travel

May be God writes a love story in everyone's chapter of LIFE. It arrives early for some while its late for some other. But its definitely written. So now, a true heart says - "I too had a love story". Why not travel in love for sometime with the story... The story begins when an ambitious girl full of life had just arrived in States to pursue her post doctoral research in Physics at Cornell University, Ithaca. Adapting to the deadly cold weather conditions, exploring the new place while simultaneously managing the academic stuff, a month quickly went by.. March 15, 2017, a warning of snow storm, thus she preferred to enjoy the heavy snowfall staying indoors. Out of no where, she thought of giving a glance to her registered shaadi.com profile after a gap of 6 months. She stumbled upon the profile of a guy on a terrific fat bike, a M.Tech graduate, and after few years into academic teaching, has joined software and is an Engineer at HP. A lot unique and interes...

How often does it happen that you start loving a person due to his possession of awesome and unique bikes. For the rare case, it happened to me, when I stumbled across Sanat's facebook wall with his profile pic on a terrific fat bike and cover pic with a sexy tandem. Well well, my crush on Tandem turned into a love affair with the incredible Tandem owner. Hardly did I imagine that almost an year later I shall be the proud co-owner of this beauty. After our marriage, the fun ride which started with 50 km weekend rides materialised into a 200 kms brevet on a Tandem on Nov 5th 2018, and here we were the randounneur on Tandem. Its always a thrilling and fun experience riding on the Tandem, specially when it comes to riding with life partners. Thus begins our TANDEM LOVE STORY with love for wheels turning into love on wheels. Learning the skills of riding this bike which demands a lot of synchronization and communication between both the riders, in a way also helped in knowing each ot...

Finally,   Randounneur it is — My first ever and ours first on a TANDEM. Mixed feeling of anxiety, wonder and joy. Time of celebration after the two months of sweat and perseverance with utmost planning. Doing a brevet on a tandem, as pleasing as it sounds, is quite a daunting task and demands a lot of dedication and focus. Tandem riding, we learnt, has unique challenges. The huge weight of the FANTOM tandem being around 30 kgs , steel frame , plus the cumulative weight of the riders (100 kg) amounting to a total of 130 kgs , in addition to its length, requires perfect coordination to balance and ride it smoothly. Stops, turns, acceleration, deceleration, everything needs to be done together. The stoker (person at the rear) has to trust the person captaining the bike, and the captain has to rely on a stoker who maintains a steady position and is responsive to choices the captain makes.  Having said that, it was a journey full of roller coaster, where we tried to le...