Lord of the Ring

Okie we now know the World is Flat, but that does not mean a Vasco da Gama wasn’t around to check that out. Well, the ring road is round, you didn’t expect me take that at face value. It had so gotten on my nerves that I had started seeing gol gol ringmares in the night. So I had to put an end to it. Parag volunteered to join in, after all that pestering, tormenting, nagging, henpecking, harassing, hassling, and bicep-showing (wow, I know to use the thesaurus) he didn’t have a choice, but he did good to ‘volunteer’.
The algorithm was this.
Start from BEL circle at 0530hrs on the ring road.
Keep going straight.
If there is a fork, do not take the one that says “Bangalore City”.
Loop until you hit the BEL circle again.
Then stop and Beer.
Before you start thinking “whats the big deal about that, I do half the ring to work everyday”, let me briefly introduce our bikes – a 2005 Hero Hawk and a 2005 Hero Ranger Swing. Ya it is that piece of machinery that comes with a handle, a pair of wheels, a seat, pedals and no fuel tank!!
It sure was very pleasant when we started off. We hit Tumkur road first, then took off towards Mysore Road. That was the best stretch of the whole ride. It was about an hour into the ride and the roads were all sloping down, not too much sweat and the sun just coming up. The sight was truly amazing.
Like all sloping things have to come to an end (pun, if any, unintended), we were in for some real steep climbs from then on. We made it in front of NLS, University, PESIT, RVCE puffing and climbing all the way. And that is when my pedal gave in. The pedal is connected to the chain sprocket through this rod. The screw thread connecting this rod to the pedal started getting ground under my weight (aprox. 40kgs). It was about 8:30 now and there was one cycle shop, which didn’t have the connecting rod. We considered welding, but the hardware shop was not open. Finally did some jugad and got the cycle wallah to fit an old rod in place. All this cost us 15 bucks and some precious time.
By the time we reached Silk board junction after about 35kms of cycling with all this breakdown and all, our enthu levels had really sapped. We took the easier option of getting into Banglaore city and headed straight back through Koramangala, cubbon park, sankey road and back to sanjaynagar. And at 1130, despite stumbling blocks, we reached the final destination – the restaurant that served beer with breakfast (breakfast when we started, lunch as we finshed)
A perfect Sunday get away - Peter Jakson would sure have been proud. I am the Lord of the Ring!!