Mud trails and muddy weekends

Sunday was spent in slush. Not the kinds that give you brain-freeze but the kinds that give you muscle-freeze!

It all started with a motley crew of tough bikers from Bengaluru deciding that getting muddy would be fun. So they thought up a bike-race where you got to see a lot (a real lot) of mud. People were told, registration forms made on Google docs and the trail was marked.Since the race-place was a good way off from where I stay and I had nice obliging friends who were fond of putting me up for the night (they must be, else, how come they do it all the time despite by really sound snores?), I had decided to camp out at Parul's along with my bike (Saturday night with bike and me is another story all together. Lesson learnt: Bike+Beer=Bad Combination)and started for race-place bright and early from Koramangala. Joined a couple of dudes with bikes which looked like machines (cmon, they had gears man!) unlike a certain red shiny bike which well, looked like a bike. That should have warned me, but no, me was the type that assumed the converse of "no risk, no reward" would also be true.After biking for what seemed a long long way (it was 8 Km actually), we finally arrived at race-place and were greeted by bananas, salted peanuts and what at that seemed like a stony path leading to somewhere pretty. Waited the other brave-hearts out and finally this was (a part of) the group that was flagged off


What happened next, I am yet to take in; all I can say is that it involved arrows, exclamations (marking where you had to jump over a ditch 3ft deep-probably in reference to the "Holy Shit!" that you tend to say after you jump), recalcitrant cows, local kids jumping out at you, getting lost for a while, and acres and acres of glorious slush and other riders passing me by on my first lap and their second.
Did I say "my first" by the way? Ha! Ha! I was lying. That was my only one! 13 Km on a red shiny bike without gears and minus suspension and my lumbar support balked and refused to support me further. So it was the support station and blanching at the grin on other riders' faces each time they finished yet another lap (there were 4 in total)for me after that.

After men and their machines finally decided that they had fun, bikes were hosed, men were hosed, stories swapped, falls compared and finally people departed (few braves ones decided to bike back too; and it included me).Reached home in a huff (quite literally) and first thing polished off food enough to feed a small Amazonian hamlet which was followed by calling up everybody and crowing about my 30 Km bike riding weekend.

Oh, btw, I was not the last to complete (or not complete) the race after all, thanks to this big guy



All in all, yet another wonderful nick in the wall of accomplishments!