Jan 11th ‘09

04:45 hrs. My cell hoots in the other room. Days of getting back under the rug and sleeping cozy are gone. I’m on my toes and in less than five seconds I silence the phone. Dad’s on the comp. checking out some stuff. He’s up early these days [well before me at times!]. Guess age gets the better of you when you age.

I quickly get ready, service my bike and by 05:50am I’m all set to leave. The plan was to head towards Qutub shahi tombs - Towlichowki, touching Necklace road en-route. Adi was to join me at Fever hospital. I place him a call before I kick off and then head towards Vidyanagar. By 06:05am I reach Adi’s residence.A brief stop over at his place and we leave at about 06:30am from his house. As we slowly pick up pace, the consistently rising whizzing sound of the spokes cutting across thin breeze as we speed up-slope acts as just another motivating factor. Pedalling through Fever hospital, Himayatnagar, lower tank bund, Prasad’s we reach Necklace road at about 06:50am.

A bit ahead of EatStreet we park our bikes on the footpath and Adi gets out his D60. For ten whole minutes he’s busy focussing and capturing the rising beauty of the city. At 07:10am we decide to leave and push over to our respective destinations. Adi had to head back home and I to Qutub Shahi. As we near the Imax circle, to the left we notice a group of people with Infosys badges. It takes a while for me to recollect that there was this rally that was jointly being organised by the ECO club in Infy and the IYCN today morning at 06:30am. We turn around and have a quick chat with the folks out there. There’s a change in plan almost instantly and we join the rally.

The central idea of the rally was to move in a group and spread word of ecologically friendly ways of commuting. The ICYN team join on their Revas in a few minutes.A set of school students join the group and the rally kicks start. Adi and I move with the group initially but not able to match the slow pace in which they were moving speed across on the road to the destination point of the rally - Sanjeevaiah park. The team takes close to twenty minutes to reach the park.A quick breakfast there and we have a set of games.

One thing about the IYCN rally was that, I don’t think it really served the purpose. Though their concept of the road tour was unquestionably reasonable, the rally I guess didn’t drive home the point. 07:30 hrs in the morning on a Weekend expecting to cut across a message to the public is definitely tad bit difficult and logically unreasonable.. Besides, instead of covering the Tank bund stretch we should have headed to the internal roads so as to reach out to more people. Anyway, That’s just a take away from the first meet.

At 09:45 hrs, I decide to head back home as I had to sort out a few isues with my Axis account. I take a U turn and pedal back towards Ranigunj.Touching Patny, Paradise, St. Ann’s, Sangeet X roads and finally Taranaka I reach Habsiguda at about 11:00hrs.

All in all, it was a cool but tiring ride back for some reason.Distance covered would approximately be around 30-35kms.But given the frequency of breaks and the time taken there’s one thing I need to work up on - Building my stamina. Most importantly keeping myself mentally prepared for long rides. Guess, I need to hit on the roads more frequently.