Riding into the night - Part 2

(if you don't have an idea what this post or blog is about..please click here to read my first post)

And so, here we were, on the marine drive sea wall in front of the Trident. It was 1 in the night but many families, group of young men and women, drunks, were still thronging the drive. We sat there watching as people kept entering and leaving the Trident. We planned to hang around till 4, so we could rest our legs and back, and then ride back home. But at around 2, the cops arrived and asked us(politely) to leave. They weren't so polite to some other people whom they thought as good-for-nothing drunk loiterers, but i guess as cyclists in cycling gear, we were the picture of moral correctness.

We had to leave Marine drive, which was a pity. It was nicely breezing and a moonlit night. We decided to start riding back as there was nothing much we could at that time. We decided not to take the flyovers as there wouldn't be much traffic below them at this hour and it was a pain to climb to pain flyovers. The city takes on a different color in the night. We reached parel around 2:30 and found a chai-coffeewala on a cycle. Had some coffee. Satish's back was giving him trouble and he wanted to abandon at dadar and wait for the first train. I somehow convinced him to keep riding till Ghatkopar. We were to decide in Ghatkopar on our next course of action.

Our bums started hurting badly after sitting on the narrow saddle for 6 hours. We crossed Ghatkopar but kept riding. We wanted to get to Thane somehow. But as we crossed Vikhroli our bums started hurting so badly we couldn't sit on the saddle anymore. We stopped for a little break near one of the newly made bus-stops near the godrej gate. You probably wouldn't believe me, but after being on the saddle foe 6 hours,sitting on the flat metal seats in the bus stop felt like i was in heaven.

We decided to abandon our ride at Kanjur marg. We took a left from the highway towards the town and then rode towards the raliway station. It was almost 4. The ticket clerk at the window got a mild shock when he saw me in my cycling gear asking for a ticket for myself and my bicycle. The train arrived in sometime and we boarded the goods compartment with our cycles.

Little did we know that we were boarding the ladies compartment. Did you know that there was a goods compartment specially for the ladies. Well, we didn't and were duly caught by a TC at kalwa. I guess the SOB waits there near that compartment to catch unsuspecting travelers who like us, don't know that we are in a ladies-exclusive compartment. To cut the long story short, we had to shell out 500 bucks for our mistakes. The TC informed us that we would be poorer by 1000 rs if we wanted to make a contribution to the Indian Railways but it would be cheaper if we made a contribution to the TC-sunday-booze party-fund :-p. And so, we thought, the TCs don't get paid well...they are entitled to a little money on the side sometimes.

And so, finally, the adventures of the night ended at 6 in the morning when we reached home. We had started at 8pm the night before, and with a good 8 hours on the bicycle I was tired as hell. Crashed in bed and slept the entire day. 8 hours and around 100 kms...not bad at all. But the key to riding to Delhi would be doing this everyday for 15 days.