The bike I’m writing about next is the 2015 Harley Davidson street 750 (now on refereed to as in this blog as the XG 750), the bike when looked at would look like what exactly a brand like HD would make for expanding markets, and it truly explains what people should think about the brand when they see a HD, long, black,big enough to seem menacing but a very approachable to the brand, but then you also start questioning the brand because of the very bike, is this what you’d expect when you see a HD rumbling down the streets, now don’t get them wrong the bike makes sure that it makes its presence felt, but is it enough one would ask, the exhaust has an ugly db killer on, something nobody would ever do to a HD. Another thing being the target audience that the bike trying to capture, the youngsters. HD as a brand has been very strong towards catering the audience it has always had and statistically speaking that audience group has been growing so old to the point that before taking this over most of Harley’s audience is dead as they have been faithfully to the brand since WW2, and faithful they are indeed to the point that some will go to great lengths to be sure about the fact that the family runs on a Harley Davidson, now back to the xg750 , the bike being in India looks very similar to the the home brew, the Bajaj avenger. The bike has a decent rake to make it feel cruiser enough but not too much to make it difficult to ride. The XG 750 has a small seat height, making it perfect for smaller riders, it took me some time to getting used to sitting so low as i come from riding an rc390, the gearing on the Harley makes her a easy bike to ride, forgiving you for every 2nd gear pull from the stop light, the gears are long enough that as a amateur you’d forget to shift gears at all, but when it comes to ride refinement, the xg750 has a lot of work to get don’t, the bike i spent time with is from one to the first lots in India so the mistakes are forgivable and nothing that a wrench cant speak, one thing that i did not like at all was the heating issues, the way you sit on the bike and the cooling system is placed, the radiator fans blow all the heat from the coolant straight onto your feet and fans are strong enough to get that heat until your pillion as well, i rode mostly in Banglore traffic so this was a big issue for me, i’ve stopped complaining about the heat my Ktm throws on me, being a V-Twin, the 750 is very soft and matured, drawing a straight comparison to the mental rc390, the bike doesn’t make all that much power than the 390 as well, the Harley is tops out 160 on the speedo but that isn’t recommended as after 80kmph the Harley gets very front light an you’d feel like you are riding with a constant wheelie, the Harley has a lot of respect too attached to it as you will become that “kid who rides a Harley”, but you just don’t buy a Harley you become a part of that whole culture, that family. Once you get a Harley, you are immediately made a part of a huge riding community called the HOGS ( Harley Owners Group) you’d have long planned rides and is a perfect example of riding community all around the world and the feeling is ecstatic, i myself am a part of two other riding groups back in my home town Pune. Brining a direct comparison between the Rc and the Xg, the bikes couldn’t be any more diffrent yet their souls are so similar, they both will literally ask you to leave the city, take the highway, get some miles on, hit the twisties, have the time of your life, and on the note of similarities are the problems the two face in this country, both being originally designed in developed counties with cooler climates and beautiful roads, vibrations, heat are something that you’d just have to deal with. All in all the Harley is a great way to get into the world of cruisers and to get into the world of Harley Davidsons.

I spent some time pondering about what should i write in my next blog, after a lot of procrastination and botched blogs, I came up with this. Why do we customize our bikes. Now before the bike part , we truly need to understand what is customization, how important a part it is of our lives and why our vehicles are a part of it. Customization by definition is to personalize something to cater to a specific individuals taste and to better his/her experience while using a certain object/service. Customization can be something as simple as adding more salt to your morning poha or asking your mother to add less sugar in your cup of chai,customization also comes out of necessity or out of taste. If a person likes more sugar, its his taste, but if the person is diabetic and cant have more than a specific amount of sugar, it is out of necessity.

Customization also makes the user experience of using a certain object or service easy, or even more pleasurable. Look at your phones wallpaper, there is a very low chance that the wallpaper is the same that came came applied to the phone from factory. This is what customization is, riders customize their bikes for plentiful reasons, the most important being that the bike that he/she own is not only a mere means of transport, it becomes an extension of his or her body, nutcase bikers like me will also find a certain character in the machine, which they either find soothing, which makes the whole point of riding a bike even more fun. Others will start associating that particular individual with his/her bike. So people start to customize their bikes, so as to make sure that their bike reflects their personality, they use their bikes as an empty canvas to express themselves, some people may wrap their bikes in flashy colors, some people may only spend resources to makes their bike faster. Their are a lot of things that can be done and there are endless combinations. In India this is now truly gaining traction as bikes are now finding themselves as a hobby more rather as means of transport, so people want to sprinkle there personality on there bikes to make it not only an extension of their personality, but also their souls.

