Ride 2 - Kanchipuram

Now that I’ve found a gang for myself, there is no more holding back. Despite the fact this blog is about my 2nd ride, by now I’ve done 5 major rides and this will hopefully be the last breakfast ride I’ll be penning down. This is predominantly because the breakfast rides aren’t long and are barely a 100 kms one which doesn’t require to be archived. Then why is this trip making its way to the blog? Read on to find out…

Itinerary

This ride was as straight-forward as it can get. We started at the usual Velavan Motors Greams Road branch and took the Porur – Poonamallee route to get to Kanchipuram.

What’s new

And I think this is the longest this particular sub-category is ever going to look. After the first ride, I knew things are going to get serious and obviously, I was hooked on to this right from the first twist of my accelerator at the highway. Spent a mini fortune on the gears but hey, safety comes with a price. Lucky me, the shopping happened at the last minute with most of the stores not having stocks of what I wanted. I actually had to take a day off at work to make sure I had everything I needed for the ride which happened the next day (Hopefully my boss doesn’t see this).

It started with an MT Helmet. This was the easiest to get from the lot/ and I got it from Moto 101. If you’re from Chennai, I highly recommend this shop as the guy who owns it knows what he is selling and that’s really helpful. I called the helmet shopping as the easiest as for the rest of it, I had to travel across the whole city. I bought these stuff only a day before my actual ride and when I was behind schedule in the shopping, I had to take my day off from work to complete it. I had to buy it for this ride as my next one – a longer one obviously, was already planned and I had to get comfy with the gears before it. Now, as I pen this down post many rides (that I’m yet to write), these gears have become like a second skin to me. The Aspida Helios jacket was the toughest to get and it made me cover almost the entire city. After checking a few shops with no luck, I heard a different shop had it. When I got there I realised that it was an old model – the one with buckles instead of velcro to fasten the arms section. Fortunately, by evening 9ish, I found a shop which had them – in my size and that’s where I also got the Aspida Pegasus gloves too.

What actually happened…

We knew the agenda before we shifted to the first gear. A couple of hungry riders going to a different town in search of good food. Inexperienced but willing to learn, we followed whatever our lead advised us to the tee and made sure our driving was in such a manner that both us and the others around us were safe.

 

 

When we reached the spot – the apparently famous Mannar Military Hotel, the place was full and we had to wait for a considerable amount of time before there were enough tables to be put together in order to accommodate us. This is where the hype stopped as unlike what we expected it to be, the food was cold, tasteless and anything but delicious. It was so bad that we had to handle our hunger pangs with omlets. But even then, the good company made up to the bad food.

Though the food was a massive failure, the meet was a huge success. I was able to meet a number of good people who would later become amazing friends with whom I’ve done many rides. It was the stage where I learnt the ‘brotherhood’ in the riding community – something I would cherish for ages to come.