About Waking up and Getting Home

The interesting part about these cycling trip that has not been written about so far is the torture of dragging yourself out of bed at 5am, and the recovery routine once you get home after the ride. As you can imagine this does not make for a very happy household. Basically the night before you get your bike ready and your cycling gear (clothes, shoes, pump, magic potion, tubes, camera etc) so that you don't have to fumble around for them in the morning and wake up the household. When the alarm goes off at 5am you don't have much time to think. It's either - get ready very quickly, but as quiet as a mouse and then get the hell out of your home before anyone wakes up, or tuck your head under the pillow dreaming about how unusually long and wonderful a short five minute nap is. 

Once your out of home there is the usual routine of waking the chowkidaar to open the gates and then as you ride to the meeting point you will get chased by some canine that couldn't get to sleep, or get asked for directions by a sleepy but bewildered taxi driver who probably has a very anxious and upset customer waiting for an airport drop. 

Once at the contact point you will find that your phone starts ringing and you get several simultaneous calls from  bikers trying to find out where the hell the pick up point is, or why you are late. Again, it is crucial you get out of your house before this starts, else expect trouble.  And if some riders don't show up then you can get them into trouble by giving them a call to ask them if they are coming or not. This is a wierd feeling, it's a bit like your six year old neighbour who rings your bell every evening to ask "can Rohan please come out to play today?" and part crank caller who is gleefully waking up a household in the middle of the night. Anyway with all the coordination done the group finally assembles and you are off!

Here are some pictures from last Saturdays ride when seven of us went back to climb the thorny hils of Compasspur, who's real name I still forget (see my blog of 21 Oct for the gruesome details of my previous lone visit).  Go here to see the ride route and other details.

Pictures below from left to right.

1. Trek 4300s parked together at the house of the now famous hookah gurgler

2. Assessing the ascent (pic courtesy Rajesh Kalra)

3. Happily climbing (pic courtesy Rajesh Kalra)

4. The photographer being photographed (pic courtesy Rajesh Kalra)

5. Carl with his son's back-pack (chweet nah!?)

6. Prabhat settling our fat breakfast bill

7. Caught in the sand 

8 & 9. The standard "proof of ride" group pictures

So you had a great ride, you watched the sun rise, laughed with your friends, sweated like a pig, probably feasted like one too (even "on one" if you can get some bacon), and then you get back home and you are exhausted. The first thing you do is re-hydrate and then you go and stand under the shower, wash off the Haryana sand and dust, get into some comfortable sleeping clothes, do some leg stretching exercises, and then crash out, waking up just in time for lunch.

As you can guess, my spouses is not too amused with this routine of finding me gone when she wakes up and then finding me asleep when I get back and I'm sure it leads to much domestic friction in many riders household. However I have conviced myself that this is the price one has to pay and that "Work-Life balance" isn't everything.... "Work-Life-Ride balance" is.

Revert and Respond

It really bothers me when I get emails where the closing line says something like "please revert on this". What most people think they are saying by this is that they would like you to respond to something. What most people don't realize however, is that they are actually asking you "to go back to an earlier condition".

re⋅vert: 

1.	to return to a former habit, practice, belief, condition, etc.:They reverted to the ways of their forefathers.

2.	Law. to go back to or return to the former owner or to his or her heirs.

3.	Biology. to return to an earlier or primitive type.

4.	to go back in thought or discussion: He constantly reverted to his childhood.

and it does not mean 'to respond'.

So the funny ones are when people write something like "please move forward on this and revert right away" which rather confusingly translates into "please take a step forward and take a step backwards right away".

Eventually the usage of the term revert will become universally incorrect and then it will take on a new meaning "to respond", but till then it would be nice if people used it correctly.

The Three Mistakes of My Sunday Ride

Today was a mistake, but one that I would gladly repeat. After the great ride on Saturday to Pathways School via Bhondsi I decided to build on the riding continue the momentum and head out on Sunday morning to Golden Greens to scope out the paths on the hills behind the golf course. 

The Saturday ride to Pathways via Bhondsi was wonderful (check out Rupesh's blog for a more engaging write-up and some great photos). But overall lots of nice views, pleasantly eventful, and some nice pics. 

We had a local try to palm off some dahi to Jacob as a substitute for his time tested magic potion, 

made friends with Panditji ka kutta,

terrorized the geese by close proximity salivation over the thought of roast duck, 

and were curious to find out how rich kids get up to no good when they are literally in the middle of nowhere.  

The Sunday ride however was very different. I went alone assuming that not many people would be interested in riding on a day when they wanted to rest their backsides and that it would be a short run to Golden Green, a pleasant walk up the hill and back to the club house for breakfast and then run back home in time to catch the Kabaddi wala. Hah - I should be so lucky!

