Fear is the key !!!

My Colleague's bike

Whenever I see my colleagues riding motorbikes in a group going out on holidays I know that I am missing all the fun and adventure of biking. I used to be an avid biker few decades back and to be exact 33 years back ….when we guys used to zoom about in the city racing one another and having fun with the rush of wind on your face while riding. Those days few makes of the bikes were cannibalized and the end product would be owner’s pride and while it is ridden through the locality one would know as to who is driving by. Also another thing of the past was throaty roar of bikes whose silencers have been removed and the racket it creates while throttling used to scare other vehicles to veer away from the bike. There were times when we used to make trips from Chennai to Tirupati just for the heck of driving and used to have lodes of fun. But after one fateful day way back in 1981 when two of my friends were crushed to death under the city bus I stopped riding bikes and till this day still have the fear of riding one. 

It is said that once a person learns to cycle he/she can never forget to balance the two wheelers throughout lifetime similar to swimming so few years down the line my friends have tried pushing me to ride a bike and when I tried my whole body went rigid and I rode the bike similar to a beginner quite unsteadily…a psychological fear that has never left me!! Recently I was browsing the net and I came across portal sharing similar experience by persons and the remedy to such fear. They describe that immediately after such incidents or accidents one must not stop riding for a long period of time otherwise they would experience the feeling I have now. I am comfortable driving four wheelers and have been doing that from 1982 but then have stopped riding two wheelers.

I wish that I had not shirked away from riding a bike way back in 1981…. I would have had greater fun here in Oman.