubes, we thought 35 deg heat was cool, if anyone rode at 23 kmph we said that’s a mad guy and we knew one man in Delhi who had a road bike that cost upwards of a lakh !! It was also the start of the cycling love affair for many of us and Google had to call Baba to control the Pedalyatri chatter 🙂
That day we started to fix punctures on the Manger trail, kept fixing punctures all the way till we crossed the grand canyon and reached GFR ! Must have fixed some 50 punctures or more. Just one of us newbies managed to not get off the saddle on the rubble filled downhill… Remember Ganesh ? So many interesting memories are attached to this ride.. Some folks trying out different postures with the tube caps while others fixed their punctures 🙂 the villagers looking at us as though we had lost it ! We certainly lost enough fluids through sweating that we cleaned out a roadside store’s soft drink stock that day.
Those rides were long and they made many of us life long friends – that’s the Pedalyatri gang. We love to ride together, at speeds where we can chat, know each other, miss each other, exhort each other to join the rides and the only milestones we like are inked in our hearts not the miles on roadside stones !
Wow. . .Bindu has made the humble puncture a seemingly romantic adventure. The pen is surely mightier than the puncture patch!!