Ride-plan .. toughest in southern inida

Yah .. the toughest you can do in southern india
Plan:
When do we start Bangalore:
4th late-evening/night from Bangalore to Masinagudi
Mode of Transportation:
Personal/rented to be decided based on number of ppl joining.
Ride:
Starts @ 7AM or earlier on 5th. Madhu's car can also act as Aid station. through the Kalahatti ghat (Segur ghat) from Masinagudi. According to Srinath it is the toughest ride we can do :-) .. Challenging ..huh?
Reach Ooty:
By lunch time (or a lil later .. i hope 5 hrs should be fine for this ride), and meet Srinath and fellow bikers. Have lunch together @ Ooty golf club.
Ride to:
The Srinath's place (Kunnur),Which is 18km of downhills (according to Srinath) of easy ride. Ppl can also opt to come back from this point. As there is no hard and fast rule (They shall take care of transportation back)
Over-night stay:
@ Srinath's place Two options:
in Srinath's House (8 rooms) ... yes E ... I ... G ... H ... T :-)
Those who wanna tent-out can use the lawn are :-)
6th whole day and first half of 7th I would prefer Srinath and ppl who know the area well to decide about.
7th after lunch we head back to Bangalore.
Budget: Spend and divide

So waiting for somthing better ... keep waitin .. you will never get :-)
~ Ravi

nandi-betta .. The Ride :-)

How did it start :

Got a mail from Roahn on Bangalore Biking Club (BBC) about the ride to Savandurga on sunday (09/03/2008). I suggested if we can do it on sunday as we have runs organized by RFL/Hash on sundays. Rohan tried his best but looks like there were more takers for Sunday rides that saturdays ... However i was ditermined to not to miss either the ride or the run, so shot a mail on BBC about the ride on saturday. I got confirmations from Kuldeep and Donald (Of TDH fame). Friday evening i left early from office to pick-up my new-road-bike.

Difficult to get-up early:

We had decided to meet @ hebbal by 5AM. I thought it may not take more than 1 hr so planned to wake-up at 3 and start by 4. But by the time i started it was 4:15 and i had 45 mins to cover 32KMs (Which i discovered later). Well i had no option to paddle as fast as possible on my new beast. By the time i was @ KR-puram 4:45 i got a call rom Kuldepp that they have reached. Well, that was a chock to me that i will have complete the rest of the 14K in 15 mins mostly uphills. So i tried my best and was there by 5:17 .. and guess what i covered 32K in 1:02Hr.

Nice Slow and Easy Ride:

Noticed that Navdeep had also joied us, and we were 4 now. We started ... and i started slow on road-bike which was faster than otheres :-) ... On the way saw the sun-rise.

We were there @ the foot-hills by 7:20 ... Had break-fast and Navdeep was down .. he said he cant as his leg was aching. He offered me his MTB and chose to stay back. I was happy, because on the road-bike it would have been difficult to clib-up. Well, we starte and initially and F2R3 (Front Gear @ 2 and Rear Gear @ 3) ... That was fine.. later we were @ F2R1 and towards the end we were @ F1R1 yahh.. the garnny gear (As per Roahan) ..

We reached there in one hour ...

On the way back it was fun ... and @ the base we all said that for the kind of High that we get while coming back it was worth climbing-up.

Coming Back:

We decided to go to Dewanahalli and take a bus from there ..., we started and after around 10k Navneet had a flat. I told to my-self that now the ride is successful :-) .. We repaired it. Went ahead and just near Devanhalli he had a flat again, this tim he borrowed Donalds Tube and used that. Finally we reached the bus-stop and waited for the bust tom come. Bus came full of ppl, we pushed our bike on top and me and Navdeep climbed up to tie our bikes to the bus cariier .
We stayed there for 15mins ... that was funnnnnnm....

And the boring bus journey ended and KR Market @ 1:20 from where rode back home and rached @ home @ around 2PM

Stats:

Fun Meter : 100KMPH :-)

Averge speed : No Meter/GPS .. Sorry!

Max speed : 65KMPH .. we gueeswd .. while coming back from hill

Total ride distance : 120 K (For me)

This was fun .. Have a look @ the snaps @

http://picasaweb.google.com/raviranjan.kumar/NandiRide8thMarch2008

My New Road-raced bike

I already have Trek-4300, Not that i did not like it. But i wanted to try somthing different. On the ride of 23rd March off Sarjapura Road, i saw Rishi's road bike. And i was sure that i want to try my hands on a road bike. Called-up many friends, every one said dont buy Firefox-2200. Thiough it is cheap but not worth the mony, go for Trek. But the Trek ones will start @ INR36000/-. I really did not have that kind of mony to spend on this.
That evening i was just browsing through and came across this write-up on bikeszone. Goth the number of Mr. Ashwath Kapoor from that and called him up, he directed my to Venkat who has the direct dealership of Marida in Bangalore, i got Venkat's (9844020861) number from him and fixed on one 2nd of march to meet-up. I went there biking on Trek-4300 and went to his place with Sri (Of TDH fame).
The shop itself is in a 1BHK house on 1st floor, but mind you dont go by the size of the shop. He has all the kind of bikes and accessories. Yup, Prove me wrong if you can .. i challane you this ... every thing he has .. name it ....
Fixed on the entry level road-bike from Marida called Marida-880. I got a really cool deal for this bike along with the Paddles (with the shoe-clips) and bottle cage and biking t-shirt and ...... all for freeeee
Rode that back home.
Well ... The next day i was going for a long ride to Nandibetta :-)
And i will take my new beast ......