I had seen a post on cycling event being circulated on the eve of friendship day been organised at my city. Just looking at it I had decided to be a part of it. But my decision of attending the event become concrete when the organiser himself called me for the purpose of inviting. Since he happens to be a good friend, I then had to had to go for it.
I prepared for it by setting up 3 alarms on my cellphone. Since I had to report for the event at 7 am, I kept alarms for 5:50 am, 5:30 am and 5:15 am respectively. Luckily I woke up with the last one. The next big task was to wake my husband up, cause his car was parked in front of my cycle in our porch; and due to the contrasting sizes of the porch and his car, it was difficult for me sneak my cycle out without causing scratches to his car. He mumbled in his breath for sometime and then agreed to do the task. It took him just 5 minutes for the maneuver and he rushed back to snooze again.
I then left for my ordeal of the day. I was the first one to reach the venue, and was obviously surprised at that. I thought probably no one turned up for the event as it required a physical task. I therefore then called up my friend who was the organizer. He answered in a voice that was as sleepy as my husband's; I would have gone back home had he not called back saying that he would be there in next 20 minutes. Luckily he came along cycling with a lot of kids, who were also cycling. It was so funny to see few teenage girls getting exhausted from their journey from their home to the meeting venue. They got so exhausted that they ended up walking along with their cycles. This obviously made me wonder how would they cope up with the activity of travelling further, when a mere quarter of the journey tired them so much. They probably knew this that is why they were carrying bottles of Gatorade with them.
Anyway after a wait of about 20 minutes for all the participants to gather, we all finally commenced our actual Cycling. We covered about 5 km of area going from Karelibaug to Kamati garden to Sayaji Gunj and back. In between we took a break to have chai and breakfast of poha. There was a journalist covering the event and we all took pictures. By the way my friend came up with a wonderful idea of celebrating the Friendship day as well. So, all of us tied a friendship band to saplings of Basil as a mark of friendship with the nature. I could have carried my sapling along, but unfortunately my cycle lacks a carrier at the back, and my shoulder tote was not sturdy enough to carry it along. So, I was unfortunate that ways of not carrying a holy plant home. Though I felt lucky that day, cause there was no lecher to invoke me, cause not just I was cycling amongst a big crowd, but also there were cops motorcycling along with us as a part of security measure.
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| event covered in a local daily, me in the third pic from left |
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| me on the left of the green cyclist |
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| I realized I should not have worn that school T-shirt over my own |
All in all I loved waking up early that day; and I came in
papers too. Hope those kids would cycle at least once a week from now. It is sad to see school kids obese.
