Commence right turn to heading 240.. no, no, no you idiot, i said 'right'.

The last coupla days were pretty big for me, work wise. After waiting quite a while, my training started on the flight simulator. And boy, has it been fun. I did not realize how much I'd missed a classroom until now, and the competitive atmosphere has been great. Add to it our pilot/instructor who is a Boeing fan, who keeps bashing Airbus and pulling my leg for liking them, it gets even better. I've flown simulators before, including one i helped build, but this has been something else entirely.

For starters, its not a half-game half serious affair anymore. Our pilot is a stickler for rules, as he damn well should be, and following proper procedure for everything has been an eye opener. None of the fun barrel rolls in inappropriate aircraft though, sadly. Our simulator is not a full flight simulator, but comes reasonably close to one. The instruments are all there in some form or the other, though at the moment quite a few are inoperable. The first day, we had theory for most of the class, and then got to take a brief spin on the simulator.

I got to fly copilot for everyone else before my turn came in the end, which was cool because i sat in my seat with my disengaged controls and pretend-flew the plane, breaking in between to help with throttle controls and landing gear. This in turn meant that by the time my turn did come, i was pretty good at controlling the throttle, and so was allowed to fly without a co-pilot. Our pilot has a quirky sense of humour which kept us engaged throughout. When one of the chaps made a slow turn that nearly ended in a stall, he reached for the phone pretending to call his wife to let her know that he was gonna die thanks to the imminent crash on the simulator. He botched the navigation instructions for me which resulted in me turning on to finals pretty high, and then when i opted to wrestle the airplane to the ground instead of going around and ended up with a rather hard landing, he said that our resident aircraft carrier pilot has landed the plane, and that the air hostesses would probably sue me for giving them spinal damage. All in all, good fun.

Whats thrilling me the most is the fact that all that i've read up about planes and flying is being put to better use here, and that i'm being able to match theoretical knowledge with practical ability. I was apprehensive about how i'd end up handling the plane, but todays flight removed all such doubts. On the other hand though, it has shown me exactly how much i need to learn. When i selected TOGA thrust for today's takeoff, one engine (No. 2) failed to spool up. The aircraft began moving forward, so i assumed things were going normally, but once thrust picked up on the functional engine, it began to yaw to the right. I did not immediately understand what was going on and had only begun to scan the instruments when our pilot impressively and immediately issued instructions to throttle back and compensate for yaw with the rudder. He had figured in a fraction of a second which engine was at fault, figured out the corrective measures, and issued relevant crisp instructions in the time i had maybe scanned a third of the instruments (of course, he has 20,000 hours real flying experience, i have zero). I followed the instructions, and we avoided a runway excursion. It was humbling, to say the least.

Things went reasonably smoothly after the second takeoff attempt, though. I maintained airspeed and altitude pretty accurately without copilot help, and unlike yesterday, had a better feel for the controls so was doing a much better job of keeping the aircraft attitude as per his instructions. Airspeed is pretty tough to maintain, and he was pretty lenient on us on the first attempt yesterday. He told me i would've lost my license 30 seconds after takeoff if this were a real plane, since i had long exceeded the recommended speed for the flap setting i had chosen. I corrected that bit today, though. The only (minor) glitch happened when my phone started ringing. I had left it in discreet mode for the first time since i've had it, and it produced a beeping sound when a friend called me while i was piloting the simulator. Since i wasn't familiar with the beep, i assumed i was doing something wrong and the simulator was warning me. So, emulating our pilot, i began a scan of the instruments at the precise moment when instructions were issued for me to turn right. And thanks to the distractions, i commenced a left turn, received an earful, and then commenced a right turn.

I had got a bit overconfident by the end of the flight, and wanted to try out a full instrument approach, but was asked, nay, ordered, to do a visual approach. Thankfully, there was less wrestling than yesterday, and i didnt give my virtual air hostesses any room for complaint, it was a decent landing (even if i say so myself). I did miss my ETA by five minutes though, and in real life, that translated to all of us missing the bus that would take us back to our main office.

I emerged from the simulator adrenaline charged, buzzed and happy. It feels nice to be able to meet goals you set for yourself, and I had been psyching myself that I should do good on this training no matter what. Of course, i should add here that i hope i dont go and botch it in the coming days. Navigation and other tough (for me, at least) subjects lay ahead. I wonder, though.. if i'm this happy in a simulator thats not close to the real thing, how the heck would i feel if i (hopefully) get to fly a real plane? The plane would roll to a stop, doors would open, and i'd go out bouncing all over the tarmac in excitement, probably. Or end up kissing the plane in love and gratitude, or do something equally silly. But so far, i'm ecstatic to hear the words 'excellent flying' from our pilot after i completed my flight. Its just the shot in the arm i needed for a flagging motivation level.
TOGA forever!

