Tonight was Movie Night at Bums On The Saddle and the movie was ROAM. This is one of the movies that can get anyone excited about cycling, and in this case, mountain biking. I couldn’t decide whether to concentrate on the adrenaline-rushing jumps and stunts or the amazing locations that these cyclists explore.

What was interesting was that nearly 35-40 people had shown up, which was quite unexpected.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes/trailer of the movie:

Rohan Kini and gang are basically running this cycle shop on Saturdays to encourage cycling and to help people buy and maintain their bikes. If you are interested in taking up cycling, you know whom to contact.

I had taken some photos of their “Bike shop on the Roof Top” the last time I visited:

including Rohan Kini unpacking and assembling a 40,000 rupees worth Trek 6000-series cycle!

Thanks to Bums on the Saddle for hosting the screening of the movie.

The weekend before last, BarCamp Bangalore 7 was held. The session that I was most looking forward to was the ‘cycling to work’ session initiated by Pradeep B V (of MapUnity fame). What made the session interesting was that people were asked to cycle to IIMB and showcase their bicycles in an outdoor session, and encourage others to take up cycling.

The idea by Pradeep to have it in the open area outside the cafeteria just after lunch was a brilliant marketing ploy, because people would just walk out of the cafeteria and then they would see all the cycles and then out of curiosity, they would come closer and end up chatting with the cyclists. It was nice to see people hopping on and going for rides just to check out the cycles.

The stars of the show were undoubtedly Vikram and Varun because of their cycling clothes and their advanced bikes which have features such as special shoes that lock into the pedals as well as ability to unhook the wheels for easy transportation.

We had a lot of fun talking to people and answering many questions from curious Barcampers and turned out to be a successful session. Among the curious people, there was also a reporter from the Bangalore Mirror. It turns out that we ended up in an article in their Sunday edition yesterday:

BANGALORE MIRROR, SEPTEMBER 21, 2008, Page 9 : Rising fuel costs, never-ending traffic jams, have made travelling quite a problem in Bangalore. So it came as no surprise that young techies, who cycle to work, created a stir at Barcamp 7 in IIM last Saturday - Renuka Phadnis

The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore was full of activity last weekend. The auditorium was the venue for an interactive session of Headstart, a group that supports entrepreneurship in the technology sector. In the corridors and break-out spaces of the management school, there were parallel discussion sessions going on of Barcamp 7. But the one group that attracted the most attention here was the one that pedals their way to work. Varun, Vikram and Swaroop, the three directors of Ion Lab, cycle to their workplace.

And when they are stuck in any of Bangalore’s infamous traffic jams, the trio simply lift the bikes and walk out of the jam. Vikram used to cycle to his office in Bosch earlier and is still cycling to his new workplace. He cycles up to 50 km a day and has even pedaled to Mysore. The cycle he uses is a ‘Giant’ that has as an accessory shoes that swivel into the pedals of the cycle.

Varun has been cycling in Bangalore for six months after he got hooked on to it in the US.”A lot of people complain about the traffic but I like it,” he says. Once in a jam, he lifted the cycle and a guy in a car told him, “Dude, I am here stuck in this traffic and you are getting away?” He likes the fact that cycling keeps him fit too.

When you ask Swaroop if he does not find cycling a challenge in Bangalore, he says, -”Cycling isn’t, but driving a car is!” He says it is a lot safer and easier in the city. He has been cycling from Jayanagar to Domlur for the past two years.

… (see the picture for the full article)

Factual errors aside, it is a good article and really encourages non-cyclist skeptics to consider cycling. The other upshot is that the red bicycle you see on the top of the page is mine, so if I ever want to sell it, I just have to say “As featured in the Bangalore Mirror”, heh. And also, this is the first time ‘Ion Lab’ has been mentioned in the press.

Let’s reiterate over the benefits of cycling to work:

1. You do not need a separate time to exercise, because you’re cycling to work. You save one hour everyday.
2. Save on fuel costs, and in turn make the world less reliant on oil fuels.
3. Reach your workplace faster. It’s a myth that cycling is hard and slow and you’ll be late. On an average, I used to motorbike to my (ex-) Yahoo! office in Domlur in 45 minutes, but used to take 30 minutes on cycle.
4. Don’t get stuck in traffic jams. Just lift your cycle and push it along on the sidewalk. (Please do not cycle on the sidewalk, you’ll be annoying pedestrians)
5. A good exercise before you reach your workplace will really pump up the endorphins and put you in a positive mood to get lot of work done throughout the day.
6. And you’ll be a lot healthier!

Convinced yet?

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This Sunday morning, Varun and myself started cycling down Kanakapura Road.

The direction from Bangalore towards Thalagattapura was generally downhill and we started to enjoy the cycling when we saw good green fields on either side and surprisingly, lessening traffic. It’s always fun for me to cycle to the pounding music of The Chemical Brothers.

We crossed Thalagattapura and Kaggalipura and stopped at the lake immediately after Kaggalipura.

This was one of the best spots to stop at. A nice small lake. Some people on the other side were washing their cows, we were relaxing and our bikes resting beside us. After a few minutes, we sat under the shady trees and watched the beautiful water. I was amused at the contrasting situation with so many people just zipping by. Everybody’s in a hurry.

