Friday, March 25, 2011

The Biker's Freaking Mind, Cabs and Interceptors

4:50 AM…. pleasant morning…. Bangalore airport…

I closed wiser of the helmet…tighten the flap of my gloves…some movement in my hands and my black beauty wake up, staring at me for my next command… she was excited and so was I.
I pressed my gear paddle and a sweet melody of her gearbox made me remember about all good time we have enjoyed in past.

From last one month or so, I was not riding that frequently. All sincere thanks to our company’s cab facility. But with all new environment and load of work at my new company, I never got time to think what I was missing …that was my daily rides with her. She never complains nor do I try to get into any conversation. But today she is in great mood. I was riding her past 60KMPH when I came out of the airport area and hit the high way.

There was very less traffic and that made us a bit greedy. I accelerated a bit more and she touched 80KMPH mark. As she started rolling fast on the road, my freaking mind started rolling back in to memories of my last bike trip. It is more than 6-8 months now, we three friends planed for COORG trip. In fact, it was Nayan sir and Sanjo(please use American accent to pronounce ;) ) who did all the planning. It was a great trip…. everything went smooth and we enjoyed a lot. It was so well planned that we never felt any type of tiredness, what so ever. Plan was simple…. daytime: - ride and site seeing and nighttime: - booze and sleep ;) . We never tried to ride late in night nor did we booze in daytime i.e. before riding…. Coorg is awesome place and the occasional heavy rain were refreshing at times…. but most of the time, it caused lot of inconvenience only but that is part and parcel of excitement on road and in any case, our trip was all about enjoying nature beauty! Well that was the only intension but that never stopped us from praising any other beauty in our way ….and please don’t get any ideas, it was just to put some smile on your serious face ;) :P We had lot of photo sessions and video recordings on the way…all thanks to our no-so-bad photographer/cameraman - Nayan Sir (I hope that some how, he skip reading this line otherwise he will never click my photos again :P ). Hey, he even promised to write about this trip but I never heard from him on this……zoooooommmmmm….A high speeding cab just over took me from my right….though it was quite far from me, but its high speed was enough to bring me in present…I looked at my speedometer – 80KMPH and thought that the cab must be at around 120-130KMPH…..am I riding SLOW!!!!

I accelerated…and the free road gave me full freedom to go past 110KMPH in no time….I don’t know how but suddenly a deadly thought invaded my already shaken mind “wowww, its time to go for my personal high speed record!”. With this beautiful thought, I could not able to stop myself from thinking about my fast and furious Chennai Bike trip with Patwal sir….In 24 hours we went Chennai and came back …..Around 800KM, taking the fact that Chennai is 350 from here and we had rode quite a distance within Chennai too. That was damm tiring trip boss… we started late in night and rode overnight to hit Chennai in 5.5 hrs which includes our 2-3 half an hour breaks!!!
The most memorable part of that trip was my eagerness to hit the top speed possible with Pulsar 150cc. It was Patwal sir’s new bike and both of us tried our best to reach the highest but never able to cross 116KMPH mark. And then came a stretch where I was riding and speedometer touched 123KMPH…I was so excited that I kept the acceleration at full to see if it will go further but it didn’t. Nevertheless, I was happy to touch that high speed and also show it to my pillion rider………

OOOOOOhhhhh NO…as I came out of my memory lane, I saw at my speedometer and it was 132KMPH…It could have went well above it in few more seconds but Sadly, I had to press break. I don’t know from which part of the universe, around 10-20 cabs suddenly came on the road as if it’s some political party rally! Best part was that all were Meru cabs and all were driving at around 80 KMPH!!!

Shittttt….not again ….I was thinking to get my new highest speed today…Plan was to hit above 144KMPH as this is what Bajaj claims as highest speed but I am confident that highest will go around 150KMPH.

I was furious and more than that I was curious! What the hell is going on…how come these many cabs are going together and that too with almost same speed i.e. 80KMPH? It seems that all of the drivers are inspired from Dravid’s style of batting: - Even if it’s flat pitch and ball is nicely coming on bat, try to play defensive…. Or may be some traffic police squad have broken 20-30 bamboo sticks on their bums!!! But little I knew that soon, I was going to be thankful to them.

Mystery Solved, Within 100 meters I saw an Interceptor, Police vehicle that is deployed to stop and fine (plus they will loot :P ) high speeding vehicles on highway, was standing on extreme left of the highway. Suddenly I realized that how lucky I was, thanks to these cab drivers. They knew that Interceptor is waiting out there…Great sigh of relief. After that I kept my speed at 80KMPH only and not to my surprise, 2 more Interceptors were seen in next 5-8 KMs, waiting for some prey like me. It seems that I am getting quite famous these days...or it should be infamous! ;)

I was entering my locality highway, bole toh, main road of it…stopped at tea stall for favorite recipe we have in our bike trips: - Tea and ciggi . It was 5:15 in the morning…its still dark but I had lost my sleep somewhere on Highway and was feeling very refreshed after such a cool bike ride. For the 10th time, I took the vow that I will never ride with this high speed again. I wanted to sleep but could not resist myself from writing and result is this small boring to read, blog….Hope that you all who have read till end will spare me, taking into account that I am not at all a student of literature ;) :P


7:47 AM….Still pleasant morning ….Bangalore city

----Signing Off