The Sane Lunatic

Hello! First of all, thank you for taking time to read about my experiences and adventures, and I hope you enjoy them and thank you for your support of my blog! I wanted to address the fact that I had not been writing much for the series of Sane Bike Loony Rider, not because I became too lazy to or that I stopped riding. I still ride every weekend and any other day that I can, I have simply not been on a ride interesting enough to write about, and no point in boring you readers with the mundane just to keep a routine. I assure you, any fun ride, long or short, worth writing about, will be written and shared with you and I hope you will enjoy it too.So stay tuned for more adventures of Sane Bike and Loony Rider and from the Sane Lunatic. As always, feel free to give your feedback in the comments.

Black Dog Easy Evenings @ The Lalit Ashok, Bengaluru on 29th March, 2016 "Just sit back and enjoy while me and Brad improvise our way through the next hour and a half trying to figure out what the crap is going on" was more or less what Colin Mochrie said after the initial introduction, right before they got on with the first game of the evening. It still felt like some bizarre day dream, that I was sitting in the audience, with a clear view of the stage on which some of my favorite improv comedy legends, Colin Mochrie , and Brad Sherwood . As I hung onto my seat, doubling up with laughter, with stitches in me sides, watching them be hysterically funny with their quick wit and innuendos, just like all those hundreds of hours I spent on YouTube watching and re-watching every video I could find of Whose Line Is It Anyway AND Drew Carey's Improvaganza. The tickets were expensive(INR3750), but they included unlimited drinks and food by the organizers, WHI...

Finally!!! After all the waiting and anticipation since the first poster came out, to the point of being seated in the theater as the trailers ended and the dark gloomy version of the Warner Brothers logo came on the screen, this was the moment. Unfortunately, it didn't start off well enough. I had booked my ticket for the 4 PM show on the 24th of March, 2016 at the INOX Theater in Garuda Mall, Bengaluru. The same place where I saw Deadpool. What happened was they messed up the 3D settings, and failed to fix it twice. But the third restart was the charm, as they finally got it right, and the packed hall of now pissed off superhero fans broke into cheer.  But the film, oh the film, it was like a complicated woman that you desire but you know it's a bad idea. The explosions and the cinematics were gorgeous, Zack Snyder did a great job with a lot of the 3D scenes as well. Hans Zimmer music accentuating the dark tone of the narrative, and the occasional dreamy scenes of a p...

Yes, I know. I know! Yes, this blog post is well late by a few days, but that's because I've been busy during the day and lazy in my free time. But better late than never is why I will still write about the rides last weekend. I went for a couple of short solo rides on Friday and Saturday mornings, uneventful but pleasant. The Sunday ride was something I really looked forward to because the group promised to do some off road, riding trails through plantations. And they delivered in style, with many many riders of the group showing their interest, because this was probably the largest number of participants till date, with 12 riders. We rode through Bangalore roads till we reached our destination, Gunjur, an area behind Whitefield. There we met our guide and host, Kumar, who took led the way as we maneuvered our way onto the narrow and bumpy trails with pockets of soft sand. Now, I've never ridden on such surfaces before then so I was quite surprised by how much my bike...

I am totally for relaxation on censorship of language and behaviour, challenging norms, breaking perceptions, not making any topic a taboo. But I do find that I often argue with myself regarding the same matter. The basic question being, who gets to define what is within the bounds of 'good taste'.  Taste and preferences are highly personalised and therefore hard to lay general guidelines for. To highlight my point, lets take a point of reference that I am exposed to and can share with you. Fastrack is a brand that always has trendy, edgy brand communications, pushing the latest social trends and breaking social norms, with the tag line 'Move On'. Now, I am a fan of a few of their ads, for example the ones below: Now I like these ads, for the same reasons I mentioned above. But the very same brand has a few ad films that I find near distasteful. For example: Now, same brand, same style, same themes. But in both cases, I had very different react...

"I ain't afraid to die anymore. I done it already." For a story based on true events, life sure put its knee right in the back of Hugh Glass, real life tracker and fur trapper, brilliantly portrayed in body and soul by Leornardo DiCaprio. And I saw what the cast meant when they would say in the promo interviews that the film was very physically and psychologically demanding.  Director Alejandro G.  Iñárritu, a groundbreaker from Birdman, damn near tortures his cast and the audience  in telling the story of Glass' revenge against the man who took away the one thing he had in life, John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy at his acting supreme). Set in the untamed West of 1823, it is one brutal, badass epic. Bear Grylls ain’t got nothing on this man. But along with this great story, you get to experience the power of cinema unleashed beyond any imagined limitations. Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki shot on locations in Canada and Argentina and the...

For the regular readers wondering if I have forgotten how the days of the week work, or that I don't have a job anymore, let me reassure you, that is not the case(mostly). I simply thought that if I can wake up early enough, I can go for a quick ride even on a weekday.  I managed two 5:30 AM rides this week, on Tuesday, and today, Friday. The previous one had me going on a very familiar route, down the HAL Airport Road and back up to Domlur via the dim back roads of Yemlur and the Wind Tunnel road. Now, the reason I picked such a familiar route, is because I had made an educated guess that these roads will not have adequate lighting to see where on earth am I going, and I was right. Surprisingly, even the main roads did not have the street lights on, and I took the help from the headlights of the few vehicles at this hour, mostly buses. The worst of it was a small narrow stretch of really rough terrain that was pitch black at that hour would most likely have strays napping aroun...