The greenery on both sides is inspiring and provides a serene setting. You feel blessed enjoying the breeze on the face as the tires keep devouring the black tarmac. You are lost in thought of how beautiful can a ride get!! You feel like someone is shaking you out of your thoughts. You look around confused until your eyes reach down where the tire meets the tarmac and you know who’s shaking you.

You curse your luck and may be the F word or the S word comes out with out any conscious effort on your part. You get down thinking, “Ah!! Come on!! How can this happen? This is a beautiful ride on a beautiful day!!” The guys surround you in no time. Like a pit stop crew from the F1 races, one guy helps you pull out the wheel and remove the tube while another puts in the spare and inflates it. In no time you are good to go. Feeling the breeze on the face again you think, “Of course its a beautiful day!! Its a wonderful day!!”

Sounds familiar!?? Yes!! Most of us have that experience and its Diwakar’s turn today on the ride. 🙂

When the guys from the Gachibowli chapter of HBC put up a ride you know you are in for a great ride with great folks. But when the wonderful folks from the Sec’bad chapter decide to ride 20km to join on the ride you don’t want to miss the fun. So I made sure I did not miss it. What better ride can I pick to take fond memories with me as I move across the ocean and fly to live elsewhere for a few months!!

I was up early and got on the bike a good one hour before the start time of 7am when the group is supposed to be at Dr. Reddy’s lab near my place. So, I decide to ride on with no set plan in mind. I rode along till I reached the Medak road and it was 7am. I mulled over my options and decided in favor of giving a welcome to the Sec’bad group riders by riding in the opposite direction of what I thought was their route to the meeting spot.

The route I took led me to Jeedimetla instead and I knew I was on the wrong path. I turned back towards the meeting spot and found the group just a km away from Gandimaisamma junction on Medak road where all the riders are supposed to meet. We reached the meet-up spot and and the riders from Gachibowli area just arrived there. It was like clockwork.

From Sec’bad Krishna, Chandra, GR, Raja Shekar, Dr. Ramana joined the ride. I heard that Wg. Cdr. Ramany turned back after 15km although he wanted to meet Shay and others as he had a 9’o clock appointment. From Gachibowli area Matt, Sunil, Sandy, Silpa, Siddarth, Amod, Rahul, Diwakar and Myself made to the ride.

We decided that we would head out on the Medak road and ride for one hour and turn back after an hours time to stop at the first chai shop for refreshments.

The Medak road is always a nice route the rides although there seems to be a bit more traffic on the day. We rode along on the trail for an hour and turned back after around 22km. We fixed the flat on Diwakar’s bike on our way back. A while later, the priest of a roadside temple invited us for prasad and our hungry stomachs refused to let go of that chance. Krishna, Ramana and myself stopped for the ‘Pulihora’ on offer and moved on after having a couple of servings of it.

We stopped at the first chai shop that we came across but by the time the riders ahead of us have left as we took our sweet own time first for fixing the flat then stopping the temple and riding slowly in general. Siddarth, Amod, Ramana, Krishna and myself rode on slowly after the refreshments and reached the Gandimaisamma junction again.

Siddarth and Amod rode on toward Miyapur while Ramana was tired and decided to take an auto to reach Bowenpally. My sports tracker was showing 75km at that point and the 15km towards home would mean a 90km. I thought, the ride deserved a century and decided to ride to meet Wg.Cdr. Ramany as I had an appointment with him later that afternoon. I called him to pre-pone the appointment and rode along with Krishna reach his home which is 20km away.

Krishna and his chikkis along with his contagious enthusiasm helped me big time on this ride. I had little else than his chikkis and water to fuel my century ride. Thanks Krishna for your company and for the chikkis. 🙂

After Ramany’s warm reception, I needed a cool sun to ride the 20km to reach home. It was 12pm already and the sun was anything but cool. It looked adamant on giving me a tan as if I really need one. More than the sun, the mid-day traffic on the Bowenpally-Balanagar route was awful. The distance that took me around 40mins on my early morning ride last week took me one and half hour in the afternoon traffic and pollution. But at the end it was immensely satisfying to see 115km on the sports tracker as I parked my Hawk.

I will sourly miss the rides with the group for sometime. I’ll keep in touch through the meet-up forum and the blog. But for the rides as The Terminator says “I will be back”. 🙂

Here is the link to the photos:

http://picasaweb.google.co.in/hivenkat.d/AdieuForNowCenturyRide20090919#

PS: Somehow not all the photos I clicked made it to the memory card on my phone. May be I got to delete some of the thousand of photos that are already there. 🙂