Woke up at 4AM today. Cyclerun 2004 Time. This was after just 3.5hours of sleep after an exhausting dance party.

Ti cycles came up with this cool idea of bringing Chennai's cyclists together. Me just had to be there. I wanted to take my cycle along, so I cycled to the Island Grounds venue. Its quite interesting to note the activity on the roads at 5AM on a Sunday morning. The beach road was flooded and these guys weren't there for the cycle rally. They were just there, like every other day, it seemed ! I guess its only us Engineers who like to wake-up late on Sundays.

I got to the venue at 5:45AM. There must've been a queue of about 500 ppl., ready to pedal. We were supposed to be at the venue at 6AM. But the gates didn't open till quite late. There was chaos. Absolute chaos. When I checked the time again, it was 7:30AM, and I was trying to get my cycle in for the registration. Perhaps, the next time they do it, the organizers will know how to make better use of the 150 security guards and another 100 clueless volunteers, they had at the venue.

There was one gentleman with his kid from Scotland. He brought his Cannondale for the 24km rally ! The bike was a beautiful yellow. I brought along Ashu's Hercules Tracer. Pretty smooth bike.

They roped in Kapil Dev, Dhanraj Pillay, Ruby Bhatia and the actress from 'Manmadha Rasa' - Chitra Singh. That's Chithra in Tamil Nadu ! Mr. R. Nataraj, CoP, Chennai did the first flag-off.

I didn't get riding till 8:30AM. The sun was up. It was beginning to get hot. But 'twas fun. The path was well planned. There were cops all along the way to direct us. Never felt this special before. Didn't stop at any of the intersections. This time all other traffic stopped for us. Loads of curious onlookers. Most ppl appeared to know that something was going on. Yeah what ? Cycle race ?

My partners on the ride were a retired Bank Manager and a Chartered Accountant who's into modelling. Bikers all of us !