PS, I've added wiki links to some of the difficult terms in the article above.

statustically speaking..

This was prompted by a post by mandakini. It kinda got me thinking about facebook, twitter and the like. For a long time, i wasn't into social networking. the only place on the net for me was StumbleUpon. There was a certain smug satisfaction in being part of stumble, which back then was much smaller. I could tell myself that i wasn't wasting my time on the net, instead i was learning new things every day. or night rather, since there was a phase when entire nights would be spent stumbling, and i would realize the time only when the sun creeped into my hostel lair via the gaps in my window.

But soon, SU turned into a social network on its own, and an addictive one at that. The only difference was that i was networking with random people around the world. So i guess i justified signing up for orkut by telling myself that if i could waste time networking with some random person across the world who happened to be into the same stuff as i am, i could network with people i know too. And orkut had its uses too, it was the ideal tool to connect with that large number of people that fell in the grey area between acquaintances and friends. these were people whom i was likely to fall out of touch with once either of us left the same general geographical location, since keeping in touch for the most part meant the usual hi-hello when we ran into each other occasionally.

Eventually i got out of college (with some difficulty, i might add), and life outside was a different scene altogether. Social networks became a way to kill those spare hours that seemed to hit me between getting off work and going to sleep. In that sense, facebook proved even better, with all the timewasters on it in the form of applications, quizzes and such. I wont describe my position as one against social networking. It has its benefits and detriments, but then what hasn't? Its just that mandu's post got me thinking about some stuff. status messages, to be specific.

I had an interesting discussion regarding this with my housemate nikhil, who is a prolific writer and poster of status messages on facebook. he said, quite frankly, that at one level status messages are about social acceptance. its a sort of reinforcement when people come and 'like' or comment on the message. on facebook, its almost an art, this reinforcement. it makes you feel good at a certain level. i respect his acceptance of that fact, and admit it's pretty much the same for me. different people hunt out this acceptance in different ways, for a lot of them it's sharing with the (online) world the seemingly cool stuff they're doing in life. for me, it's (hopefully) making people smile by posting a line of wit, either mine or by someone wittier than me.

which finally brings me to what i was worrying about. whenever i write, i try and make it funny. often its effortless, but often enough i have to try and make it funny. and recently, i was told that my blog posts were losing out a bit on the funny. i attributed it to my finally growing up, but then later realized that the funny hasn't quite disappeared from other zones in my life. i mean, i still crack the worst jokes possible. after further investigation, i placed the blame on status messages. i guess im happy enough getting a few laughs by writing one line than an entire post. so my question is, am i alone? is there a statistically significant number of aspiring writers out there who are finding satisfaction in the 140 characters of a tweet, or an SMS, or a slightly longer status message? in the years to come, will literature shrink to fit this line-size of instant gratification, and the attention span that goes with it?

purely rhetorical, you may stuff your opinions..

Lessons in Collaborative Volvo Repair..

So i've just completed the second of my three annual pilgrimages to morjim beach, goa. The trip itself was pretty unremarkable, since we didn't do anything out of the ordinary like we're wont to. In fact, we rented scooters and did the touristy stuff for a change, considering we've never done that before. Usually, these trips go in the order : set some kinda dubious speed record on the way there, spend time lazing at the beach, set another kinda dubious speed record on the way back. This time though, public transport was taken much to my chagrin, and the driving was left to the bus guys.

This brings me to an interesting fact that my friend vijai and i discovered while going over my numerous goa trips. Everytime I have taken a mode of transport other than my bike, there has been trouble. And this time the trouble was a volvo bus of the KSRTC that refused to start. We reached the bus station at Panjim at 6pm to catch this bus scheduled to leave at 7pm, and by about 6 30 it was evident that we weren't gonna leave on time, the engine was in no mood to come to life. so what was to be done? repair the damn bus, obviously. at least, that was the collective mood amongst some of the passengers. the ones who took action immediately were prospective passengers, the ones who didnt have a booking and only wanted to travel short distances anyway. i heard this huge chap telling his friend 'chal gaadi ko dhakka maarne me help karenge, phir to seat dena hi padega'. even though i already had a seat reserved, i joined in the bus pushing squad, because i love pushing large vehicles around. soon, tourists were clicking pics of us while we pushed the volvo up and down the bus stand in an effort to start it. at about seven it was evident that our pushing wasnt lifting the spirits of the bus' battery, which had been identified as the culprit by then.

