110th Anniversary Ride

Not that the anniversary meant anything to any of us, since largely our part of the group holds Harley India and its service next to sham. But as it turned out, the day we decided to regroup our riders after long, happened to be Harley’s 110^th Anniversary.

RV @ Balachaur

There has been inactivity in our group for several reasons. Melvin sold his bike, Sunil was down with a back problem, I had laziness & work issues, weather has been horrendous etcetra etcetra. I had been fearing, that whenever I am going to ride next – Harley’s famed low life battery, would die on me due to inaction seen in previous months. However, I was remotely glad as the engine cranked to life at 0530 hours. Caught up with Sunil and Jalandhar boys and off we were to Dasuya. For some un-explainable reason, my own battery was giving low voltage since morning and only silence and occasional yawns could be heard from my side of Scala. I finally had to tell the guys to stop at Hoshiarpur, lest I just dropped sleeping. CCD was not open yet, but the attending lady was kind enough to take our order for cold coffee. Sunil – I mention again Sunil, asked the lady to switch ON the AC and thus we had morning fireworks at CCD’s electric distribution panel. Orange sparks and thick black smoke; it could have been a start to formidable inferno – but the damn thing died on itself robbing us of early morning fireman role.

Dasuya is same old, with same old fuel pump, same old CCD, same old poor staffed McDonalds – I mean I wasn’t expecting any improvement but still worth mentioning on my non initiating Indian brothers and sisters. What a stagnating group of non doers – as if I am much of a doer....duh! Had they given me a couch this day, I would have slept right there in the sun.

Burnout DB @ CCD Hoshiarpur

Rode along with Sunil and guys to Jalandhar, before me and Navdeep parted ways with them. We averaged good speeds and reached CCD Doraha in good time. Come to think of it, today our hospitality partner was CCD. First CCD Hoshiarpur, then CCD Dasuya and then CCD Doraha – not that them buggers gave us any loyalty discount or anything, but still worth mentioning. Again – I have been mentioning a lot in this piece, maybe am still asleep!

Punjabi spirit and hospitality galore – Chhabeels could be seen all over the route. Worth mentioning that while people of my state organize Chhabeels and Langars in times of need and calamity, exact opposite is currently being seen in Uttrakhand where traders are shamelessly fleecing stranded victims, charging 200 rupaiyaas for a packet of biscuits in some cases! I cant even call this cheap opportunism – its simply criminal.

Crossing the chhabeel near Landran couldn’t help but overhear chhabeel co-ordinator over his mike – “O HARLEY WALEYO....ETHE WI RUK JO”. Must give it to Harley’s marketing whiz’s, in just 3 years of its operations in India the brand has more awareness than any other superbike brand. And to top it all, they have succeeded in selling the 70’s technology right uptil 21^st century, at CURRENT shameful exchange rate of 60 rupaiyaas to a dollar.

And I was the first one (at least in my city) to fall for it!

BOWS HEAD