A Sunday morning breakfast ride with the fellow DOC (Ducati Owners Club) members. We decided to try a new route no one had ever taken. It was exciting, with some great roads and very few bad patches.
Multistradas dominated the group, but we also had a couple of DesertX, a Monster and, importantly, a Streetfighter. And it was his first ride with us. We didn't want to scare him on his first ride :).
The weather was perfect, and we got some great pics. \ \ A strange thing happened on this ride: one of the parked Multistradas moved on its own. After we left our meetup spot, we headed toward Bhor, then onto the Warandh Ghat road.
You have to leave that road and head toward Titeghar Road, which takes one to the Raireshwar Fort. We found ourselves riding through narrow village roads, surrounded by mountains and fields. The views were stunning, and we had to stop to take them in.
We stopped on a slight incline beside a narrow road. All of us were particular about putting the bike into first gear before turning off the bike so it wouldn't move. The Multistrada has an additional hand brake option, which was engaged (as claimed).
While clicking pics and shooting videos, the bike slid backwards on its own and bumped into the bike behind it. Luckily, none of the bikes tipped over, and there was no damage to the bike. But we were all stunned by how the bike managed to do that on its own.
We decided to not think of it too much and carry on with our ride.
Another unexpected thing was that after our second stop to click pics, we started riding. I was the tail (the last person), and Sid was ahead of me. On one of the hairpin bends on the ghat, Sid enquired over the Cardo about who was blowing the horn and whether there was someone behind me. It was cloudy, and there was no one behind me. But that question spooked us, since there was really no one on that road except us. We never even dared to look in our rear-view mirrors and just kept riding through the ghat roads, engulfed in clouds. Spooky? - Absolutely.
Nothing much exciting or spooky happened after those incidents. We still managed a great ride. The Raireshwar fort to Wai section has some good roads in good condition. The newly concreted section of Wai town connecting to the highway is not smooth at all. We never got any heavy rains. There was a light drizzle in some sections. Overall, another satisfying Sunday morning ride.