Back in 2012. during the monsoon was when, our riding journey had just started. It stared out with two guys who had a die hard passion to explore new places and the love for bikes. Back in the start we used to go on small trips in and around the city of Mumbai. Initially it was just Cletus's impulse in our group, I did not have a bike so, I used to borrow bikes from some friends for going on trips. Later in the mid of the year my cousin lent me his pulsar 150. The bike was old and gray but it was my own and I felt really good about it, I did not have to borrow from anyone anymore. But as the bike was very old it could not keep up with our trips. The year passed with another passing semester in college and with just one long trip in our completed list. Then in February I asked my sister to buy me a bike on my birthday. Well she is the best Sister in the whole wide world, so on 10th Feb 2013 I got my very own bike, the love of my life, my Fazer. It was the best birthday gift I could ever wish for! Post this our trips just started getting bigger and better. We had a group in whatsapp for discussing and planning our trips. The name of the group was "Trips" (Common! we could come up with a better name!). The name of the group was boring so I renamed our group to Overhaulin Trips. The name came form the show Overhaulin' as I was a big fan of that show that time (I still am a big fan of Chip Foose). So that's how we got our very first name.
Overhaulin Trips consisted of five friends (riders and loyal pillions), Allan (That's me!), Cletus, Cleon, Zeyn and Vishal. There were also a few other friends in college who joined us for some of our trips. Our first trip of 2013 was to Igatpuri (a small town on the way to Nashik, Maharashtra) and after this we went to Durshet, Malshej Ghats, Mahabaleshwar and many other places.
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| Igatpuri |
This day, it was almost a years and a half from the time our riders group came into existence. Many great trips were done to the most desired destinations in Maharashtra. Everything changed one fine day, when our engineering journey came to an end. I guess engineering was like a glue that stuck us together but now we were out of stock. A new phase of our lives had started, not only for us, but also for our riders group. The members of our group were scattered across the globe now. Cletus was going to the US for masters, Cleo and Vishal were in Mumbai and me and Zeyn were in Mysore for training and later moved to Pune for work.
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| Sinhagadh, Pune |
We did not go on any trip for quite some time. Our lives had become a cycle of, Eat Sleep Office Repeat. Then one day Royson (Roy ma Buoy) got a pulsar 150 from his uncle and things fired up with our trip from Mumbai to Pune (It was Roy's first ride with us!). Like me and Zeyn, even Roy had the passion for exploring the world around. We were finally, finally coming out of the "No Trips" phase and our riders group was back in action. The only difference was now our group had new members. Our group consisted of four members Allan (me again), Zeyn, Royson and Aldon (Bishop).
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| Rajmachi, Lonavala |
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| Lavasa |
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| Lavasa |
With the blessings of Aldon (Bishop) we started out with some small trips near Pune (Sinhagadh, Lavasa, Lonavala, etc) and we had already lined up many trips for the future. In mid 2015, I thought that I should start a blog about our travel diaries. I told Roy and Zeyn about this and they were very supportive. Roy suggested "we need a new name for our group", Zeyn added "we should also make a new logo for our group". So we got together one day and started thinking about a name for our group. Even after wasting an entire day we could not fix a name. Fixing on a name was like the toughest work we had to get done with. Wandering here and there in my mind, I stared looking around the room for some inspiration (that is how I had come up with a name for my gaming profile Minion Bogessi [Minion form the movie and Bogessi was my wallet brand]). What came to my view was my Lee Urban Riders jacket, my sister had recently gifted me this jacket. I stared at my jacket for some time, thought about it in my mind and then when I made up my mind I shouted out loud "Urban Riders, the name of our groups should be Urban Riders". Roy and Zeyn asked me, "Why Urban Riders?". I was still looking at my jacket and when they asked I pointed towards it. When they looked back and saw what I was pointing towards, they told me I was crazy, but eventually even they got tired of thinking and agreed to my idea. We laughed a lot on how we had come up with our group name, but that is it, it felt right. And that in how Urban Riders became the name of our riders group.
