Happy B'day, Rocinante :)

My bike turns four today. It's been a helluva ride, almost 50k kilometers. I'm proud of the fact that she's done more kms on long trips than on the office commute. She's my life and love, my pride and joy, blood sweat and tears and all the other cliches possible. I love that bike.

We've been through a lot together. I've had 28 accidents, for starters. I've been airborne and underwater(and how!) on it, both true stories by the way. Skin was scraped, bones were broken, money was spent on expensive and hard-to-get spares, yet the biking spirit endures. I've been to chennai 9 times, pondicherry and goa 4 times each, shivanasamudram twice and once each to sakleshpur, coorg, bombay pune and ahmedabad. And a hundred other places remain on my list.

I hope to do ladakh some day soon, maybe even another country, though that is a distant dream. If i could, i'd go around the world, in a heartbeat. I've done enough miles to cover the equatorial circumference of the earth, and i hope we eventually cover the equivalent of the distance to the moon. I wanna go to the north east on a wild goose chase to find the elusive sonam kazi. I want to chill with the delhi folks after a ride through rajasthan. I want to see pushkar, jaisalmer and bikaner, probably even make an offering at the biker baba shrine thereabouts.

But above all, I want to say its been a helluva ride. I've seen parts of this country in a way few other people have. I've had the most amazing experiences, hurtling through dusty villages on hot afternoons, racing downhill on the ghats against the sunset, scrambled to escape the clutches of a rainstorm, tasting roadside chai in unlikely places, tearing up and down the highways in what can only be called a pursuit of happiness. temporary and fleeting happiness that disappears when i get to work on monday, yes, but a very important happiness nonetheless. A happiness that helped me keep my head amongst a life varying between the mundane and the insane. And for that, i'm grateful i have this bike, a sport tourer extraordinaire. I'm as much in love with my bike today as i was on the day i bought it.

Someone was dead-on right when they said, "Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul"

PS- I secretly christened my bike rocinante a few months after id started touring, in honor of Don Quixotes faithful steed. My pursuits are quixotic after all :)

Also, pratheek sends his wishes :)

Whats even worse? Shopping for Times of India..

Two rants.

Shopping. I do not subscribe to the line "lets go shopping". Do not. I can think of a million other things to do in that time, i might not do any of those things and probably will goof off on the couch at home, but i will not go. When i have to buy stuff, I know exactly what i want, and pretty much where i can find it. Within five minutes of entering a mall, i know where the t-shirts are, and in another two minutes i figure out the dark coloured ones, and one more minute to choose an appropriate number i require, and then its checkout. I do not like walking up and down wasting time looking at stuff i probably have no intention of buying. And my logic is this, that its bad enough giving my money to some two-bit corporation (not a hippie, not against corporations per se, just that its my money im parting with), but i dont have to give them my time. my time is mine (except when i charge $22 an hour at work). In fact, if i have gone on a shopping trip at any point, it was probably with people i value in my life. rant one over.

Times of India. What the fuck is the point of that paper? I know entertainment and titillation sells, i know they cover their pages with semi naked chicks and shiny advertisements even i like to look at occasionally, but i cannot stomach the absolute cynicism that drives a newspaper, thats right a NEWSpaper, to come out with a special obscenely overpriced edition on saturday that contains NEWS in it. what the fuck? a newspaper selling a special news edition on saturday? isnt that what they're supposed to sell EVERY day? and a word to the page 3 eco nuts who read said paper, i guess the irony is lost on all of you. cancelling your subscription to this joke of a paper that does nothing to enrich your life would probably save more trees than all your eco whining on said paper ever will. rant two over, over and out.