After 15 min of rest, we started cycling back to Bangalore. Since we enjoyed the downhill journey already, now it was time to face the uphill journey. It was a killer.

We stopped at Thalagattapura to have good vadas, bad dosas and refreshing maazas.

Eventually, we huffed and puffed and reached back at the Kanakapura junction at noon, making it a total of 4 hours and 30 km of cycling (which inevitably meant good sleep after I reached home).

All in all, a good Sunday. I hope I eventually become fit enough to join the Bangalore Bicycling Club on their adventures.

While I was cycling today, I had an interesting thought.

I always have my ol’ iPod Nano with me while I’m cycling. As usual, if I want to listen to a song again, I click the left button to repeat, if I don’t like a song, I click the right button to skip to the next song. But while cycling, I have to do this without looking at it. It is possible because I can feel the click-wheel and it has a good feedback so that I know when the press has worked.

Compare this with the touch-screen rage - can a person use the iPod Touch/iPhone without looking? From my limited usage of a friend’s iphone, I do not think it is possible.

It makes me wonder which is really the “Touch” - the one I can use without looking (using only sense of touch), or the one that has a touch-screen UI (requires both sense of touch and sense of sight)?

My favorite memories of my Singapore trip is Day 9 (Dec 30 Sun). We went to Pulau Ubin island. What is the only activity on this island? Cycling.

It was fun to see people of all ages, from families to large groups of teenagers to avid cyclists all here for the same reason. It reminded me of Cubbon Park on a Sunday evening.

The first thing you see on entering the island is shops on either side to rent out cycles. We went in, took cycles and started pedaling, all in a matter of a few minutes.

Those giant “Thailand coconuts” were simply fulfilling.

Next, we randomly cycled and ended up at Chek Jawa. We read about the sea life conservation efforts that go on here. The highlight was the bungalow, along with the view of the sea.

The above few dark sunset photos are courtesy of Abishek Nair (just to make it clear that the good photos here are not taken by me).

We had become obsessed with the view here and just enjoying the sunset. Finally, we had to push ourselves to explore some more and return back the bikes. We even did some bird-watching (seriously).

I was sad to take a bumboat to get back to the mainland, but I did get to see the planes dive to land in the airport which is right next to the beach.

This incident happened about three weeks ago when the preparations for ion were in full swing, and Vikram and myself worked all day long to create the posters for ion as well as the website itself. At one point, we realized that we were spending most of our time in choosing just the color and placement of text, and we spent some 20+ min just to decide the font of the apostrophe in “plug ‘n play”!

At around 6 o’ clock, we were dead tired (at least I was, Vikram said he had never seen so lazy before) and decided to go get the posters printed but I didn’t want to, so he suggested instead to go for the new place that he went for cycling to recently. We went by bike through a zig-zag maze of roads and after 3-4 km, suddenly ended up in a place which seemed to be deserted! It was a new layout being formed by destroying the hill and the greenery, the signs of urbanization marked by destruction, the green being replaced by the grey (concrete).

We climbed up the rocks, just sat down there in the darkness and we had a long discussion about random things and sometimes deep things. Then, we noticed there was a huge reddish moon in the sky. Simply beautiful. I was taking photographs.

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Partly inspired by my gang’s craziness, and partly inspired by Shree, I bought a cycle a month ago, and I’ve been cycling to work on 2-3 days in a week ever since.

Some observations :

• People who drive in Bangalore have no respect for cyclists.
• The assumption is that the only reason you’re on a cycle is because you can’t afford a bike.
• Traffic is so dangerous for slow-movers like cyclists.
• People find it funny to see a guy riding a cycle listening to his iPod while most people are in formals on bikes.
• When most people my age are planning to buy a car, mom is wondering why I’m buying a cycle.
• It takes 45 min to travel the 8 km on cycle, just 10-15 min more than my bike (mainly because of the traffic)
• After I reach office, I feel energised and have noticed a positive effect in the concentration at work.
• No traffic cop trouble. They never bother cyclists.
• It’s dangerous to be on a cycle at night. It doesn’t have a headlight.
• Never park your cycle just about anywhere, it’ll easily get stolen.
• I save on petrol.
• I feel like I save an hour everyday because I don’t need to exercise separately now.
• Cycling is fun.
• 8 km is turning out to be easy now. Shree, when do we do a long one?

ShreeKumar’s at it again:

It’s december, and I am bitten by the travel bug again. This time, I intend to cover the areas on the western coast of India on my cycle. The trip would cover 2000+ kms of gruelling terrain and span 21 days !

From Mangalore, I am cycling to Goa. From there, I will go to Hubli and then to Pune over Aihole, Badami, Pattadakal, Gokak and Mahabaleshwar. After Pune, it will be Mumbai. After Mumbai, I will be off to see Shirdi(?), Ajanta, Ellora, and Lonar (yes, you haven’t heard of it yet). From there, I hope to end triumphantly in Ahmedabad.

I thought my biking trip was radical but check out ShreeKumar who just completed a cycling trip from Chennai to Kolkata - over 2000 km on cycle in 15 days!!! He is either a total energy junkie or simply gone crazy

He has promised complete details once he gets back to Bangalore… can’t wait to read more about it.