at this point, the reserved passengers began showing an interest in the proceedings. they were led by a goan auntie who was in her early fifties probably, and she took charge of the situation and directed things for the rest of what would turn out to be a very long night. there was a kannadiga guy about my age, who duties involved interpreting the aunties instructions to the drivers, and then interpreting their responses (a considerably tougher task given finding alternative words for some of the unparliamentary language they tended to use at times, though i wouldnt blame them). there was a techie who spoke only english and kept reminding us that he was chainsmoking through this ordeal (which made me want to tick him off with a smart-aleck remark, but the possibility of borrowing a smoke from him later kept my mouth shut) and a bihari who proved to be our saviour for the night. one of my friends slept off, and another had to catch a train so he fled for margao at the first sign of trouble. so on one side the drivers feverishly tried to figure out the problem by following a checklist barked out at them by a mechanic on the phone from bangalore, while on the other side auntie tried to arrange for a refund. the first glimmer of hope came when the drivers, misguided by the voice on the phone, traced the problem to the fuel filter, and not the battery. after fiddling around with it for a while, the tried starting the engine again. the filter exploded instantly, covering everyone in range with a fine spray of diesel, and that's when all hope was lost. explosions and i are on good terms, so i couldnt help but grin with childish glee at the scene, though this didnt gain me much approval with auntie and her squad.

problems compounded by 8pm, since it was well and truly dark now, and aunties efforts at a refund were properly stonewalled by the higher brass at KSRTC. they did not have a spare bus in goa, the repair depot was miles away and the bus would need to start to get there anyway, every other bus leaving goa for bangalore had either left or was full, and having spent an extended weekend in goa, nithin and i were left with little money for another ticket in any case. so we decided to stick with the bus, and tried to make arrangements for accommodation in case we had to stay the night there in Panjim. the poor drivers were getting nowhere with their repair efforts, and so *drumroll* i decided to pitch in too.

the addition of an LED torch to the cellphone is probably one of the most underrated innovations of the last decade. my cellphone, which happens to have such a torch, has so far been involved in cooking chicken during powercuts, repairing my bike in the middle of nowhere etc, but now it was time to up the ante. it was going to aid in the repair of a volvo bus. a volvo mechanic had been spirited in from 50km away thanks to the efforts of auntie and her squad, and he worked under cellphone light to try and figure a solution. which he did, and it involved travel to some place 30km and back to get a spare filter. while he went to fetch, nithin and i decided to grab some dinner, and in our haste to make it to cafe venite and back, i left my atm card in an atm machine, which ate it up. so now, we were really screwed since nithin had no money, and i was left with no way to access my money until next morning when the bank opened. venite plan was dropped without further discussion, and dinner was had at a cheap restaurant where the cheapest drink was for three bucks. yes, cheap.

the mechanic returned with a spare filter, and proceeded to replace the damaged one. i had no clue how to replace the Volvo 20 853 583 Fuel Filter for the B7R, but seeing him work, i definitely had concrete ideas about how NOT to replace one. the old filter was screwed in tight, so our bright mechanic (who was welcomed with applause when he arrived, applause we later rued) decided to cut it off with a screwdriver. this left a stubborn stub of a filter which resisted attempts from all his tools to gain a grip on it. it took him all of an hour and forty five minutes to get this stub out, which included a gentle reminder that he was twisting it in the wrong direction. he eventually managed to replace the filter, and was greeted with further applause and crossed fingers. another attempt was made to start the bus, and from the not-so-encouraging sounds made by the engine, we figured he hadnt quite fixed it. the battery was still down.

in the midst of all this, i was talking to the drivers. they told me that if this were a tata or ashok leyland bus, they wouldve taken out the filter themselves, jury-rigged one from a jerry can, and got us all to bangalore. but, 'ithu foreign bus sir. volvo. yella computer'. apparently no maintenance training is imparted to them, and the maintenance department guys have specifically asked them not to touch anything if things head south. 'tumhara dimaag mat lagao bola woh log', he said pointing at his head, and then said his dimaag cant understand the bus anyway since everythings in english. when richard hammond of top gear remarked about vehicles that can be repaired with a brick and a piece of string, he was right. but the volvo, with all its new fangled computer jiggery-pokery, still had some bits of rustic technology in it. and the batteries fell in that group. they could be jump-started using batterries from any other bus. all we needed were a pair of jumper cables.. wait, what?

