Hello Steemers!!!
I am Krithi Uchil from Mangalore, India. I do freelancing in web development for a living and I’m also a part time auditor. I have passion for cooking. Even though I see the world through spectacles, I have eyes for good things and good food :P
I am part of all women’s motorcycle riding club called the Bikernis and I run a smaller chapter of Bikernis in Mangalore.
And here’s my journey about how I got into to riding motorcycle and forming the Bikernis:
“Don’t touch others vehicle!!!” my parents always warned me. But I had a love towards two wheeler what so ever. As I grew up, I could see girls owning a two wheeler or some who knew how to ride, I used to envy them. My desire to ride a two wheeler grew stronger. However, I wasn’t 18 to get my driver’s licence and had to force myself to suppress the urge to ride.
I kept telling my brother how much I wanted to ride a motorcycle and had promised to teach me once he buys a motorcycle for himself. At last he bought his first motorcycle the Yamaha fz-s. I used to be his pillion until one day he asked me to ride it. He explained me about the clutch, break etc. At first it was overwhelming and I had no idea nor did I understand what he meant when he said “leave the clutch slowly while giving the accelerator" I did not lose hope; I took a day to understand the logic between that. Finally got to know to start the bike and ride it in first gear. But then again, it wasn't enough; I still didn’t figure out the part on how to shift the gear. I did my share of mistakes like everyone does when they learn. If I had to change the gear I would end up doing it the wrong way. Somehow, in the end I managed to ride a bike without a fall.
My happiness knew no bounds. I used to tell everyone that I had learnt to ride a motorcycle. Every evening I waited for my brother to come back from college so that I could ride. People who saw me riding literally stopped in their tracks. Soon I got lot of attention from people around me.
In India of you are from an average family and have a sibling who is elder than you, whatever they own will be yours as soon as they get something new. I was totally eligible for that logic to fit my life. And I got myself my brothers Fz when he bought Yamaha R1 5.
I have heard people telling things happen for good; in my case it was definitely true and I was now a proud owner of Yamaha Fz. I started taking my bike to college. Now, I was the only women to ride a geared motorcycle in the entire college. The attention I got was overwhelming, got a lot of critics too at the same time. There were people who saw me as an inspiration. Thank heavens for the supportive parents I’ve got! :)
I had my share of incident with the bike, though it was minor the horror of it did not leave me easily. I got to know the importance of a full face helmet and the riding gears, I started saving money for it and eventually bought them.
I teamed up with my friends. They were part of motorcycle stunt team known as Zero Gravity. On their club they planned for a ride. I was thrilled to join them on this. Excitement took over my nervousness. This was my first long bike ride, a dream come true. (More on this on my next blog).
Many a times I have heard people abusing me on streets just because I was a female who rode a motorcycle, at the same time there were also some who looked at me with admiration.
Whatever you do, or want to do, or achieve the first thing you need is permission from parents. I had to lie to my parents whenever I used to go on rides with my friends :D All for the sake of a rider's dream. I did that the first time when I went on a riding adventure of mine and many times later too.
I was fortunate enough to meet many biker friends in a Road safety event organized by United Bikers of Mangalore and one of them was Gloria. She followed my lead and learnt a geared motorcycle. We both decided to start a women's riding club in Mangalore.
We started contacting the girls through social networking sites who shared the same passion and dreams like I did. We managed to make a team of bold women riders with no name. We got a suggestion of associating with the Bikerni, this group was formed by Urvashi Patole. We got in touch with her and started the Mangalore Bikernis team in our city.
Once we had our official launch event, people started recognizing and contacting us to join our group. As we grew, we learnt a lot from each other. However, the only issue that remained was getting the permission from parents, but this time it wasn’t my parents it was the parents of those who joined the group newly. It was a difficult task to convince their parents to send them a long bike rides. And finally we did have an all women motorcycle ride!
More of my riding stories in my upcoming blogs! So follow and support me as I take you along my journey with gears and greases ;)
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Have an awesome day!