Nov 2nd, 2025 – CR turned Two!

This time we decided to celebrate the occasion by doing a short breakfast ride a known destination Amaravati Family Restaurant, Gudur. 

We have been to this place when we were on the return journey to Chennai from our 2025’s endurance ride for Odisha. It’s a nice spacious restaurant with ample parking facility coupled with big trees which provides beautiful shade from the morning sun.

Even though it’s a short ride the assembly time announced was like our long ride timing which is 4:00 AM in the morning. As the destination is in Andhra, our starting point chosen was in the exact opposite end of Chennai from my house which is almost 60+ kms apart. So, I woke up by 2:00 in the morning, started at 3:00 AM to the starting point from home by listening some soothing songs my early morning playlist through intercom and reached the starting point on time after fuelling up my bike.

This is time it was not feeling like a surprise to see almost 80% people were already gathered at the starting point when I reached the flag off point. This is one of the core cultures we follow in CR and the main deciding factor influenced me when I joined CR – Be on time and respect others time.

I just parked my bike adjacent to Prem’s bike as we decided over marshal’s call to indicate/arrange the bikes group wise in a line just to reduce the group formation time during flag off. We always look for small improvements we could make which will ultimately help us managing the ride. This time we tried this as we had 38 riders split into 4 groups.

After the usual morning greetings and high five, our ride captain (Ram) started the ride briefing and set the agenda for the ride crisp and clear. We mounted on our bike on time and flagged off from the starting point towards our first tea break point. Group 3 and 4 flagged off with 5 mins gap just to avoid the highway pile up issue. Also, we planned take different pit stop for the tea break as well for easy management and to reduce the break timings. In between my group tail (Rahul) warned me multiple times about a slight left we need to take enroute to our first tea spot which I have missed in our last Odisha ride. 

This time I was bit cautious about the left turn since I don’t want to end up in a situation where it will end up as one of the points, we banter about for the day 😊.  In my mind voice “இவனுங்க ஒரு தடவை டர்ன் மிஸ் பண்ணதுக்கே இப்படி பொலம்பறாங்க, மறுபடியும் மிஸ் பண்ணா அவ்வளவு தான்”. Luckily, I had Prem also who led the group 1 in front of me indirectly assisted me on this.

After 60 mins of pleasant morning cruise, we reached our first pit-stop for a morning for a tea/coffee break. We took bit longer tea break than the usual timing we do and enjoyed the morning tea/coffee and started towards our destination of the ride. Enroute, we faced a puncture issue for our beloved star Abhi’s bike who has a habit of small incidents when we go to his native AP. Thanks to Santo, Ram who handled the situation effortlessly by taking Abhi as a pillion and left the bike which Abhi rode for the day near a toll plaza after the initial inspection / remediation which didn’t work. 

If Jiju was known the issue real-time, his mind voice would be like “உன்ன நம்பி பைக்க குடுத்து விட்டத்துக்கு, உன்னால என்ன பண்ண முடியுமோ அதை பண்ணிட்ட”

Jokes apart, on the way back to Chennai Santo and couple of our boys started bit early to go and check the issue with the bike, fixed it and joined us enroute by the time we reached that spot during the return journey.

We reached the restaurant by 6:50 AM which was bit early for the breakfast. So, we took our time in the parking lot and assembled in dining hall which was reserved for us to have the breakfast and celebrate the occasion.

Since we had bit more time and the breakfast also yet to be ready, we started the usual official / fun part of the day. BART started with a small briefing about CR and how it started, how it grown over the last two years and where we are today. He just simply briefed it in 2/3 mins. But it would have felt great/wonderful to the CRWC members (Santo, Jiju, BART, Ananth, and Mohan) to see their thought materializes, idea becomes reality, and vision brought to life. It’s been 2 years today; CR stands strong with 100+ same minded people.

After the briefing from BART, we had 3 new joiner who rode for the first time with CR, and we asked them to share their experience which we usually do to get to know/connect with people. Then by the time we had our breakfast and the cake cutting ceremony for the Anniversary.

Then comes the return journey which will always be a bit difficult part than the onward journey either it would be short ride or the longer ones due to the amount of heat we face, and sun was also in front of us during this time which make it even more difficult. After two hours of riding, we reached our peel off point where we took our last group photo of the day and bid adieu to the group for the day. Now for me it’s the time for another short ride of 62 Kms in the scorching sun and the full city traffic to home from our peel off point.

I always hate this part of any ride “ஆனால் தேங்காய் வேணும்னா தென்னை மரம் ஏறித்தானே ஆகணும்”

It was a wonderful feel to realize that I am also a small part of an incredible riding club in Chennai which takes riding very seriously and implemented all the discipline it requires not just in papers but also into action. Now a day discipline is what lacks in many places in our fast-moving world. I take pride in saying that I am also a part of club which consider it seriously. Thanks to all the people who made it happen.!

I wish many happier anniversaries to CR and all the renegades.! Cheers to the wonderful future rides ahead to all of us..!