Being alone, I managed to start early and had crossed Badshahpur by 6:15am. I crossed the golf course at about 7:15am and decided that I would first climb the hill then come back for breakfast. 

So I entered the village neighbouring the golf course (I don't remember the name of the village, but let's call it Compasspur for ease of reference) and started asking the locals for directions about how to get on top of the hill. In the process I made pretty good friends with a lot of them since I met them several times over the course of the morning. The first reason for this was that everyone had a different opinion about the path and kept sending me back the way I had just come. The second was to have them sympathize with me a few hours later as I walked around the village trying to find a puncture-wallah, but let me not jump the gun. 

After spending an hour back-tracking several times through the village I found two people who consecutively gave me the same directions about how to get on top of the hill. This was good enough for me. Near the start of the climb I also found a chowkidaar who volunteered to show me the path himself. This looked promising! As we started he did suggest that I leave the bike at his hut, but being the suspicious Gurgawaia (Gurgaon-ite in Bihari) that I am, I told him the bike was light and it would not be a problem walking with it up the path. This was mistake number two. 

As we walked up the trail Jamuna (that was his name) told me that it was a wide and rocky track, but that about a month ago some strange city folks in big cars with very very big tyres had managed to drive up to the top. At first the track looked pretty easy (see pic below of Jamuna next to bike on the track). 

And as I was more and more distracted by the view and our conversation of how he had come all the way from Samastipur to find a job here, I did not notice that we were getting into very rocky and very thorny terrain.  By the time I did it was probably too late as my front tyre was already flat and by back one was getting soft very quickly. With the damage done I decided I may as well enjoy the view of the sun rising over the Aravallis.

Breathtaking would not be an exaggeration to describe the view.

While I was busy clicking pictures Jamuna excused himself as he had to get back to duty. Alone at the top of the hill, with a strong breeze, abandoned buildings  and complete silence was an inspiring and slightly fearsome sensation.

If anyone has seen the movie “Picnic at Hanging Rock” then they may know what I’m getting at.

After about an hour of hanging out on the hill the sun came out in full force and I decided to return to Compasspur to assess the damage to my tyres. There one of the locals invited me to share some tea, which I was more than happy to accept that but I had to draw the line when he invited me to gurgle his hookah, preferring to stick to my own cancer sticks. 

An inspection of the wheels told me that the front was totally gone and that the rear one had a slow leak. I figured it would take me half an hour to change both the tubes till I looked in my backpack and was horrified when I realized I had just carried one tube with me. Mistake number three!

The nearest puncture-walla turned out to be in Hassanpur, about a three km walk. I had managed to change the front tube (at the home of the hookah- gurgler) and asked the tyrewalla to fix the rear one. He took out the tube, inflated it and stuck it in the water to see where the leak was and then smiled and stopped counting punctures once he crossed ten. At this point, with no other options, I accepted his offer to fit the closest size tube he had, which he said would probably get me the 18km back home (see route map and ride details here)

I did eventually get home at about 11am and since Lady Luck had walked out on me all morning, she decided to come back and smile on me finally in the form of the Kabaddi-walla who had almost finished his rounds of the apartment complex after an unusually busy morning. The list of things I sold included about 17 kilos of papers, several beer bottles, an old plastic stool and two not very old but very leaky tyre tubes. 

 

Par for the Course

Today was my fourth ride as part of the Gurgaon Cycling Group. So I should now qualify as a regular rider and be able to get by hands on one the uber-exclusive T-shirts that the group is in the process of designing and procuring. 

I think this ride was bit different from the last three since we mostly stayed on very small country roads, dirt tracks and sandy tractor lanes crossing some wonderful rural scenery and charming villages. Mostly importantly, once we got off the highway we were exposed to almost no traffic except the occasional tractor and tanga and closely followed a route drawn out using Google Maps.

Akshay, Prabhat and I met up on Sohna Road at the round-about at Uniworld Gardens. When no one else showed up, we started to phone people. First of all we called Carl who answered the phone in a very groggy state, clearly still tucked in bed. Next I got a call from Jacob, in an equally groggy state, apologizing that he would not be able to make it (clearly he had not had his magic potion the night before).  We also tried calling Vicky, who had probably put his phone on silent, so the three of us eventually started off taking the NH8 to Manesar.

Riding on the highway is never very comfortable. Sleep deprived truckers and hungover cab drivers racing to Jaipur means that you have to cycle defensively. However the pleasure of not paying at the toll gate is some compensation for the hair raising experience of a 30 ton dumper truck, air horn full blast, come tearing past you from behind.

We turned off the highway just before McDonalds, ensuring that we were not enticed into a burger breakfast once again - however, greater pleasures lay ahead. From here we closely followed the map and the GPS on my phone to get onto a 3.5 km dirt track that would take us, slipping and sliding, towards our refueling pit-stop. 

