A bike or a mistress?

I started looking for a bike over a year ago and the wife was not happy. She thought it too dangerous and that I was too old to be on a bike. I tell her that I need to feed my mid life crisis : I can either get myself a bike or get myself a mistress; I haven't heard a peep from her since. I wonder why men want to go back on motorcycles in their middle age. Maybe it is the need to feel a powerful beast between their legs ...... again!

I test drive the Honda CBR250 and like it immediately. It isn't too big for a starter bike; not too small either and easy to handle. More importantly, it's affordable. I get back from the test ride and the wife comments "There is only one problem about this bike. If you ever give anybody a ride, then that person is going to be your love interest by the time you return from the ride, regardless of age, race, color, shape, sex or orientation of said person."

It's been a few months and about a thousand kilometers since then and I feel it's time to try the bike out on a long ride. MM is game and we choose Yelagiri which is about 170Km from Bangalore. The wife will hear nothing of it and insists on riding herd on us. In the end MM and I ride our bikes with the wife and son following by car. It works our pretty nicely as we can now bundle all our bags into the car; not so good for the tough boy image though.

We set off at 8. MM and I are on our motorcycles and we have the best escort ever - best looking at least. The ride up is leisurely. We take it slow and enjoy the ride. It's a beautiful day to be out and we stop for boiler tea. The ride is eventless. We reach the turn off to Yelagiri and head up into the hills. The view is breathtaking - the road is cut into the face of the mountain and we are treated to spectacular views of the valley all the way up.

Yelagiri is a one horse town; or to use a more modern parlance, a one ATM town. It consists mainly of hotels and resorts intersperced with a few temples. We reach our hotel (Landmark Hotel) and are pleasantly surprised with the large rooms. Our two rooms are connected through a huge balcony which gives us a good view of the surrounding mountains. MM and I break out the bottle of rum while we send our escorts to check out the buffet. They come back with some news: the buffet is fully vegetarian except for some chicken curry whih is hidden under a table so as not to upset vegans. We decide to order room service which turns out to be an excellent choice. I have never before seen such super quick service.

We are up early the next morning and set out for the lake. Its about a 2Km drive from out hotel. The lake is not too big but is quite picturesque. As we walk around, we notice a hotel that has rooms overlooking the lake. We decide to get a brochure from the hotel and follow the signs on our drive back. We are a little surprised when the signs leads us back past our own hotel only to discover that the hotel is right next door to where we are staying. And yes, we are only about a 3 min walk from the lake and not a 2Km drive.

The drive back is much quicker and more enjoyable than the drive up. This may be because we are more used to the bikes now. MM tells me that he will be getting a bigger bike soon. He has learnt on this trip that he is a "biker dude". He echoes my sentiments - I think I need a bigger bike too. Let's see what the New Year will bring.

When We Were Swingers

To one who has been long in city pent

‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven, to breathe a       prayer

Full in the smile of a blue firmament.

-          John Keats

Its summer and time for another summer holiday. KK calls about going to Coorg and we don’t need much convincing. He arrives from Chennai with his harem and we set off. Coorg is about 250 kms (~170 miles) from Bangalore and it should be a smooth drive.

The  Beemer has a sports mode and KK uses it to the fullest. I try hard to keep up, but my poor Accord is not much of a match for the X5. I don’t do too badly though and catch up with them after a while. The ‘Sport’ mode on the BMW is awesome – it transforms the car into a mean machine and makes it a pleasure to drive. My life needs a “sports mode” button! 

The road from Mysore to Coorg is two lane. There is no divider; just a thin white line that separates us from the high speed agents of death hurtling at us in the oncoming lane. Its dark, it’s raining and road winds up into the mountains. I haven’t driven like this in a while and I begin to enjoy it. The radio plays “Take it to the limit” by the Eagles. Well, that seems like something that we can do. I push it up a notch and soon we are doing insane speeds upwards of 120 kilometers (~80mph) an hour through the hair pin bends. Needless to say, the X5 is right on my tail. The Beemer has a sports mode!

We are staying at the Club Mahindra Holiday resort in Madikeri. The resort is built on a hill and is layered down into the valley. The infrastructure is well planned and the foliage reminds me of Oregon. There are birds everywhere and we even spot a few fireflies lighting up the night with their flashing backsides. The place is simply superb. I can’t say the same about their staff though. They range from plain incompetent to downright rude. As to the cleanliness of the place, the less said the better. The tables at the restaurant are sticky – they don’t seem to have seen soap and water since Christmas. Club Mahindra needs to pull up their socks and get down to it (or as my American friends would put it “take their hats out of their asses).

I discover a new alcohol diet and lose three days in a week. The resort is packed and there are a lot of people walking around. Cameras are the new phallic symbols and each guy is trying to outdo the other with the length of his lens. I am glad that I don’t need a crutch for my crotch. We go for a walk and spot a swinger couple. I fondly remember the days when we used to be swingers too – when you spend your whole holiday in the children’s area pushing a swing all day long. We are well past that – our son now prefers to spend his time in the arcade rather than the children’s area.

We take a long hike to Abbe Falls and meet the locals along the way. People are very nice and friendly and all the men seem to have mustaches that stand out straight from their faces. Viagra seems to be the gel of choice for grooming whiskers. We encounter a bunch of leeches on our way back and they attach themselves to our legs. I now understand where the term “blood sucking leeches” comes from. We have a few relatives that fit that definition pretty well. I remember a story about one of them: He and his wife were having trouble conceiving and he was explaining how expensive the fertility treatment was. “Why do you need all that?”, I told him. “Just put more men on the job”. He does not talk to me anymore.

