25,000 km of Awesomeness!

August 12 is when my FZ got an year older. 2 years and 25,000 kms! Pheww!

No no! This isn't me getting all emotional. The first 10K might have been about falling in love with biking, getting a hang on routes, convincing people to ride pillion, but the next 15,000... no sir.. its been much more than that!

Its been about reliability and selflessness! About camaraderie born out of tripling from office to the nearby bus-stand. Dropping colleagues off en-route and towing the bike from the middle of a traffic jam to a petrol pump 3 kms away, just because somebody forgot to refill! Oh and Yes.. dragging my ass back home from a 3 am party. The harshest of summers to the coldest of Delhi winters, swerving on potholed and flooded monsoon roads, its seen everything!

Not almost. Where do I go next? 

The mysterious sands of Rajasthan, dew filled mountains of Himachal and Uttarakhand and the aroma of the daal ( lentils ) cooking slowly over the tandoor heat from the dhabas in Punjab seem to be too strong an attraction right now. And whatever India I've seen apart from my destination has mostly been from a train window or peering outside the bus. On the bike, you just feel closer to the road, feel every bump, and can always stop in the middle of nowhere to take a detour into a village on a 'kaccha' road and sit by the side of the canal and bite on sugarcanes! And yes, bask in the smell of fresh jaggery getting prepared.

Ooh. Too much to fit into the next 10,000. Its going to be one helluva ride!

10,000 !

Ten Thousand ?

As I crossed the red light from the Outer Ring Road at Nehru Place towards Maa Anandamayee Marg to cover the last leg to get to my Okhla Phase-2 office, the odometer on my bike chucked to 10,000 kms. The meter really didn't put in that much effort. The wheels surely did!

I swerved to the side of the road just as the four figures changed to five, tootling amongst a BMW and a Toyota, the playthings of the rich. The earphones unapologetically blared " Ji Karda ni mera... braka laun nu.. " (-I don't feel like applying the brakes-) , a popular Punjabi track from the movie "Mere Dad ki Maruti" echoing the thoughts running through my head.

So this is what 10,000 felt like! To all the trust I had put into my Yamaha FZ! All the new places I never knew were a part of Delhi. All the folks who rode pillion with me. And finally to my getting a better handle on the routes! Biking, is the best thing I could ever have got into. I remember the first time I biked alone on the Airport-Dwarka road on a cold winter night, the chilly wind breezing past my face, the silence of the night being broken by the roar of the engine. Living, felt so real.

As I get back onto the saddle to drive the last mile to my office, I realize I haven't given my FZ a wash. A spa treatment is due. A lil bit of waxing, a lil bit of oiling and she's good to roar again! She's quite like me! Doesn't really mind not taking a bath every single day!

Eww! Didn't really have to blurt that one out!