22 January, 2009
At about 4:45 AM, I wake up. The dream is about to begin. The preparations have all been in place for over a month. The bike is ready and the road is waiting to be seen, touched and enjoyed.
Loading complete, I reach Mehdipatnam Food World.
My co-riders are waiting. Everyone as excited as I am.
My biggest mistake is hidden in the picture.
Confident of the tightness in the straps, I don’t secure them with a bungee net/cord.
Paid a heavy price for this a few hours later.
However I stick by the concept of these bags and will be just be a little more careful in future.
Another such bag made the entire trip without any problem.
The team before take off
We stop for breakfast a couple of kms later here.
Found these beauties tucked inside this place.
As a biker, I pray almost right thru the ride. I pray everyone on the ride.
Crashing is the worst thing to happen to a biker and unfortunately I ride into one that has happened just a few moments back.
A rider from Hyderabad takes a blow from a passing MUV and a truck. I hear later that he was caught in between them as the UV was overtaking the truck. The smash has rendered bent his badly designed crash bar into his leg. He also suffers a broken wrist.
My prayers are with you for a speedy recovery and good health.
The ambulance surprised me by arriving within 10 minutes. Satisfied that his friends can take care of the situation, we leave and carry on with our ride.
I wear army trousers and another rider in my group wears an army jacket. The public refers us to as the military on more than one occasion.
Irfan signals me to stop and is quite frantic about it. I am in for a shock. My straps have slowly gotten loose because I kept fiddling with the bags to remove my camera pouch. The straps burnt down first, released the bags onto the silencer. Luck had however not departed me completely. Only my toolbox suffers extensive damage on one side. The extra engine oil and a can of WD40 are safe. If they had taken off, I would have flown all the way to Ooty and missed the ride.
We are almost at Gooty, so stop at a nearby Dhaba. As lunch arrives I transfer all my stuff into one bag and give some to my other riders to carry with them.
Lunch is a simple roti+dhal+chicken.
We take off and the open roads are very inviting.
DJ asks me why his bike is not running as fast as the others. He shifts early like any good Std 350 rider should. I tell him to up shift the gears after maximum revs are attained. Warn him that this is the best way to blow an engine as well. I don't think he paid any heed to the warning. He flies off like his tail is on fire.
A couple of kms later I meet him again. He has a silly grin on his face. The bike sounds funny. It almost sounds like a tB. We find a mechanic. I am quite sure that the rockers have a problem. The mechanic confirms the same after checking the tappets. He recommends a mechanic in Anatapur. We call up the others and tell them to carry on towards Bangalore. As I enter the Anantapur city road, we find a rider. Ride up to him and find that he is going to Bangalore. He mistook the signboards at the highway with information from his group. That just reminds me of how often we take things at face value and never really apply our heads to what is being implied.
We find Amanullah. He is our hero. The bike is fixed. But light is fading fast and we have a long road ahead of us. I lead as DJ trails. Traffic is luckily quite less and we are making up for the lost time.
A clean headlight is a bright headlight. I don't see any point in those expensive and useless addon lights. For a short period of time I request DJ to lead. I love riding in the night trailing behind with my lights off. Its magic. Reach Hebel flyover and call up to get directions to our hotel. 600 kms of riding does strange things to the human mind. I can hear Subhayu explain the route. He is obviously doing a good job. But I can understand nothing. I ask him to come down to someplace in between and guide me thru Bangalore.
I can only wonder which perverted mind came up with unmarked speed breakers at Signal crossroads. As the light is in green and may switch to Red we speed up. Only to come to a drastic stop at a huge speed breaker. We were not breaking the signal. We simply wanted to cross it and actually had enough time inspite of the speed breaker. But keeping it unmarked. Some idiotic mind at work in this.
Anyways, I run out of patience waiting for Subhayu. Ride on following bits and pieces of information gleaned from the Hotel clerk and an auto driver. Reach the hotel and as soon as I look at the rooms my anger disappears. They are fantastic. For food I go down to a Kerala joint nearby and get back with some nice grilled chicken, rotis, gravy and so on.
Dinner over, we spend a relaxed night.