Meet Report.
At about 10pm Tadu dropped down by my house to pick me up. I enter the car to find Tadu's wife and two sweet kids sitting in it. I say hi to aunty and hope she doesn't think "These are my husband's friends whom he hangs out with during the weekends?"
. I have had two bad experiences when I had to meet Goddy's & Psycho's better halves and witness such a reaction. Really didn't know who should feel more embarrassed, the 22 yr old kid who hangs out with these 30+ year old gentlemen or the other way round.
The journey to Tadu house was fun, seeing the younger son play so actively. The elder one was asleep. We reached Tadu's house, only to be greeted to a very tasty dinner. We had some chapati's, chicken curry, and after sending some e-mails and checking out Tadu's latest 85k TV acquisition we headed out to pick up Brraj.
Soon, the 3 of us were on our way to CBE. But, luck was not with us. It was pouring cats & dogs and some more. Nor tadu, rajiv or I had ever seen such heavy rains in TN ever. Visibility was non-existent. Thankfully the Elantra had really good headlamps Tadu had changed to. But, unfortunately Tadu hit a pot hole pretty bad at about 80kmph and something didn't feel right. Yes, we had one of the right side tires flat. We pulled over to the side and I inspected the damage. Tire was flat, now we had to change the tire if we were to move any further. After waiting for about 10mins for the rain to subside from a chaotic downpour to a trickle, Tadu and me got down saying we could be here till morning waiting for the rain to go down.
With an umbrella to protect us, we got to action of swapping the tire. We did everything we could in the next 15mins, but the tire got jammed & wouldn't come off. After some 10 mins of playing football it finally came loose. We swapped the tires, then swapped clothes as we were drenched in rain and I was handed the keys to the Elantra.
I took the wheel and was surprised by the comfortable seating the Elantra had. In gear, we zoom off with a huge grin on my face everytime the turbo kicks in and I soar to 4,000 rpm. I really enjoyed the drive, the company. We talked about pretty much everything around the world. And some more. The rain had still not given up, but the company made it that much more less straining to drive. Though we left at 12:30 am we reached the outskirts of CBE at about 6:30 thanks to the 1hr lost due to the puncture, 3 coffee stops, and the torrential downpour. Our last stop was the Reliance petrol pump outside CBE, we somewhat filled our stomachs, I had bath in their showers. And within one hour we were all set to go. Oh, before I forget, Reliance A1 plazas really have good setup. Very cleanly kept bathrooms, functioning geysers, basically its a place not many of us would hesitate to have bath at.
Sporting a "Stock Car Racing" T, I started our journey to CBE Coffee Day. still behind the wheel of the insane Petefied Elantra. We reached CCD at sharp 8:57 am to witness that nothing at TBHP meets had changed.
No one was on time, a wait of 15 mins later, gkrishn dropped by. Then we waited and waited and waited. Finally our local resident hero Harrie turned up. We waited more for quicksilver and he finally turned up some 1hr after we had reached CCD. We then headed off to the tire shop to get the tire fixed. We were planning to head back straight from the track, and didn't want to take a chance of getting it fixed later. So another hour went past and finally everyone dropped out from coming to the track. Quicksilver and another friend of his hesitatingly agreed to come because they thought we didn't know the way to the track. But once we got onto Trichy Road I knew the way (surprising some say I am bad with directions). We asked SriRam to carry on with his work and that we could get to the track all by ourselves. And we did without any problems. Then , we saw I sight to behold.
To BE CONTINUED.