Chain ReaXion 'Team Ride'

I spent all month waiting for the "long weekend" to arrive. When it did, it turned out to be my shortest one in a while. I worked right through Janmashtami and Independence Day, besides the fact that 14th August was my dad's birthday these days didn't really hold any real significance for me. I was robbed of some R&R but then again, it was for a good enough cause! I'm not going to drone on about work because if I were you, I wouldn't really care either.

After a late Saturday night, I was woken up by Chris Brown's 'Forever' (from the JK Wedding entrance video :D) at about 04:45 AM. Reluctantly I jumped into my cycling gear and headed out to meet Siddharth (whom I will hereafter refer to as 'Mopsy') at his place en route to Abhay's where we were to set up the cycles and head out, safety car in tow.

We left Kotturpuram and headed towards Tiruvanmiyur, where we usually start our ‘Chain Reaxion’ rides. We decided to make like professional riders and counter the wind by taking turns at the front end of our little "peloton". A couple of kilometers into the ride Mopsy had a close shave when he didn't notice an ambassador turning left at the RTO, quick reflexes from both driver and rider saved him a lot of pain. Anyway we managed to shrug that off, put our heads down and pedal. I had left my Camaleonte back at Abhay's and was riding Veeresh's Via Nirone with the carbon forks, the frame was way too small for me and I couldn't change ride height because my Allen key set was left behind in the ambulance at the last ride. Abhay was on his 'Celeste' beauty, Mopsy on the Spillo Quarzo and Tanvi in the Skoda keeping us all safe!

Along the way we saw a couple of groups riding, they were pretty much all youngsters and mostly on MTBs. It didn't really seem right to just fly right past on our Bianchis so we slowed down a bit, smiled, said "hey!" and took off! Literally!

We made quick time, heading down ECR towards the toll. Just as we were passing Basera, a bug managed to find its way into one of Abhay’s eyes. Once we had that sorted, we put on some protection and got back down to business. Once we got to the toll gate, we decided to hydrate and head to Abhay’s Uncle’s place in Panayur for some awesome breakfast. We also bumped into Sidharth and Rajesh, on their spanking new Bianchis, at the toll.

Once breakfast was out of the way, we chilled for a good half hour before saying our goodbyes and heading back. This time we decided on taking OMR to avoid the traffic on ECR. This was the long way around, still we were up for it. OMR is way more dangerous than ECR, you can’t look down without having some guy on a bike nearly hit you head on! Yes! They are all on the wrong side of the road. At the toll just as we were approaching Tidel Park, we met a boy that had cycled all the way from past Sholinganallur to meet a friend. Now THAT is awesome! 

The ride from there till Abhay’s place was uneventful, except for an old man on a bike taunting me saying “Why you going so slow? Go faster!” Despite feeling like my legs were going to fall off, I showed him that the Bianchi could be quicker than his rusty old bike!

The ride pretty much sorted the men from the boys! I felt more like a Cavendish than an Armstrong by the end of it. There were clearly two classes of riders on the day. Abhay and the rest of us!

Its Ramadan now and I’m pretty much off cycling for a month. I’m currently working on getting through the month without losing any weight. So far, so good! I’d like some feedback on this post. What with this being my first blog post and all. We’re all going to be up here at some point. Watch this space for more!

Keep Riding!

Suhail
Chain ReaXion

PS - We missed Rohit, who was away in Erode on some work! Veeresh thanks for your bike, too bad you couldn't make it.