BHPian TheVaas recently shared this with other enthusiasts:Deliver’s TravelsIt was a jam packed last week of March for me. No, not because it was the ‘Financial Year’ ending (Always remember: There’s no ‘FY’ in ‘Motorcycle’!)but because two friends from different phases of my life got themselves a new bike! So let’s get going! Riding Phase Friend: DA “Ready to unravel” Dominic aka DA (If you remember him from Chapter 6 of my first post here) got himself the brand new KTM ADVENTURE 390 – S! A brief, intimate delivery of a bike that promises (as per critical reviews) to deliver “immense off-road and trial riding pleasure”! The usual ADVengers assembled for the moment – as jokes, laughter, friendly big bike-small bike banter and sugarcane juice (Bombay’s getting progressively closer to the sun!) flowed through the entire process. Since it was a weekday delivery, everyone had to return back to their daily work stations with the promise of a weekend ride (which didn’t materialise lol) to fully celebrate the new bike! Also KTM showroom didn’t have a dedicated guest parking space, so we couldn’t do a side by side comparison with my AT. ADVengers assembled! “Return to Sender, address unknown…” Mandatory posing! — Life Phase Friend: HB A unicorn spotted! (But whose is it?) If you time-travel to my first post in this thread, I’ve mentioned a ‘Dear friend’ – both of us had taken delivery of our Tiger 800s on the same day. The plan back then was to ride, tour, explore India together. But then life took over. Back to the present – after a lot of soul-searching, patience testing and hard negotiations – my ‘dear friend’ aka HB is now a proud owner of a 2020 preowned Africa Twin Adventure Sports (Manual). An itch that started exactly a year ago when I got my ATAS – scratched, cured and how! I poured my heart into a post I wrote on social media which I am sharing with you all here – In filmmaking parlance, we often hear the line – “It takes an entire village to make a film!” But sometimes, to reach that village, you need a motorcycle! My tryst with motorcycles began in 2006 by sitting pillion on HB’s faithful Pulsar 180 – as we rode from one end of the city to the other – braving traffic, people, speed guns and even narrowly escaping a massive oil spill on the road (which I was completely unaware of). Trivia: I didn’t even know to ride one back then! But with all things ‘Universe’, 10 years later, in 2016, we both rode to Goa on our Royal Enfields and decided then and there that “more motorcycling adventures awaited us!”. Well, that line got reversed because in 2020, we robbed a bank and got ourselves an ‘adventure motorcycle’ (see what I did there?) – the Triumph Tiger 800. Life happened post Covid – and we ended up in contrasting situations with work, life, family taking over HB while unemployment (aka motorcycling) taking over mine! Anyway, the point of this appreciation post is – last night when I was riding back home after our little celebratory meeting, I just couldn’t help realise that – life has come to an almost full circle for us – with both of us settling for yet another ‘adventure motorcycle’ and the same one at that – the might Honda Africa Twin! Our 2006 selves would have never imagined this occurrence back then; would’ve definitely laughed it out like we used to! Anyway, here’s hoping we find the ‘village’ that I spoke about earlier! As I had mentioned earlier too – the end of this post is the beginning of another’s journey into the wild. The promise to each other is to honour our commitment of ‘riding and touring together’. So hopefully you’ll see more of him and his ATAS in my future posts! (PS: In case you were wondering about the title of this post, sorry – couldn’t resist the PUN! ) Check out BHPian comments for more insights and information.
