My New Bike

It has always been a matter of amazement to see those techno-bikes whooshing past.....the ones on TV screen! On my daily walk to the bus stand I found them passing by ME...in reality! I spotted couple of young fellas with backpacks, pedaling; felt a bit envious about their physique...slender and glowing! Soon I realised it is the magic of excercise....the machine between the two legs (:p..dirty mind! Don’t dive in) has done this magic........

Since sedentary job, junks etc. etc. gave a growth in the girth I thought of buying a bi-cycle....with the resolve to make myself fit and save bucks on auto expenses. So I bought a Hercules MTB. It came as a basic bike with no fork suspension or multiple gears. It was a great fun, I must say! After a long long time I found cycling to be fun...earlier it was a need. The short rides to Indiranagar and Thippasandra never made me tired. One fine morning I took this bike to Manchanabele Dam...not joking! It was a painstaking achievement for me to pedal all the way to Manchanabele Dam. Actually, this trip made me resolute about thinking of a multi-gear bike. Long rides and Single geared bike? IMPOSSIBLE!

I was a bit skeptical about shelling out a bomb during this time of recession and hence kept on negotiating with myself. After a long wait the Hercules MTB was sold and then my Merida Matts 20MD arrived.

Before buying this smooth machine I did a lot of research on Firefox, Merida and Trek. Read a lot of blogs...went through lot of threads on the web. Firefox Target was my first choice because of budget constraint...then I stretched it a bit and I was at the level of Firefox Viper. My friend Vishy said, at the same budget Trek 3700 is available and it is an imported one. The website of Trek is amazing as it gives you the details with product videos. Merida was another brand that attracted me in terms of money and features. Trek was not offering me 8x3 gear combination, with Mechanical Disc Brakes at my kinda budget.

Firefox was out of question after what I came to know about the product.
a) There is no proper after-sales-support at the Firefox showrooms. Sorry to say most of the mechanics don't know about the technology of gears and all.
b) They claim Firefox to be a bike from the UK. But it is not. It is designed in the UK and manufactured in India.
c) The spare parts are not so good.
d) The gears start giving problems after a while.

So I made up my mind on a Sunday and jumped on to the court.......took an auto to J P Nagar and met Venky at his shop. The Merida shop at 100ft road has a good collection of bikes. Venky, being a national champion, has got good knowledge of biking and so is Navin, although he is a very young fellow(Just figured out, he is in B.COM. 1st Year).

Before settling down on my 20MD, I checked out all other models....20V, 40V, 40MD.....
One good thing about Venky is - he is not a mere businessman.
He gave me a lot of suggestions on the positives of each model and how is that going to make difference in the experience.

Time to pay Venky! Navin had already started to fix up the backlight, tighten the screws and nuts. There were three ATMs nearby - ICICI, Canara and Bank of India. ICICI was not working for the cards of other banks. There were some issues. BOI ATM was closed due to some technical failure and Canara Bank was showing some error message. So we loaded the bike on Venky's Scorpio and went to his residence. The swiping machine made life easier. By the way, I got the bottle cage, sipper and lock for free.

The first ride to Airport Road from Chamrajpet was extraordinary. Me sitting on a Merida..I could not believe it! It's like dreams coming true! Flyovers and hilly terrains of Bangalore has not been a problem ever since!