Zaria is the name of my 2016 KTM rc 390. I’ve owned for a year now, I got it off a close friend of mine and when I did the bike was in let’s say a 9/10 state. like the rear seat is slightly torn, the front tyre is almost dead, but I got some cool mods like a Tail tidy with the bike, I happen to be extremely lucky to have a 390 as my first bike, I mean there was a time when an rc390 roamed the streets of pune with a red “L” on it. The bike’s personality is very well defined by its name “Zaria” which means a princess in Hebrew, which the bike is. It has to be pampered with a chain setting and lube each week, but surprisingly so far, contrary to popular belief, maintaing a KTM is relatively cheap as compared to bikes of similar capabilities, that would be what I believe the other 2 bikes of the holy Trinity, the Yamaha YZF R3 and the Kawasaki Ninja 300, both cost a bomb to maintain. Riding an RC, which is an acronym for Race Competition, and that is clear the moment you swing your leg around the bike, the RCis meant to go fast, that to not necessarily in a straight line but in corners too. The bike is what I believe the quintessential starter sports bike which everyone should experience atleast once. The posture is aggressive, the handling is predictable to the point that you’d be going knee down in corners a little too early that you’d expect. The aggressive riding posture helps further with the way how the bike handles and as you will feel in complete control at all times, the pegs are more on the ‘rear set race bike’ side of things, gears are short, so short that you’ll be scrambling to find the right gear each time you hit the brake or twist the throttle, because of which the acceleration is so brutal (aided by the massive 44 teeth rear sprocket), after a point the reason why you are holding on to the bars is so that you can hold on to your dear life and not the control the machine. Looks are a personal opinion but the bike looks too savage for city use, the exposed orange trellis frame the front fascia, I’ve put on a pair of winglets from autologoue designs to aid in the aggressive front fascia look even more aggressive. The rear “seat”, which is more of a joke for a seat. The bike is compact, which is a good thing as parking makes it a bit easier and isn’t as intimidating as the other two bikes, the r3 and the ninja 300 are big bikes. Riding it is a pain in city, the bench like seat, the aggressive posture, the heat (due to the high compression engine), make it a bit too much for a newbie to handle in cities. This is where the competition gets ahead as the ninja and the r3 are both comfortable bikes with a parallel twin layout instead of single cylinder layout with reduces vibrations and those bikes have the sitting more upright. There is one thing though that some people would like and some wouldn’t, that is the hype and attention you get, stares at the traffic light, people sitting on the bike getting photos clicked and the best part being meeting other riders in parking lots and talking about these machines and I don’t know what pulls us towards them like bees to a flower.

I started this blog simply because I love yapping about bikes. I mean I could’ve ended it here but that’s not how blogs work so I’ll explain how it all started. Like every thing, this too has its own origin story. Back when i was a toddler who just learnt how to walk, my parents got me small hotwheels toys. Yes, it had to involve an American brand, anyways I loved them. All the walls in my house had tyre marks from those cars and slowly my ‘garage’ expanded as I got many more cars and bikes of different shapes and sizes. Fast forward to a few years later I got my first bicycle, and all hell broke loose and I got to know the freedom of 2 wheels and me being and extremely lucky kid, there is a garage near my place where my granddad took his ageing blue Bajaj Chetak to get fixed and it was natural I would go there with him. There is just something about the smell of engine oil, petrol that drove me crazy and seeing all the intricacies of an engine, it blew my mind. As each time I visited, I saw something new every time. By age 10, I could point out all the inner workings of a 2 stroke and a 4 stroke engine and name all the parts in it. A few years later, I started riding the family’s scooty an Activa on the back roads of pune. By the time I

was done with my 10th, that steel grey Activa was matte black and had neon green monster energy stickers on it. The cliched mods every kid did back then. And that’s when my life took a turn, when I got my learners licence and I got my own, brand new black Activa 3g, whom I lovingly named Safeena. I have had a ton of memories with her and shall write about that as well, but those 2 years have been a blast. And as soon as I got in college, I worked out a deal with my friends back at the garage and picked their personal KTM RC390 who I named Zaria, and here I’m, writing a blog about the roller coaster of a life I’ve had. This blog is going to be more about my experience as a rider and my takes on different bikes, tracks, roads,and my trips with my many riding buddies.