Friday, December 7, 2007

Seeshya meets Guru(s)

I woke up with a jerk, fearing that I was late. But it was just 3:40 a.m. I laid back and the clock inside me was ticking as I cannot afford to miss the meeting with my Gurus. At 5:00 a.m. , I woke up and I hit the road at 5:20 a.m. My Gurus will be waiting at the Marathahalli bridge and we had fixed the meeting time as 6:00 a.m. I had my flashers on..and it blinked red..blue..red..blue.. and I received some space on the outer ring road. My observation has been that, if one wears cycling outfits, a helmet and puts some flashers on one's bike, people think that he's a pro cyclists and give some respectable space to pedal the way forward. I have been doing this for quite sometime and it works.

I reached the Marathahalli bridge, and I pulled out my mobile to call my Guru. Well, who are my Guru? My Guru is not one, but two. They helped me to complete the TourDeCoorg, a 5 day cycling trip. My first loooong ride which spanned 400 kms. If not for their help,guidance and tips.... I would have quit cycling succumbing to the excruciating pain that crept in on my first 78 km ride. They are KP and Shree. I learnt the right riding posture, sitting ride, adjusted my pedalling technique... boy! since then, I have literally gone miles.... :-) I have crossed 800 miles now, in 4 months.

"Dodda Blue Bus Kannastha?" - KP
"Haan" - me
"Alli naanu eruthene, illi bha." - KP
"Ok" - me

I met KP and Shree over the bridge. We shook hands... and KP said Shree "Noodu pa, eevanu oosa baate thogundathane..". KP and Shree, liked my cycling outfit and said it should cost 60 Euros. I sad, "My colleague got it for me, its 20 Euros". Soon KP, asked which store in Germnany. I said "Aldi". Next time, KP is going to loot the Aldi.

Soon my eyes rested on the Hero Thunder...Oops... Wonder.... Yes! Shree had turned the Thunder into a Wonder and it had a deadly look with the front shocks of Viper, Cassette from Shimano, Derailluers where Shimano Deore, it had new V-brakes, the crank was changed... only the Frame was that of Thunder. So! Now its a Wonder!!!
KP went all out and he was spitting out names of some 4 or 5 different component manufacturers. The components alone had costed a cool 12K.

KP wanted to ride my new Trek 4300D and I wanted to ride his Giant, road racer. We exchanged, and we set off. The road racer was flying and soon I was thinking, which shares to sell in Dalal street to buy me a new road racer. KP was justing a Giant OCR3 which costs around 650 USD. Hmmm not bad, One life live it, my inner voice said.

We were soon at the Whitefield Railway station and we took a detour and went into a sleeping village. Underneath a big tree which was overseeing the newly laid road, we had the photo shoot session for Shree. Shree was doing a ride from Assam to Gujarat, East2West tour. His plan was to start on Dec 9th, 2007 and finish on Jan 17th,2008. Thats 36 days...solo ride... and distance? Neither of us knew the distance. By crow's fly distance Assam to Gujarat (extreme points) measure up 2950 kms. If shree does 120 km, a day which is most likely, then he would be easily crossing 4000 kms. Reading 4000 kms.. leaves a mental shock in me, but here I stand in front of person who is going to pedal this way all the way ...solo.... Well, if Shree has a cadence of 70 and rides on a average 7 hours a day, then he would be rotating his knees 10,58,400. ( Yes you read the numbers right and I typed it right) Yes! Thats a million times rotation of the knees.

Shree is carrying a GPS, a Laptop, Nokia E series, Nikon SLR and he is gonna do live blogging during his ride. He has already did one during our TourDeCoorg trip. So, all we have to do in Bangalore is....read his blog www.shreekumar.in and post comments...which is gonna fuel him up and enjoy this tour. I have never read a fairytale...this time... I am gonna read one at http://www.shreekumar.in/

We finished the photoshoot for Shree. Shree is gonna put this photos on the frontpage of this blog. So, we spend extra time and care. It was getting late and we had to leave to office. We pedaled hard and reached Cable stayed bridge. KP,Shree and I dispersed, wishing all the best to Shree. I climbed the cable stayed bridge and took a detour towards the outer ring road. I was tired manuevering through the traffic. To make matters worse, It started drizzling...and it was worse suitation for me and my bike. Without fenders (mudgaurds), I was collecting tremendous amount of mud on my face and back. It was tooo much... the friction on the road was less and I was racing at 30+ kmph speed. Thats when I hit a speedbreaker, and the rain meant skidding and I did skid and fall down. This time, I did not fly... but my bike did. Thank god. There were no heavy vehicles behind me and thankfully, I was wearing the helmet and full sleeve cycling gear. With a few cuts and a bit of bleeding here and there... I got up.. pulled my bike aside...fixed the chain.. to 2 minutes by the roadside to recover mentally... and started pedalling at a slow speed of 15 kmph. The Trek is a sturdy bike, no damages...except for some scratches on the shifters. Thats ok.... That reminds me I got insure my bike against accident and theft.

When I reached home it was 8:50 a.m, the cyclo read 47 kms , 2 hrs:22 mins. Soon, I found myself, smsing my boss that I cannot come to office because of the small accident. I had to rest for a looong time, before my fingers can dance on the keyboard. Now, you can see after 2 days they are infact dancing. :-)

3 comments:

vindy said...

Hahaha... cool story mate.
So did you bounce off the speed brakeres due to speed or was it excessive application of front disk brakes!?

Be careful in the rains man.

Would'nt geting tyres with treads meant for roads (diagonally moving back off the centre on either sides of teh central seam) be better than the stock off-road (treads that go perpendicular to the central seam) tyres on the trek for riding on roads?
I dunno just curious.

-Vindy

Gauthaman said...

@Vindy - Hmmm, after running few flashback reels of the not so good moment, I find I actually skidded of the road because of the grip on the tyre. After the rain, the road was very slippery....
The treads on the Trek4300D are meant for serious offroading and may be do not offer good adhesion to the tarmac. Each crash/fall is a precious learning (if, we survive :-))!

vindy said...

:).. drive safe man!