The drive back is a little less exciting until the wife suddenly asks me “Would you like a dark fantasy?”. “Well, honey I had a blue eyed blonde in mind, but this could work too”. Well, it turns out that I am way off base – Dark Fantasy is a new kind of cookie. For a minute there, I thought I was gonna get lucky!!

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All said, a nice and relaxing holiday.

Salt Water is Better Than Fresh

Milwaukee is a blast. I called Larry three weeks ago and asked him what I should pack for and he said to get my shorts and T shirt as the temperature was 5 degrees (-18C).  Well, I land in Milwaukee three weeks later and the temperature is a mild 32 (0 C). The sun is shining and everything looks great.

Well, I’m here for work and not for the weather and I get down to it. Call it beginner’s luck (or you could just say that I am darn good!) but I have the boards working in two days against the four days that I had planned. I try to advance my flight to Portland but it’s just too expensive so I decide to stay. There’s a snow storm brewing and I want to see it. We’re going to get six inches tonight, maybe even eight. Well, it sounds obscene, I tell them - they don’t find it funny. The morning turns out beautiful. How the whole landscape can look so pristine and virgin after being slipped 6 inches the night before is beyond me.

The days pass in a blur. There’s beer at lunch and there’s Scotch at dinner; and sometimes there is Scotch for dinner. I make a new friend in Tim and he offers to drop me off at the airport. We detour along the way for a few Fat Tires. One is too many and two are one too few and in the end we make a mad rush to the airport to find that my flight is delayed. That doesn’t matter, because the Fat Tires keep on coming. I only hope that I will be OK to drive when I get to Portland.

Corvallis feels like coming home. All the signs are familiar on the drive down. I stop on the way at Albany to see my seaman friend and there it all starts. He has a good Glenfiddich which is already 12 years old and there seems no point in letting it get any older. He drives down to Corvallis with me and after a quick shower I am ready to hit the bars. A bunch of people join us and we close the bars down – one by one. The designated driver is drinking water. Don’t drink water, I tell him, because fish do it in water (it sounds better when you use the actual word but this is a kid friendly blog). It’s not just the fish, J announces to the bar. Apparently she does it in the water too; and salt water is better than fresh. That was more information than I needed and I vow never to drink water again. But then again…. Why not! It might be interesting.

I am a bit dismayed at the number of my friends that I find are recently divorced. I remember reading a recent statistic which said that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Might as well, I guess, because the other 50% end in death!

Sunday is slow. I recover from my flight and the jetlag. We watch the game. The Beavers are playing the Ducks which is always interesting. The Beavers seem to be holding their own until the last ten minutes where they lose it. The night ends with me walking into a glass door. The door is undamaged which is more than I can say for me; I have a bug bump on my forehead and the guys are rolling on the floor laughing.

Saturday is the (Pub) Crawl for a Cause and we enthusiastically sign up. I doubt the enthusiasm is for the right cause though – I think we all have our own private agenda. Apparently more women care about the cause than men which is not really a problem. We take a group pictures and G has his eyes closed. It’s not surprising – I think he has had his eyes closed for a long time now. A tiny pink thong turns up miraculously and the women can now become superwomen – they merely have to wear the thong over their pants. J confiscates the thong. I suspect that it will be just the thing to wear under water.

Lunch the next day is  with friends at the Red Robin. The burgers are exceptional and the service is impeccable. They give me a card to fill out and I tick all the right boxes. There is a question at the end: “Would you like to see anything else on the menu?”. Hell Yes …. The waitress! I wonder if anybody ever reads the feedback cards.

Sunday is a family dinner and we are cooking Indian food. They make good use of the cheap Indian labor and I even end up cleaning the floor. I have two beautiful women as helpers and this makes cooking a pleasure. We are having roast chicken. I stuff the birds and then find that the chicks just can’t keep their legs together. I ask for some string to tie them with and find that there is no string in the house. Is this symbolic, I wonder. Maybe there should be more string in this house.

The flight back is uneventful. I am in a little matchbox on the Portland to Seattle leg and this is not something you want to do in turbulent weather. It puts most roller coasters to shame and I can hear a few barf bags getting used around me. Thankfully it’s a short flight. The 747 from Seattle onwards is smooth and I sleep off my excesses. I have enjoyed my trip but it feels good to be coming home.

Skinny Models do nothing for me .....

Some things never change. Every January, a large part of the human population makes a resolution to go to the gym regularly and a large part of the female population feel that they have put on weight over the holidays. The wife is a part of this large population and mentions it to me the other day and I tell her "Don't worry about it honey. Skinny model types do nothing for me ..........(long pause)..... even when I beg them or offer to pay them money". 

We are already a month into the new year and I have still not even started on my exercising. All the spare ribs I ate during the holidays have decided not to spare me. I thought I had hit pay-dirt when I first saw them. I mean, these pigs must be have been skinny - the ribs are so spare that they look like they have been attending classes with the missus. I now realize that they are with me to stay and they seem to have settled down a few inches below my ribs. I need to start hitting that gym soon.




The last couple of months have been centered around music at our house. Almost every weekend has ended with the music blasting and sometimes the neighbors complaining. After one such particularly wild night of CCR and Dire Straits, we were invited to dinner by one of our friendly neighbors. They obviously didn't know that we were the reason for their sleepless nights and soon the talk got around to and I quote "the ear splitting" music that seems to reverberate around us at unearthly hours. Even as we were trying to change the subject, the lady of the house told us "It must be that group of bachelors who live on the top floor!". I had to own up that we were indeed the "bachelors" on the top floor. Needless to say, we have toned down the music at home - we now don't turn the knob up fully, we stop at around 80%.