My Reason to Ride…..

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. The above picture shows the reason why I like to ride. The Brotherhood of bikers,  My friends, my Brothers, who ride with me, make each of our rides a memorable one.

The reasons , superficially are many, get away from the daily office routine , fulfill your passion of photography and seeing new places, my wife likes to travel so that she can get away from cleaning and cooking ( like many other better halves also do, I am sure) .

I ride with the Bisons Ride Hard Motorcycle club. We are a relatively new biking club, around 60 in number and bonded by one common thread, our passion to ride the Bullet.  When together, distances seem small, punishing temperatures, non-existing roads, idiotic people and stray animals crossing the roads, seem so much more easy to handle.

Before you jump to any conclusions, we are a very sane set of people , not the archetypal biker boys( and gals). Our group has the most interesting set of people that I pride in calling brothers.

There is our chosen leader of the pack – Paaji, Gen singh, who is a self-proclaimed truck driver, whose life revolves around 2 things – riding and drinking tea. This gentleman consumes buckets of tea at every pit-stop that we take and rides for distances that gives the rest of us a real pain in the a** . After 3 – 4 rides, most of us have the Gluteus Maximus that would put body builders to shame.

There is Signals – the communication wizard in the team, who refuses to get photographed without his helmet, because he believes none of us can capture his inner beauty. Signals, is always on a protein diet. I almost feel for the restaurateur or in our case the dhaba wala who serves food to us. The entire Non vegetarian food on the menu is finished by this gentleman in one sitting.

There is Kauwla – named so because he is the youngest in the group. The Josh machine loves being photographed and has a different pose for each click that we try of him. There is not a single one with a straight face.

There is Tawa masala – Captain, who gets his name because he is always in a hurry , like he is sitting on a tawa.. by the time we park the bikes in our nightly pit stop, tawa masala has already run out, checked the rooms, the food available, the nearest atm, the petrol station and what not.

There is Yeda anna – probably the most colorful one in the group, whose life revolves around – “The humble vada pav”.  He has drawn maps for people asking for directions , with waypoints as vada pav stalls.  A connoisseur of this maharashtrian snack, Anna, even coaxes chefs who don’t have the vada pav in their menu to make it specially for him..

There are many many more such characters in the group and when we get together, and ride together, that’s what makes it so much fun to do.

That is my reason to ride….

For many such stories, and to talk to other bikers, what better way than to link up at www.facebook.com/CastrolBiking