Day 7: Riding back home

The day started with mixed feelings. The joy of going back home to the loved ones was all mixed up with sadness that the tour is going to end. Lot of hugs and wishes exchanged before the start. I am sure there would have been quite a few moist eyes. As an every day of the tour, people started leaving in groups. The slower riders who were determined to complete the stage left ahead followed by the faster riders. I was on board the Scorpio loaded with Gatorade and Water. Along with me were a couple of riders who opted out of this stage since it was the same highway that they rode on Day 1.

[George][Nachiket][Sangwan][Saurabh]

This gave opportunity for lot of riders to try new bikes out. Nachiket was on a road bike (for the first time?) - A Trek-1.2. Dickie has been riding a MTB (his specialty anyway) since later part of yesterday. We started the stage 0700 hrs. In less than 30 minutes, we were on the Bangalore - Mysore Highway. The highway was monotonous and riders stuck to their rhythm and moved ahead steadily. The weather was so pleasant that they did not even feel any discomfort.

We reached the food point between Maddur and Chennapatna - a BP gas station with McDonalds. Soon a few riders Venky, Iggy, Sangwan... mostly road bikers. By their calculation, they would need another 2 hours to be at JnanaBharati from where our Victory lap would start. So they decided to take a break - long one. Nilgiri's food was served - Curd Rice, a version of Bisibelebath, set curd, badam milk, cold coffee and so on... Somebody even cut some water-melon and everybody feasted on it. Nelly was at his usual - showing off tricks on a MTB.

Back on the road, we caught up with most of the riders who were battling the heat and head wind. Some of them were glad to replenish their fluids. Once we entered the ciy, limits the wind got reduced and riding more easier. The excitement of completing the tour was also high. So the pace picked up. Srikanth was the first to be at the finish line - followed by Dinesh, Datta Patil, Sourabh and Mani. All of them relaxed under the fig tree sipping fresh Sugarcane juice and Tropicana.

Many more riders finished in a matter of minutes and everybody jumped and cried in joy. More on our grand entry into Bangalore in the next post.