TFN has bought a whole lot of changes, but one noticeable change is the camaraderie among all the bikers. Everyone is in constant touch with each other planning something or the other. If one set of bikers are testing their endurance levels going on long rides, others are testing their new found abilities to do crazy stuff. And I must say after what we did on the 1st of Feb, I belong to the latter one.
Friday, Nelly buzzes me calling out for a trail ride towards NICE corridor, and I agree to it with a small sigh. I personally don't like this road because of the headwinds and the crosswinds. It sucks the air out of you. I still wonder how the riders on TFN rode constantly for 7 days on such roads phew!
We met at the Critical Mass event on Saturday and fix on a plan to go towards the place where the Effective group riding workshop was held. It was Nelly's favourite place as he had recognized a few places to practice wall riding. Late in the night I call up Srikanth and Neelesh, and they agree to join us 7am sharp. The time shifts to 7.30am and finally we fix 7.30am as the start time.
The next day I woke up at 7 am and gave Nelly a wake up call. Fifteen minutes later Neelesh calls up to say that he would be 20mins late. Finally Neelesh and Srikanth come over to my house, by around 8am and we ride towards Family Mart junction. By 8.30am Nelly joined us and we start our ride towards NICE. Nothing exciting to talk about our journey towards NICE.
After about 50mins of riding, we reach the spot. Nelly surveys the place and he starts of with his wall riding immediately.
Looking at how Nelly does stuff, you feel its easy..until you try doing it. I had my own apprehensions and didn't do it then. After doing the wall ride, Nelly gave some gyan about how this can be done. The first thing, he pointed out, was to learn how to bunny hop. Gave us a few pointers about how to bunny hop and within an hour, we were bunny hopping......wow!
I seriously admire the way Nelly does these, and above all, the way he explains it. He takes you through the process step by step, explaining in detail the things that you have to do and things you have to keep in mind. It was really amazing. If not for the way he explained it, we would have probably taken a day or two to learn instead of an hour.
We then graduated to the next level and practiced Bunny hopping over a obstacle 1foot apart. Man!, we were in the air, flying.....:)
It takes some serious hard work and nothing comes easy, everyone had their share of cuts and bruises.
After a while, Nelly talked us through side hops, lifting our rear wheels without braking. It was fun and we thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it.
After watching Nelly do the wall ride, I couldn't resist myself from trying it out. Myself and Neelesh, we did the wall ride a couple of times and had a terrible fall once(unfortunately camera wasn't rolling, damn :().....its a little scary after you've had a fall. Neelesh hadn't eaten anything in the morning and wasn't hydrated well enough. You know the outcome, he cramped in his thighs...and we decided to call it quits!
Dilip had an event at his office, and had informed us that he would join us late in the afternoon. But his event got cancelled and joined us by around 11am.
After about an hour of chit chatting, we decided to explore some trails. We set off and had to prematurely end, as it was getting hot and we didn't have enough water. And I had the second fall of the day, I was standing on the peddle, on one leg towards the left side of the bike, when I hit a stone and toppled over my bike. Srikanth had a nice view of me falling from behind :). The terrain was a bit thorny, Nelly had 2 punctures and I had 3....phew! Fixed those and we turned back towards the city. Half way through Neelesh was slowing down mainly because of exhaustion. He took the ride back home slow and easy.
Gullu joined was near Konankunte, bought us some water. Had a nice lunch at a nearby hotel and headed back home.
Now after 2 days, my forearms, shoulders, biceps, triceps, neck....bloody every single muscle is aching.....I guess have to do this more often.
For the complete set of pictures click here and video playlist click here
