The Cycle Trip

It was in the monsoon season 2005 and i was in my 3rd year of mechanical engineering. i studied in NITC ,an esteemed college, which has a lot of extra curricular clubs. One of these was the ADVENTURE CLUB. My good friend, who was the head of this club, organized a cycle trip from our college to a waterfall spot around 25 kms away.

There were 6 of us. 5 guys, 1 gal. The route was a scenic passing through small towns in rural Kerala. The flipside of riding through this scenic, rural atmosphere is that we get the amused, astonished and curious stares of the local inhabitants. I don’t think they have observed that many young people riding on bicycles with a backpack wearing t-shirts and three fourths. Needless to say, we were a sight for them too.

Around half way into our trip, one of our friends cycle got a puncture. Our initial rudimentary attempts at fixing it on the spot were very unsuccessful. i shall admit at this point my feelings for my good friend who organized the trip wasn't that good. Me and another of the adventurist decided to take the damn wheel and walked back to the nearest town where we hoped we might find someone who knew better how to patch a tire than us.
Of course once in the town, the sight of two long haired, unkempt youths wearing t-shirts, bermuda and carrying a tire along with them invited a lot of smart ass comments.

One such was “I think they fell off a plane"

The trip wasn’t that fruitful. The next step was that we had to bring the entire cycle back to the town. We went back, got our entire group together and started back. Of course we all were pushing our cycles.

Then it started to rain. The thing about rains in Kerala is they don't drizzle, they just don’t fall lightly. They pour. They pour so hard; you are wet to your undergarments’ in a minute.
There we can’t hope that we find a shelter and it will get over fast. It rains continuously for hours.
So now here we were 5 guys and 1 gal wet and walking. Shoes sloshing, specs fogged, feeling really cold. It was miserable at that point. But when now i think about it was fun.

So we walked in the rain all the way back, again inviting even more smarty comments about idiotic wet kids. We fixed the cycle and went all the way back to our college in this rain.

It was miserable then, but fun when you think about it now.

Of course a week later my good friend did the trip completely with out interruptions. i decided not to join.

Because it was raining!