Exploratory Cycling

I recently got my cycle fixed up at Rider Owned Bikes (ironically, despite the grumpy owner of that shop). I hadn’t done that good a job at reassembling the bike gears after I had taken apart the wheels and put them all in the back-seat of the car when travelling from Bangalore to Pune.

This was one of the fortunate days where I slept early enough and woke up early enough. And I badly wanted to take the refreshed cycle out for a spin. I had been too often to Nagar Road, Viman Nagar and related areas. I wanted to explore a different part of Pune, I wanted to go south. I didn’t have much idea about that. Then, I remembered that NH7 Weekender (which I’m looking forward to) is happening at Amanora Park Town which is south of Nagar Road.

I checked the maps, just ~7 km from where I live, so I set off! I went exploring the gullies of Pune, crossed the Mula-Mutha river to the Mundhwa Road, went under a flyover, crossed a railway track, back to the main road and into Amanora Park Town.

I explored Amanora Park Town quite a bit, lots of residential complexes have come up, but I didn’t see much else, or probably I couldn’t figure out which way to go because it was a massive under-construction area. The security guards were nice and even wished me good morning. I guess they assumed I must be one of the locals, one of the benefits of wearing a cycling helmet which makes people consider you “seriously”, I guess.

And then cycled back. RunKeeper app says that I did 15.5 km in 1 hr 10 min. Not bad for cycling after a long time, that too in unfamiliar territory.

I love exploratory cycling, probably why I should stick to cycling rather than running, even though the latter felt more of a workout.

The only irritating part to this morning’s cycling was the constant fear of my iPhone jumping out of the front basket as it was not tied to anything. It was critical to keep it there because I needed Google Maps to show me the route to take. Of course, the phone did fall out once, luckily I was in one of the gullies where there was no vehicle behind and the protector case did it’s job well. Maybe I should get one of those Quad Lock mounting systems… let’s see!