Not only us, even our steeds are feeling the itch.
Gotta stretch our legs.....
Lets get away, how does a ride on that beautiful piece of bitumen, the Bangalore Mysore highway sound?
hhmmm, Interesting!
Besides, since Zaid had missed the ride to Ooty, I really wanted him to get a taste of the Royal Enfields on the highway.
So a date was set and D Day dawned bright and early. The only ones who were not bright and early were the kids. Poor things, had had too much excitement the previous night being a Saturday and slept pretty late.
Hence, as is our tradition, after planning to leave at 6 we finally hit the road at a quarter to 7.
It was a glorious day indeed. We took off on 3 bullets and 1 Alto - we were taking the kids with us you see! So along with Mueen and his wife, Abrar and his wife, Zaid and his wife were me and ma lil sis and Mueen's kids and Zaid's kids. Gotta find a rider dude for lil sis cos post July 12th if lil sis wants to come with us, I'll have to take triples ;).
The ride started of rather uneventfully with the going being a little stuttered with the Sunday morning traffic heading out of Bangalore. By the time we were past the Mysore road flyover, Abrar on the 500 (Black Beauty) and Zaid on the Electra (Rabee) were literally flying with me and the Thunderbird (Raad) struggling to play tag. I gotta get that Goldie out and the standard silencer on when we hit the highway cos post 3.5k rpm for more than 15 minutes at a stretch, and your backside will remind you about it for the rest of the day!
Having left the rest of us far behind, Abrar and Zaid finally decided it would be prudent to wait for us to catch up.
It wasn't long before all of us were travelling together in formation at a steady speed of 80 and loving it. It was me in the lead on Raad followed by Mueen and the kids in the Alto and bringing up the rear were Abrar on Black Beauty and Zaid on Rabee.
An open road in front of me as smooth as a baby's bottom and me on a bullet is like a chilled glass of lemonade on a hot summer day! - Simply irresistable!
So off I went tearing down the road like my tail was on fire with the rest of the gang in hot pursuit!
15 minutes later, the tail section announced that the imaginary fire was becoming a tad bit hot for comofrt.
So after severly torturing the most sensitive part of my body, I fell to a more relaxed pace and found both Rabee and Black Beauty thundering past. Just as I was about to twist the throttle and take off behind them (the behind be damned!) a glint on the left caught the corner of my eye. It was a glint of shiny red paint lovingly and painstakingly polised to put a Major General's shoes to shame!
I glanced. I gaped! I braked, turned around and headed back in the direction I came from. Just as Mueen whizzed past in the Alto he saw me going back and sure enough, he zzihwed (reverse of whizzed) back to stand by me and gwak at the beauty of the original tourer on 2 wheels we know! This was no dream! We were seeing on Indian Soil, on Indian Roads, a brand new Honda Goldwing! Very soon we were joined by the Black Beauty and Rabee riders and I started remeniscing about the very first Honda Goldwing I had seen in the flesh.
I still remember it like it was yesterday. It was about 14 -15 years ago. There was an auto show in the Kanteerva Indoor Stadium and I had gone along with a couple of my friends to check it out. I was in school those days and my dream bike was the Yahama RX 100 (Modest, I know but a performance 2 stroke nonetheless.) But the one that stole my heart that fateful day was a 1979 model Honda Goldwing on display. It was a combination of silver grey and black, the most beautiful bike I had ever seen. It had a sofa for a front seat and nothing less than a throne for a back seat.
The one that grabbed my imagination the most was THE BIKE COMES FROM THE FACTORY WITH AN AM/FM 2-SPEAKER SYSTEM THAT INTEGRATES A CB RADIO AND INTERCOM SYSTEM.
An Actual tape deck on the instrument console! Boy, you couldn't get fancier than that! Check the pic, you can also see the speakers on either side of the meters and dials.
And here I was standing in front of a 2008 model Honda Goldwing imported from the USA for all of 13 Lakh Indian Rupees which after taxes costs a neat 27 lakhs.
The rider was taking a break and if it were not for him riding off, we would have probably stood there staring at it all day long! So off we went with hazy eyes and fuzzy minds day-dreaming of the very bike which was parked next to ours in Kamath Lokaruchi. What a co-incidence! Grabbed the opportunity to chat up the guy who was riding and he informed me (after I shook hands with him) that he had just completed a 3000 kms trip of South India and shook hands with 10 thousand people on the way...
We had had eye candy and we had had food for thought. It was finally time for some of the real stuff. Beckoning us were the soft and fluffy kotte idlis (steamed in a leaf) and crispy vadas. World famous in India!
Kids of course will be kids and after 2 bites, ran off to paly in the play area. Ameen is a pretty impressionable young fellow and had to do whatever Zaki did. Except, Ameen was never very confident of sitting in a swing all by himself. So the idea of sharing one with Zaki really appealed to him. Zaki on the other hand, was the self proclaimed king of the high swings and what happened was rather comical. As the swing started moving higher, so did Ameen's little heart. The moment Zaki took off his hand which Ameen was leaning onto, Ameen let go of the swing chain and clung onto Zaki for dear life - check out the pics below! Pretty comical if you ask me!
All fed and watered, it was time now to head home. Post 9 am on a Sunday Morning on Bangalore - Mysore road is not the best of situations to be in. However, fortified with the long ride from Lokaruchi till De Club, we tackled the traffic gamely and were home longing to hit the sack even if only until lunch. Unfortuantely / Fortuantely for us, we had to shop for chicken and masalas for the barbecue palanned that night.
But that is another story, best left for another time, maybe another blog.....
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