Fish Eat Popcorn. Seriously.

You know how it is with long road trips. You should plan them properly. Sleep well the night before, ensure that your bike is in good shape, well serviced, ensure that you have packed your bag the night before, and you know, stuff like that.
Absolutely essential, because going on bike trips ain't for the fainthearted.
Heh heh heh.
See, what happened was...
I and some guys from the office went to this roadside dhaba on Friday night. Let's unwind after a long hard week, and all that jazz. Which we did in style, finally giving up the ghost at two in the morning. At two in the morning, my roomie welcomes me with a khamba of rum.
Say the hellos to the Noel Castellino.
Noel is a fantastic drinker, an awesomely scary bike rider, a guy with a sense of humor, and all in all, just the kind of guy who should be welcoming you home at two in the morning. All the more so when he's accompanied by 720 ml of Old Monk.
So we drank until 5 in the morning, which is when we figured we should listen to Pearl Jam on full blast.
We have a third guy staying with us. Who roared in our faces about five minutes after that Pearl Jam session started.
Say a very timid hello to Jagandeep Singh.
At which point we retired to the terrace with the last of the rum.
Our terrace overlooks the airport. I requested the airport to launch a couple of airplanes, and abused it when it didn't oblige. I requested the sun to come up, and hey, it did oblige. Then I got bored.
So swaying slightly, I ran through a checklist of what is feasible, and what is not.
Which is why, 15 minutes later, Noel and I were on an old beat up bike... a Suzuki Max 100... headed towards Mysore.
When you are piss drunk, you can drive. Seriously. All you have to do is focus on the road, and pray that you are conditioned enough to figure out the accelarator, brakes and gear by instinct.
Where the system falls apart is when you are piss drunk AND dead sleepy. I have honestly no clue about how we did the first 50 odd kilometres.
Noel was fast asleep behind me, and I'm not claiming that I was completely awake either. It got really scary when Noel bumped his head against my shoulders... waking me up in the process.
So what I did was, I drew the bike up on the side of the road, and Noel and I fell asleep there.
Just parked the bike, and right there on the road, we went to sleep. At around seven thirty in the morning.
At ten, I wake up, to see blue sky above me. My view of the azure is suddenly blocked by a grinning bearded face, and which is when I realise that the hands of the bearded bugger are freaking slapping me.
Not good.
I scramble to my feet, upon which the kin of Veerappan grins happily and jabbers away in an unidentified tongue. I shake Noel awake, who stares at the apparition in shared terror, and we clamber onto the bike and race away.
Saturday morning, nothing out of the usual.
On and on and on to Mysore, not quite awake, not quite asleep, only stopping on the way to have breakfast.
Reach Mysore at around noon, take up lodging, and fall asleep.
Do the toursit rounds in the evening, stuff that I'm sure you don't want to hear about. Chamundi Hills, by the way, affords an excellent view of the city. Must visit.
Find ourselves a restaurant that serves beer at 120 bucks to the pitcher, and dinner is done, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
The next day, post breakfast, we start the ride back to Bangalore, stopping on the way to visit some bird sanctuary. Where honest to goodness, we see only herons and crows.
But hey, it wasn't an entirely wasted trips. Sylvan surroundings, quiet as hell on the riverside, lovely islet in the midlle of the river, dotted with herons, and two kids, who while sitting by the little quay, throw popcorn to the fish.
And the fish eat them!
Did you know fish eat popcorn? I mean, I know you learn something new everyday and all, but that was one of life's weird lessons.
And headed back thence to Bangalore.
And this time around, it was the same biking experience, the kind that is now normal for me. Not the sleepy kind that was a first, while headed to Mysore.
The one back was where I noticed the coutnryside, the abundance of sugarcane fields, the majestic mountains, and their mysterious features, the wide unending road... when you get time to sing, think, grin, and make wry smiles at self.
Mile after mile of you and your thoughts, and thats what its all about, innit?
I type this on Sunday evening, dead tired and happier than I've been in a long time.
Bike rides, ladies and gentlemen, are my thing.
I keep telling myself that I'll grow out of this, but so far, thankfully, I've been a very good liar.