This stretch with its rocky inclines, sandy straights, and mud allowed me to finally put my “all terrain bikes” to full use. On the way we crossed a few villages, some beautiful scenery of fields being ploughed, had to get off the path to make way for a truck that just about fit on the track, overtook a noisy tractor, and turned a blind corner to find a rather surprised looking horse pulling an amused looking tanga driver.

Eventually we got back onto the tarmac and raced towards the Golden Greens Golf Resort. Riding confidently to the club house Prabhat used his charm to get them allow us into their restaurant. 

Most of the cycling group will agree that this is clearly a move in the wrong direction. I mean graduating from chai and glucose biscuits, to samosas and jalebis, to fillet of fish and happy meals at McDonalds, and now to the breakfast at the club house goes against the rough and tumble, outward bound nature of mountain biking. But what the heck, after all it was the only place to get anything to eat or drink for miles around.

Refueled, we took the narrow road that headed back to Badshahpur and Sohna Road. On the way we crossed the aptly named village of Darbaripur, with its palatial houses, all with the standard hooka on their front verandahs, and prized tractors parked in garages and SUVs lined up in the front yard.  The final stretch home was as usual the most painful, not just because I was tired but also because this ride had probably been more about the journey and less about the destination.  

Here are some more pictures from the ride

Akshay with donkey

Prabhat slipping and sliding on the sand

The stone quarry we passed on the way

Lots of fluids

On your bike mate!

It all started in the doctor’s clinic. She looked grimly at my reports, murmured something that sounded like "oh dear, oh dear" under her breath and then pointed at my belly and suggested "we really need to do something about that". There it was again, that "we" thing. For some reason she made it sound like she was in as bad shape as I was. She would never say "you". It's always "we”, “we need to get a test done", "we need to increase the helpings of salad", "we need to be regular with our check-ups". Anyway it was clear that my regimen of morning walks was not doing me much good. Listening to the latest podcast of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.. or Mark Kermode’s movie rants while doing five laps of the Orchid Garden complex was not sufficient compensation for ‘our substantial calorific intake’ the doctor gently pointed.

My options were to shell out a fortune and once again join some fancy gym and then doing calculations that told me that everyday I didn’t go I wasted another 500 bucks, or do something I was likely to enjoy - like cycling. All the research suggested that if you managed to not get run over, or not crack your skull in a fall, it was the best form of exercise. This sounded reasonable and so I decided to buy a bike.

It was a difficult process. My mind said buy a road bike for short gentle rides, my ego said buy a mountain bike do something adventurous. The bike gurus on various web sites suggested a 19.5 inch frame would fit my size, I just liked the feeling of a slightly smaller 18 inch one. The shopkeeper said I should go for the new orange coloured frames, I thought I'd look a right Charlie on anything that looked like a kids cycle.  So after much deliberation and research I was won over by the selling skills of one Mr Lance Armstrong who swears by Trek cycles.

I also explain this impluse as somewhat a response to mid-life crisis for the sedate. If had been a little more on edgy I'm sure I would have conviced myself to buy an Enfield Bullet and if I had the money I may have gone for the little red Porsche convertible. 

Anyway it's been about a week since I got the bike and not one fall and a fair amount of fun. Stay tuned for more about the rides themselves...

Being Regular

I truly admire those people who blog regularly. It seems to be compulsive for them and the most impressive part is that they actually have something to say everyday.

And then there are the others. The rest of us, those whose lives just don't seem as full and happening, those who really don't have anything interesting to write about. I mean look at my track record - two blogs about a 20th year school reunion and one about why I think people write blogs. So basically the reader of this blog can fairly surmise that they need not check back for another posting till about 2027 when we have our 40th class reunion.

But what I noticed is that people do not just write about events, but also about observations, no matter how small or insignificant. In fact some of the most interesting are often the most insignificant ones. You know the kind when you see something that makes you smile inside but you think it's not worth sharing because it's really not much. An example may help.

I stopped at a dusty crossing on a country road outside Agra to ask directions for the bypass road to Gwalior. Both men point in the same direction and reassure me that I have to keep going absolutely straight. Then as we start to pull away the older one shouts out "Bilkul aankh meech ke" which sort of means shut your eyes but also suggests something like with blinkers on. What a lovely expression. It did make me smile all the way to Gwalior and at every intersection we came to I'd think "Bilkul sidha - aankh meech ke".

And so I have decided to put myself into observation mode which gives me a good excuse to look blankly at people and then smile.

