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LoneWolfRides - i TheWanderer
Prologue
Prologue
Fast forward to month after that, I received a pleasantly surprising yet completely shocking mail that stated that I had cleared the Level -1 filtration process for the selection of the top 10 True Wanderers. My jaw being on the floor would be an understatement, I was ecstatic, not for the fact that I had cleared the first level but there were people out there who had voted for my trip log and shown support without being asked for it. I am forever grateful to all these people who put me right up there. But wait a minute, such moments are only short lived, the 'Reality' that had bitten me hard earlier came back. But this time, I decided to put up a fight against it. This was a once in a life time opportunity, not something that every Tom, Dick & Harry get and not something that comes by daily. I decided to give it a one time shot! If things fell into place, well and good else Aloha! Life!!. I walked to my manager at work, and asked told him with a straight face that, "I know this is short notice, but I have the opportunity to do such and such, would it be possible to get a week off?". He scans my eyes to see if this was one of the jokes I was trying to pull off that no one really got. I am not sure if he saw the fire of passion in my eyes or was it the straight face that was being brutally honest, but he said the magic word...The one word that just went back and gave life a Kung-fu shot back to hell, he said "Yes"!
What ensued was just nothing short of pandemonium, my trusty bike the Red Devil was aging and had seen almost 70,000 kms with my in the past 3 years and it was already in service much before True Wanderers came through. Now it might sound like a good thing that my bike was already in the process of getting a service, but this was no regular service, this was one of those gargantuan services which meant the bike was stripped to the bone and a lot of the worn parts were being replaced. This by no means is an easy task and neither is it something that takes your run of the mill type one day to service, this is something that takes up devotion, patience and loads of time. With just days left in for the intended start of the Wrangler True Wanderers ride, I was panic stricken with the thought of missing out on the ride just because my bike was in service. I spoke to Mr. Venkat Shyam of AutoService, the owner of the Bajaj Probiking service that has been taking 'care' of my bike for the past 3+ years. He immediately got his team into action and my bike was ready to roll within the next few days. But there was a flipside, I was running a brand new bore-piston kit, this meant I would have to remain in strict speed limits for the first 500/1000Kms. This is but a minor aberration in the bigger picture of things.
Remaining true to the statement 'True Wanderers', even a day prior to the ride I was neither sure if my bike was in a ready state, nor had I planned anything for the ride. All I knew was, I wanted to 'Wander'...'Wander' wearing only one pair of Wrangler True Wanderers jeans
...Yes you read that absolutely right!I was to be flagged off from the Wrangler brand store at Indira Nagar in Bangalore on the starting day of the ride. For this ride I have two firsts, one was actually blogging the ride Live! And the second was media coverage. Maybe its just me, but the limelight maybe just isn't me. Wrangler had an elaborate plan outlined out with photo shoots and media coverage lined up prior to the start of the ride. Whilst I enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame, a couple of friends from the xBhp forum joined me wishing me and seeing me off, common faces was a sight for sore eyes midst the complete frenzy of media activities. As I reached the store, the very first activity lined up was for me to don complete Wrangler gear. I must add that the moment I got out of the jeans I had come in and into the True Wanderers lineup of Wrangler jeans, I could immediately felt a comfort which my jeans from a brand who shall not be named
did not offer, the fit and comfort of these jeans were immediately apparent and I felt completely at home in them. Kudos! To Wranger for coming up something that's actually meant for bikers like me. The media circus finally ended (well almost!) at around 11AM and I finally began my trip.The Red Devil ready hit the highways!
The xBhp team from Bangalore seeing me off!
[From L to R : Nisarg, Phanikar, Rathish, Avin, Me in the centre]
The xBhp team from Bangalore seeing me off!
[From L to R : Nisarg, Phanikar, Rathish, Avin, Me in the centre]
NOTE: The Live! Blog for the Wrangler True Wanderers contest can be followed by clicking here --> Click!
with a few breaks thrown in to cool the engine down as well. I knew that this would be a slow day, but exciting never the less. Mysore road to me is one of the scariest highways that I know off, not that it can beat the absolutely dangerous stretch of NH17 between Mangalore and Udupi. But Mysore road does hold its own in my list of dangerous highways, accidents are an everyday fare on this stretch and one has to extra extra careful as even a single mistake can prove to be fatal. This can largely be contributed to the design of this highway and the general mentality of those using this highway. I said a small prayer as I gunned the throttle from NECE road, the exit ramp for Mysore road took its own time to show up and again I hit a loosely packed traffic jam. A steady stream of towns went passing by as I kept riding at my extremely sedate speed.
), now along with the new engine bore, I was also running a brand new rear suspension setup. This was stiffer than my previous one and every abnormality in the road surface was sent right up my spine, this was not really a cause for concern as I am used to this, but the new suspension takes it all up to a new level. Soon enough I was passing through the town of 'toys', Channapatna. If one wants to buy wooden toys from yesteryear's, but can't seem to find them the modern shopping malls of today. This town is the one place where you surely find them, this is a very major source of livelihood for the people of this town. I realized I had made one big error, I had not eaten anything since morning. The whirlwind Wrangler jeans brand promotion followed by the fighting of traffic had made me completely forget the rumble in my tummy. In fact even now, I was not really feeling hungry the sheer joy of doing LoneWolfRides all over again was so exciting that everything else just became immaterial. And I quite literally forgot that I needed to eat, maybe it was all the cheese from last night's pizza that kept me going 
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