this was at 1 30 am and there was not a soul in the bus stand except us and a security guard who was trying to cheer us up with music from his handheld FM (he cranked up the volume for euphoria's maaeri and delhi 6's dil gira daftan, much to my happiness). aunties squad had pretty much given up by now, since they had pinned all hopes on the volvo mechanic, who quietly kept away from the crowd and declined to help with the batteries. we found one karnataka bus, and pleaded with the driver to bring his bus to ours so we could hook them up, literally. after ten minutes of pleading, he relented and drove his old rusty bus over, and since there was no jumper cable available we were faced with the task of removing batteries from both buses, exchanging them, starting up our bus, and then replacing them. still working under torchlight, we opened up his battery box, only to see that everything was bolted down. i love dismantling things (especially if i dont have to put them back together) and in about ten minutes, the battery box was in pieces thanks to the efforts of the bihari chap and i. then we took out the volvo's battery, switched the batteries around, and let the drivers connect things up. another attempt was made to start the bus, but now it was completely dead. even the screens in the dashboard had gone blank. The bihari, whom i'v already proclaimed to be a life saver, figured that the drivers had connected the negative and positive leads incorrectly and that it was a miracle they didnt short the batteries out. pretty soon, that too was rectified, and finally, this time to deserved applause, the bus roared to life. we had successfully field-repaired a Volvo.

people are helpful only till their needs are met. once the bus was running, all manpower except me, the bihari, and one of the drivers left the spot, leaving us to replace the batteries. the driver of the other bus looked on helplessly as everyone else left the scene to climb into the Volvo which now had its A/C running. The four of us toiled for another half an hour to rebuild the battery box i had successfully dismantled, and when it finally resembled a respectable battery box (thanks to the resourcefulness of the bihari, again) and we had no parts left, we placed the batteries, wired them up and his bus was back alive too. the driver who had earlier made the computer remark likened the old bus to goddess lakshmi, and from the tone of his voice i could make out that he wasnt just saying it because his high tech comfy Volvo had ditched him, he meant it. He would probably have been happier driving that uncomplicated beast of a machine.

i was back in the bus, the last to board while the drivers made final checks before leaving, covered in grease, diesel dirt and crud from the battery. it's not everyday you get a chance to pitch in to repair a bus, and it turns out all you need is a half baked mechanic, a mallu with a torchlight, a resourceful bihari, and a respect-commanding aunty to bark out orders in a militaristic tone. as i sat back in the comfort of the A/C, i pondered over what a day it had been : swimming in the sea all morning, walking miles to a bus stop, a volvo refusing to start, fending off a marriage proposal mom brought (yes, that happened too), losing an atm card, repairing aforementioned volvo.. not bad for an adventure. which brings me back to the point i made initially about the discussion vijai and i had about my goa trips. everytime i went there on the bike, i had no troubles. once i took a train, and since the ticket wasnt confirmed, i spent the night in front of the toilet on an RAC coach. once i went by car, and spent 23.5 hours on a the road thanks to a traffic jam where we moved 10 kilometres in 9 hours (contrast this with the fact that my fastest time on the bike is 10.5 hours total). and this time i took the bus, and all this nonsense happened.

Vijai advised me not to take a flight there, ever. I think i'll stick with the bike.

PS : in an unjustifiable act of vandalism fueled by the frustration caused by the events described above, i helped myself to one of the buses volvo badges. I dont repair buses for free, anyway.

papad john paul II

an old old man used to deliver papads to our house when i was a kid. he's one of those characters from childhood that you remember. he had a face like pope john paul II, and was a stooped, weather-beaten old fella who seemed like he could barely walk. yet he would walk kilometres barefoot selling papad. he spoke very little, and what little he did speak was unintelligible, and i used to wonder why. maybe he was from a different place? we would buy hundreds of homemade papads from him at a time, to stock up till his next visit. i'd always suspected that mom shared my thoughts in wondering if we'll see him again. yet we did, from the time we built our house to the time i started driving a scooter. he would always politely decline a lift and flash his radiant smile with missing teeth (i used to think of the gaps in his teeth as sunspots on the sun) if i met him on the way, choosing to walk carrying his heavy bag full of different types of papad. and looking at him walk barefoot, i always used to wonder whether there were more cracks on his feet than there are wrinkles on his face. and watching his stooped thin frame walk away in a manner that seemed to defy odds, id always be left with mixed thoughts in mind.

the funny thing is, i remembered him yesterday after ages. i was on a chai break where a couple of colleagues were discussing socio-technical aspects of a user interface for monitoring a refinery supply chain, and pop comes the papad man to my mind. how in the name of all good things on god's green earth did that thought get triggered by listening to that conversation, i would dearly love to know.

story of a story of a..

