Roughly 3 years back, Ragavendra asked me out of the blue ‘Shall we buy bicycles? It will be a good work-out to go on weekend rides.. we can even do out-of station multi-day rides!’. I have considered many kinds of outdoor activities like trekking, pilgrimage walks, catamaran rides with fisher-men, motorbike rides etc.. but cycling never occurred to me. I asked ‘what??’ and he was all excited about buying good new bikes and getting started. Budget stated was around 10 K – which seemed a ridiculously high amount for a bicycle at that point. We drove down to Suresh’s Track&Trail store at Kodambakkam and got our Schwinn Sporterras.
We were soon riding 40-50 KMs during weekends within about 6 months, did one memorable ride Chennai-Thiruvannamalai-Chennai over 3 days! It was an absolutely enjoyable experience.. riding in unfamiliar territory thru the night, across paddy fields, little towns, villages and meeting school kids cycling their way to schools, people idlying away their time in village bus-stops and several other people curious to understand what we were doing in a bicycle in their parts of the world..
By this time, we were hooked into cycling and planned a massive Chennai-Rameswaram ride along the ECR over a 5-day period. It was during this ride that we discussed about spreading this cycling activity, forming a club, encouraging friends to take this up – and keep this an informal group at all times. This is how Southernriders.in was born and cycles have become an integral part of our arsenal now. Rides to Mahabalipuram or Thiruporur are common-place during week-ends and we have an active core group of 6 riders now. We have done another long ride Chennai-Hogenakkal-Masinagudi-Ooty and are in the process of expanding this group into Coimbatore as well.
So, what is your experience with Cycling and how did you start? If U are yet to start, are you considering this as an activity for the future??
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