Encouragment and Confessions

I have been flooded by emails from class mates in the last few weeks appreciating my recent blog postings on this alumni website and encouraging me to continue the writing. Well when I say ‘flooded’ it was actually just three. But this series of emails has had an interesting effect on me. I was struggling to put my finger on what it was evoking and then realised it was something called self worth and confidence. This feeling was somewhat unusual until I realised that these emails probably amount to the greatest appreciation I have ever received by a group (except for that one time in tenth or eleventh grade when I was one of the first to get chicken pox and went around spreading it among many of my fellow students who all thought that two weeks in the dispensary would be any day better than going to class). This does off course tell you a lot about my sad state of affairs, but enough of the self-pity.

The fallout of this sense of confidence was to start me thinking about how to continue the blogging and perhaps get more people to participate and re-connect. The more I thought about it the more I kept hearing this line in my head - “the road the hell is paved with good intentions”.

My initial thoughts were to start a series of questions that would lead to a series of what I call “historical confessions”. Like most secrecy acts that keep secrets locked away for a limited period, I thought it’s now more than 20 years since people have left school and have entered a completely new stage of life. Surely we could get people to start opening up about some of the things they were not comfortable talking about at, or right after school.

Questions included:
- Whatever ever happened to that girlfriend/boyfriend who you thought you would spend the rest of your life with and how would you introduce them to your current spouse/partner?
- If you left school before graduation can you please tell the rest of us the real reason for this?- What really was the worst school regulation that you broke and if you have children how would you react to them doing the same?
- Did we have, or can we make up a retrospective class list of “person most likely to succeed/become a leader/fail/be famous/be infamous/become an ascetic/be a millionaire etc." and then actually see what those people are up to now?
- Any other secrets or confessions that someone wants to make after 20 years and their perspective on it now that we are a different generation.

Of course I realised it looked a bit like an Oprah Winfrey script, but also that at best there would be that awkward pin-drop silence on the website while people wondered who is going to go first, or at worst I could be excommunicated from the alumni list by “she who must be obeyed” (the name that Merryn has appropriately given to our beloved class shepherd - Lorrie).

So to keep good intentions in control, how about this why not also post a short blog on the latest person you met from our class and on how you think they have really changed since leaving Woodstock.

Also let me clarify that anyone who wants to respond to the other topics I suggested above is free to do so, but completely at their own risk (if that’s OK with you Lorrie?). And lastly I promise not to consider any posting in response to this as fan mail, and if you hear a loud “pop”, it’s probably just a self-confident bubble.

20th Reunion Preparations

Someone from the class of 86 got my number from the extremely well managed Woodstock School alumni website and called me the other day. In the course of the conversation he said he had seen my photo on the website and commented that I looked very different from how he remembered me at school. “Really!??” I said.

Anyway the point is that I am quite terrified about the upcoming reunion and have been contemplating desperate measures in preparation for the day. A diet may do me some good but I probably need something closer to major surgery including facelift/s, hair transplant, and liposuction. Some of you may remember that at school I was given the nickname “Boss”. A kind classmate once told me that it was because I resembled a certain villain from the “Dukes of Hazard”, and something tells me that the name may just stick (another acronym was less charitable, but I won’t go into that here).

The other recurring nightmare is the one when I remember myself in school, walking around the quad and seeing some middle aged person from say the class of ‘67 clicking photos and trying to have a conversation with a student, and the thoughts that went through my mind. I think it went something like this: “My goodness, don’t these people have a life. I mean imagine having graduated before I WAS EVEN BORN and then coming all the way just to see if things have changed! Well actually Mr so and so we got some form of electricity, and running water quite some time ago. And would you please stop talking about the ‘good old days’. Good grief”.

I have booked my tickets so I will be there for the reunion, but if I look somewhat different, or stay very very quiet – you’ll know why.

Exposing Myself to Strangers

"I think that's a very odd thing to do" said my wife as I began to type my first blog. I realized it is a very uncomfortable feeling of exposing yourself or being seen and read by potentially anyone in the worldwide web. The scary part is that it can come to no good whatsoever. Those who don't know you (the majority) will form an opinion of a person based on a photo and some poor introspective writing, and those who do know you will think "what the hell is he doing now"!

Anyways I'm not clear why anyone would write a blog except maybe to try and broadcast an opinion, stay connected, or make themselves better known, or enjoy the public "exposure". I find none of these reasons for my blog, I think it may just be time pass and the enjoyment of writing with no purpose at all. If someone is reading this I would strongly encourage you to stop at this point because this is not going anywhere at all. It's just downloading garbage through the exercise of writing. Just consider this as typing practice.

My wife continues to give me strange looks as I type this and has encouraged me to change the photo of myself to one of a pet dog or favourite bird. She says that I could then behave like a kid who sneaks around the garden, throws a stone into the neighbor's house and peeps through the bushes to see if anyone has noticed. I'm really just doing this to see what happens next.

Curiosity without the guts to face the consequences. But look, I have put my photo on the blog. How much more courageous can a guy get, especially one looking like this. But the question is, is this really me? And even if it is, is it really me?