Biking has transcended the barriers of a hobby and into a lifestyle for most of us here. The line between a person’s biking life and his personal life has blurred beyond definition thanks to forums like this, we now are no longer a bunch of strangers meeting up at weekends, with nothing common to talk about other than bikes. And this has made biking more serious than we care to realize, since our social circle today is literally online, our daily discussions and arguments taking place here almost compulsively centers around Biking. It takes no Freud to understand that you are influenced by the people we associate with, and likewise we all here are influenced by each other on our likes and dislikes. And similarly when I first entered here, I was simply fascinated by the world of biking, exploring new places, pushing the limits of our capabilities, it was so packed with adrenaline that I was left looking at some peoples exploits here with my jaw hitting the floor.
Naturally as I was only a teenager then, that I started dreaming about having my first bike as soon as I turned 18, soon this day dreaming turned into an obsession, an addiction driving my parents crazy. Finally they gave in and offered to buy me a bike, but even then their problems were far from over, I would settle for nothing less than a premium segment bike, even though it was going to be my very first bike. At first I thought I had all the technical know-how to handle a machine on my own. I immediately started out on road trip’s clocking nearly 2000kms a month, when I barely learnt how to ride a bike. As the months passed by I would invariably be stand in front of my father head hung quite often, him telling me I had always bitten off more than I could chew with the bike. And I always found this justifiable with my enthusiasm for adventure, also I in my mind was becoming more and more cocky with my ever gaining confidence whilst riding my bike. I would assume everything and everybody else to be inferior to me. But as fate would have it as months passed with every little thing I seem to discover, happened to be just the tip of the whole polar ice cap. And at the price of becoming a mature biker, I found that everything that I have been doing till now in the name of biking was very irresponsible, and a criminal waste of my parents money.
But don’t for one second think I’m insinuating this forum or its purpose, its just that I simply plunged in head first into it without being ready to accept the consequences, and if you were to put yourselves in your parents shoes you would be very hard pressed to find anything wrong when they say things that they do, and it is of my opinion that a responsible biker is someone who recognizes this as well. If I were to be honest to myself today, I would say that I’ve started out early and I had bitten off more than I could chew when I bought a bike. And no one else is to blame but me, I was too eager on doing all the things I had read when I was a teenager that I was too blind to see the consequences that were to follow, from petrol to service I had to depend on my parents for financial support, and as if that were not enough I had to give them the worry about my safety too.

The expenses involved in biking are something so inherent with it that, you can’t call yourself a true biker unless you are able to handle the expenses efficiently. Anybody can keep a bike pristine by pouring a ton of money into it, but it takes someone who truly understands his bike to maintain it efficiently yet keep it from controlling his life. This didn’t dawn to me in a day, it took it’s time slowly and painfully, when think back at the times I was frustrated with the bike for not delivering even though I had been constantly spending time and money on it, I now realize it was because of my haphazard ways in using it that made no sense of all the money and time put into it. Even now I know I’ll make mistakes, but at least I’ve come this far as to realize that I had been making mistakes. I’m writing this because I feel I should still be a part of the biking family, and writing this physically will make it a written record for me come and read whenever I feel I’m doing something wrong with things I hold close to my heart.