The atmosphere in our office is health oriented - and it tilts on both the sides. We have parties that last till wee hours in the morning with enough booze to drown the city or we have this cycling expeditions once in a while. I participate in both these with equal enthusiasm. This little episode relates to this 70 odd km cycling expedition that some one from the department suggested.
What began as a 12 member enthusiastic adventure whittled down to a 4 friends outing by the time the day arrived. I had usual butterflies in my stomach the previous night. I was watching "Wolverine"'s finely carved body on Saturday night in theatre and took home some inspiration. The butterflies however drove the sleep away - I had barely 4 hours sleep. The trip did not begin too well.
We began from Vashi at around sevenish...each one looking fresh as flower - some smelled liked flower as well - poor choice of deo - but not relevant here.
Palm Beach road on Sunday mornings is very refreshing. Almost 9 km stretch would probably have at least 90,000 residents - off whom you see 90 health freaks bothering to do something about their out of whack bodies. At regular intervals, you have the essential breakfast/juice / health food vendors which is where one usually finds the rest of the health conscious folks. The going rate nowadays is one glass of juice or one plate of health food for every half km or so walked/jogged/covered...we passed this stretch with considerable ease.
Right turn from Palm Beach road towards Panvel diverts your attention from Mumbai's luxury to the country's poor infrastructure. This patch also reminds an average biker that god didn't think enough when he shaped human backside. I had a painful struggle at the point where I rested my body on the cycle. The seat and the body fought in a bid to re-mould each other and the cruel road looked on - sometimes smirked…..Anyways I continued the journey but the enormity of the task ahead had downed.
Maharashtra Government would make you believe that there is a road between Panvel and Uran fata but we cyclists had to imagine it. This is the kind of stretch where you yearn for potholes - reason? At Least there would be a road around the pothole!! My body's struggle with cycle seat reached its pinnacle here.. I think my body finally lost out - I will now need trousers with different shape.
This apparently was not enough as god's sense of humour took a completely different turn - it began to rain cats and dogs...There are different degrees of rain - Sprinkler - a little sprinkle here and there - no biggy, Shower rain - the water struggles with your clothes to get in - some time it succeeds sometimes it doesn't - but the one that we experienced was cloud burst wet - the water successfully penetrates your body in the first instance and before you can say Jack Robinson - it discovers your bodies most erogenous zones…. you just don't have time to react -it hits you like a rapist and you take it. This experience was a little too much for some of us. We had a classic problem now - some of the bikers became philosophical and started questioning the very reason for this exercise. I too was one of them but was too proud to admit it - being the eldest. I imparted words of wisdom and the gang decided to move on.
The final climb was even more Herculean - while the rain never ceased and the road never got better - we had an uphill climb for the final stretch. Till now, I was proud of my US made Alloy built Fire Fox model but this climb made me realise that it is never the cycle that reaches destination but for the man riding it..... It was sheer will power for the next 10 odd kilometres that we pulled on. Every paddle was the peak of an effort. Sweat running down from the forehead to our neck and mixing itself with the rain water soaked by our t-shirts created a strange but inspiring fragrance, every paddle pushing out the last chunk of energy left in the calf muscle, the shoulder and biceps withstanding the body weight and balancing it on the cycle handle - still managing the gradient and the unbalanced road conditions - we lost sense of time. The whole experience was like meditation - our bodies losing the last grain of energy with every paddle and the energy for next paddle came from nowhere..
Just when it was time to fall down, we saw divine light - against the cloudy backdrop - amongst greenery of the forest; there was this weather beaten, rusted metal plank shouting 'KARNALA BIRD PARK" at us in victorious chant!!! We had reached. We congratulated each other before rushing to take out our energy bars and water.
The journey back home was a different experience but right now I am too tired to write that down….watch this space for more!!!!
