A Friday Morning D.R.I.V.E.

[suman]

Friday mornings are usually “one of those days” – when the weekend is so near & yet so far. You can’t wait for the day to get over & yet, for the day to get over, you gotta go to work! LOL. So yesterday was no different, add to it the fact that we were shifting our Office to a new location & you had all the ingredients for a “YAWN, oh God, another BORING drive to work & a long day ahead......”

With those thoughts more or less in my head, I made my way through the new link road from DLF to the border, crossed the toll booth at the border on MG Road & arrived at the red light at the Air force premises. Traffic was light & this is what I saw ahead –



“Hmmm, another guy with a Landrover, probably gonna be carefully threading his way through the traffic – he’ll slow down at each & every speedbreaker & pothole & carefully negotiate it & slow down all else in the process. Jeez, better get ahead of him”. Those were my thoughts as the light turned green. But guess what guys? I was as wrong as could be – he just took off! And for the next half an hour or so, I had one hell of a b.a.l.l. All boredom was banished, the adrenalin was pumping & I had one of my best drives to Office that I can remember in recent times.

Man, this guy was driving it the way a Landrover should be driven. I thought that I was bad when it came to abusing my truck over the undulations & craters on MG Road, but our friend was two steps ahead of me. Add to that the engine response from that machine & he was almost disappearing on the empty stretches. And I must reiterate here that he was a damn good driver. Andheria More came up & there we were at the traffic light –


Turned green & the exhilarating drive was on again. LOL, this was fun! The roads were quite deserted till Qutab & he was pulling away but not out of my sight though. Never thought I’d be doing 100-110 on that stretch at that hour but we did. No rash driving or rash overtaking though but good, clean stuff. And most cars stayed out of the way in any case when they saw two behemoths in their mirrors! He was about 2 truck lenghts ahead of me when we came up to the Qutab T point (to turn right onto Aurobindo Marg) but we had to slow down because the light was Red – was turning Green as we approached, I had a better line & lane out of the point & was way out in front before he could blink. But that awesome Turbo & the traffic ahead – by the time we reached the next T point (turned right onto Press Enclave Marg), the Red beast was filling my mirrors again.

Now this was my daily commute & I knew the road pretty well so, after taking a left onto Geetanjali Marg, I decided not to push it too much. Those of you familiar with that road will know that its not one bit advisable for two behemoths to be going flat out at 8.30 in the morning. So I decided to cool off & a couple of kilometers down that stretch, I waved him through after giving him a "thumbs up". He dipped his head in acknowledgement (I guess he was pretty surprised himself that a 3 ton Indian truck actually had the capacity to breeze through traffic like that) & then we carried on our way, in close formation but no rash moves. We parted company at the Savitri flyover, he turned right into GK II & I went straight on - in a light mood, the usual stress of driving 28 kms to work completely forgotten & ready to tackle whatever the day had in store! Well, I guess this kind of fun once in a while does wonders for breaking the monotony. And it felt great watching a Land Rover in action, treating the road with such disdain, unlike many who try & nurse these monsters over bad roads.

By the way, he was a foreign national, as you will see, this was a DL registration & there were some real nice stickers on the vehicle. Loved that one about the Harley Davidson. I wish I’d been able to click some snaps of the side & the front but I was too busy looking at the road ahead when I overtook him & it would have been decidely dangerous trying to take pictures when he was behind me as we didn’t have a red light to stop at.

Thought I’d share my Friday fun with you guys,

(And guys, a request from me - no sermons please, guys)

[Sideways]

Fantastic stuff. I've been in a similar situation more than a couple of times, so I know how it feels.

Cheers

[Mission_Safari]

Hi Suman,

Nice write up. You should have asked him to pull over and talked to him. May be you should have told him about tbhp . From the site mentioned on the rear of his LR it seems he is an auto enthusiast too and he deals with auto components.

OT: The roof railing in the LR looks ugly.

[googly]

Are those milk buckets hanging on the left side of LR?? have seen a lot of those hanging out of trains window in bihar

[Torque-ative]

Hey Suman,

I have had this very same RED Land Rover overtake me from the left thru the ruts and pot holes more than once while driving from GGN to DEL.

This guy slows down for nothing. I'd watch watch out if I were him !!
Cant get lucky every day

[rjstyles69]

Hey Suman I have had a similar experience earlier and the gentleman was kind enough to stop and let me check out his vehicle.

The difference was that he built his Land Rover from scrap and his trip started from Amsterdam I think , his destination being Australia.

Some pics



Here will clicking the above pic his speed was about 90kmph.





His odo read some 27k miles when we met him and the dude was doing a solo drive.

[iraghava]

Aha! Look slike someone had fun on a boring Friday morning! Nice blog there Suman! The LR does look tasty!

[simply_sunny001]

Wonderful that someone had fun driving to office

these kind of drives usually make your day.

Keep em coming,dada

[maddy42]

Great stuff. Once in a while such stuff make your day

[ashthedivx]

Phew... Another good reason to avoid drivers on Weekends

Nice blog Suman !!

[VJ_MAVRICK]

Its always a pleasure when we encounter someone on a ride complementing each others drive being cautious too. Nice rendezvous for you to make your day and good report

[dadu]

Nice catch suman, but upon first glance at the pictures (before reading) I though Wt.. why is he using a LR to ferry milk



they just seem to be hanging on the front

[esteem_lover]

Nice one suman. Have had that experience myself once in the Madras-Bangalore old highway around palamner. Had great fun in those ghats. The drive till then was incident free & boring.

[Thad E Ginathom]

Interesting site he's advertising too.

I'm tempted to get one of the air compressor kits to fit to my Swift. Never can remember to get the air done regularly !

Shame you didn't have a large, flashing Team-BHP sign on the top of the car! Maybe the driver will discover us one day; I think he'd like the site, surely. Maybe he's here already!

[Torqy]

Originally Posted by rjstyles69

Attachment 30481

Are they diesel cans in the front?

If yes, I'd say NOT the safest bumpers for Indian traffic. Imagine bumping into someone with diesel cans.