On biking, it is!

It was back in June last year while I was interning at IANS that I was sent to an early morning expedition to India Gate to witness and report the flagging off ceremony of the 2011 Royal Enfield Himalayan Odyssey. The hour long event which saw around 50 bikers getting ready for their 15 day journey to Leh and beyond and back, had me suddenly changing my perception of bikers as being ‘rash drivers’. Never had I given a serious thought to learning to ride a motorbike before that day. After going through the information provided in the press kit and a lot of internet surfing, I was like, I have to ride on one of those bikes and go on a biking trip!! The day hasn’t come yet, nor have I learnt to ride a bike as of now, but this experience was good enough for me to start writing about it here for the Castrol Power1 Blogging Contest at IndiBlogger.

Biking is fun. Biking is all about letting go of your worries. Biking is freedom. I have heard a lot of similar stuff. Having no personal experience in the art of biking, I thought I would ask some of my biker friends what biking meant to them. A facebook status update and tagging a few friends was all that was required to bring in some wonderful answers in a few hours of time.

Getting hands on that dream bike and riding at an age when you can not legally have a license, is another bit of the fun of enjoying freedom. My senior at IANS, Rahul, sent me an account of getting his hands on his first bike back in class 10.

Parking the bike and sitting silently listening to music or riding the animal at full horsepower on the open stretch of the highway, my biker friends seem to love it all.

A senior from my school is a biker who loves to address his bike as his girl friend- 'the only woman I could ever trust'. No wonder I also have a friend who is a girl and loves the thrill of riding the bike. 

I learnt driving a car with the help of a proper trainer in May 2010. My trainer remarked on the second day that I was able to drive with more ease and safety on the back gear than any of the first five gears. I wonder how the scene is going to be when I finally learn to ride a bike. Perhaps then, i would be able to come up with a better post for this kind of a contest. ;)

By the way, are you a biker?