KNIGHT RIDER

Blame it on silly girlhood fantasies. But who could forget the TV serial of the same name with a black leather clad, helmeted David Hasselhoff and his lean, mean man-machine? I had gone to the extent of recording the title music on my rickety old tape-recorder (this was the pre i-pod era by the way) so I could play the music over and over and be lost in a fantasy world populated with cute men and their cuter rides.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered one of my friends here in California owned what is called a "sports bike". True blue bikers would consider it sheer sacrilege if anyone called these crotch rockets "bikes". Did I dare ask him for a ride? Would he refuse point blank and give me a set of 10 logical reasons why he could not take "the thing" (his nickname for the feminine gender) on his all-male bike? Screwing up all my courage I did ask. I got a blank stare in response. The lift of his eyebrows indicated that he thought this was a huge joke.

But gentleman that he was, he did not squash me point blank and pointed out that if I wanted a ride, I had to have a jacket and more importantly a helmet. If I did manage to procure both of these, he would take me for a ride.

Miracles do happen in this world. Proof of that is the fact that I got to go on my bike ride. All the way upto Malibu. Of course for the first few miles I felt like the top of my head was going to be ripped from my shoulders and I was pretty sure, at the very least, that the helmet would fly off and hit some poor unsuspecting motorist.

Later, when I did get used to it, it did give me high to be moving at incredible speeds with the wind rushing past my face, overtaking most other vehicles. What a royal pity I couldn't ride it myself.

Stopover at beautiful Malibu for lunch and the trip back made in really cold weather.

Inspite of not being able to sit down properly for a week, this is a ride that I don't intend to forget in a hurry!