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.