I knew this from my off road bicycling, but never related it personally, to motorcycling. It is so much fun to maintain a ‘somewhat’ high speed on a muddy road, at some places wet with rain water, umpteen number of potholes nearly next to each other. One needs to be continuously ‘handling’ the bike so it doesn’t go over the potholes. You twist and turn the bike left and right so it uses the ridges most times to go over. You break and accelerate to handle that odd situation when the bike was actually getting into a pothole after all that valiant effort. You stand up on the pegs and ride.  Two reasons; one – the bumps don’t hit your bum saving your back, two – you can handle the bike better with the weight of the person off the bike (they call it zero weight handling or something because the weight of the our body is no longer supported by motorbike’s shock). And there is that way bit of tension that the bike may drop, if there was a slightest mistake. Add to that the idiosyncrasy of Royal Enfield’s EFI, you don’t know when the petrol will be shut off and engine stalls! Just like that!

So the motorbike goes left right, in and out of potholes, manages to go over the narrow ridges most times. It’s fun! Never knew going through a bad road could be so much fun. I guess it is all about how we receive and respond to a situation. There are bad patches in our life too. It is not so much of an issue once you change your outlook. You are now no-longer the victim trying to avoid it but rather cherishing it. With each success you are actually looking forward to more bad patches so you could successfully manage them and feel the pleasure of overcoming it. Every time we misjudged it, miscalculated it, we do go through the pothole. And you learn to stand up (on the pegs for a motorcycle) and minimize the impact. And you analyze and derive lessons from it. Understand what went wrong with the response and timing. Not so much of why we have a bad patch at all in my life’s path, but rather about cherishing them when we had one thrown at us.

Yes, smooth roads are all we want for most times. But not all the time. Too much lazing around and no work is no fun either.

So the itch of wanting to do a long ride on my motorbike was killing me. My friend and I were to go visit a beautiful lake considered part of 12 most beautiful lakes in the world. Yes, you read it right. Among the most beautiful in the world, right here in Telangana. Not worried but concerned of that occasional jerks I was getting on my motorbike during my return from office, I took it to the Service Center on Friday only to be told it was a 5-6 hour work. So my trip was obviously canceled. The itch was strong. Nevertheless didn’t want to take chances. I was to attend a lunch event at an old friend’s home today. So I needed to return home well ahead of that today.

I made a late decision waking up an hour early today on the Sunday, why not go somewhere, JUST-LIKE-THAT. I mean is it not fine if the destination is JUST-SOMETHING? After all for most motorcyclists it is the ride that is important, not the destination. So I thought I would go through the nice twisty roads with plenty of monkeys around in the Narsapur Forest. But the distance was not adequate to satiate me. I started off at home, and rode a long distance thinking I could decide where I wanted to further after I reached Narsapur. When I did, and did nicely through the small villages on the way, I thought why not pass through the forest longer. I checked out the maps and figured I could go till Medak, take a right ride till I join the Nagpur Highway and taste the high speed highway riding to my home, for the return instead of tracing back my onward journey.

Something unexpected happens on my way up. A car stops ahead of me twice with the driver waving his hand. After some initial confusion, I was surprised to know the driver (owner) wanted to know how happy I was with my Continental GT motorcycle as his son wanted exactly same bike with the same color too. He wanted a reassurance from me that it didn’t hurt rider’s back due to its racing riding posture. He seemed satisfied with my own experience that it didn’t.

The return through the highway was not anything to reckon with other than that for the first time perhaps, I reached home ahead of the time estimate provided by Google Maps. Usually despite some high speed stretches I am always well behind the estimates provided by Google Maps. Not this time. Maintaining north of a 100 most times during my return ensured I had good fun and reached home early to allow me take a hot water bath for a change today and visit my friend in the comfort of my car, for an altogether different reason!