I was writing a story. I still am writing it, in fact. Fleshing it out, so to speak. It started out as a script for a short film since a friend was bugging me to write one for him, but once we discussed it over, it turned out that this was gonna be too long for a short film, but i decided to go ahead and write it anyway, since it's been a while since i tried my hand at stories. the idea had been kicking around in my head since i saw the movie Ghost Rider, but it hadn't quite taken shape until recently, when the aforementioned friend bugged me.

The story is about a guy who, for reasons undisclosed (which means i still have to write a credible backstory for him), decides to die. he decides life isn't worth living, and it made no sense to him to fight all the meaningless battles he had to in every waking hour of every living day of his self-titled miserable life. so he decides to quit battling, quit life. being a coward, he decides suicide isnt for him. so he figured another way. he was going to walk on the lips of death, seeing if they'll open sometime and take him in. so he starts pushing the envelope, so to speak.

since i've already mentioned ghost rider, and since i'm a bike lover myself, you probably guessed that he is going to push the limits on his bike. and since iv already labelled him a coward, there were enough possibilities to play around with the physical courage vs mental courage angle, since it does take courage to stunt on a bike. so our hero starts with simple stuff that was scary to him before, and soon finds himself increasing the danger quotient. pushing the proverbial limit millimetres at a time, he finds himself emerge successful each time, so he pushes it some more. the cycle continues until one day he realizes that he has become good at this one thing in life, possibly the best one earth, evel knievel league. and this all important realization comes to him in the middle of the stunt that will kill him.

as soon as this idea had started taking form in my head, i tried to create this protagonist guy, and it kept falling apart. things weren't fitting where they were supposed to,and i wasn't too thrilled with the road my story was taking. it soon was eating my mind in my spare time, and i had to fix the story somehow. it so happened that one day, on my commute back from office on my bike, i was riding with my mind on autopilot and the story popped up in my head again. stories are good things to ruminate when you're coasting along at 80 kmph.

I am a fast driver, but i am also one to take safety seriously. i mean, i'm not above jumping a red light, but many of those who've ridden with me would vouch for me if i say that i dont like taking unnecessary risks. a crazy though seized me, and i found myself in the mind of my story's hero. so, what would he do?

soon enough, caution was gone with the wind that was washing over me, and i watched the needle climb upwards of 110, in peak evening traffic. i overtook vehicles with narrow clearances, shooting through red lights at crazy speeds, slaloming across a line of cars.. there was a curve on the way home, with a bump at its apex, and experience told me 40 was the speed there. today, it was going to be 70. the roads were damp from an afternoon shower, and my mind was blank as i was briefly airborne, still blank as i watched the bike slide to the curb and miss a car by an inch or so, all in slow motion. the thought that i may have taken this too far did occur for a flash, but somehow the thought of backing out didn't follow it. shooting through a red light, a cop jumped into the middle of the road to stop me, and i played chicken with him, trusting in his cowardice to get him out of my way. one violent turn of the bike was made to ensure he didnt catch the registration.

the madness ended on the lane home, where my cousin met me and we were to figure out where to have dinner. once that was done, i hopped on the bike and started it, only to realize that i had a flat tyre. it had by then been apparent to me that my prior misadventure was a bit much, but now i realized exactly how much. ten minutes earlier, and that flat wouldve been catastrophic. the moment that followed wasnt one of realization, but one of fear and deflation.

maybe stories are better told, not lived.

POSTSCRIPT : the facts.. i am writing a story, i do drive fast, i did get a flat tyre. the rest have been stringed together from incidents that happened to me/were witnessed by me over the week preceding my writing this. yes, this is fictional, just another late night attempt at an idea to get a short film out of my original story idea, but one that might not work considering this isnt easy to film either. nor am i happy with it. and no, do NOT comment on my driving.

an old futile attempt..

A story I'd written for an ultra short story competition back in 2006. I think it had to contain the word message or manoeuvre or something, dont remember now. Found this, and a lot of other writing by chance yesterday. Thought i'd post, considering it's utter crap anyway.. :P

No, i didn't win any sort of prize.

Ever the practical guy, I had a plan. I looked at it again and again and again; it was foolproof. All the elaborate manoeuvres I had devised to pass her the message seemed to work like swiss clockwork in my mind. I could do no wrong. But you see the trouble was, I was convinced of my own genius. I failed to see that the genius itself was the flaw of my plan. And I failed to see the chasm between genius and reality. So, I fucked up.

As usual, detractors might add.

All my elaborate courtship manoeuvres were wasted, falling pitifully short of conveying what was in my heart. Now she thinks I've lost my marbles. Oh well, can't be helped.

I guess its much cooler to be a flawed genius anyway.

where is the ♥ ?

so here i am again, at 2 30 in the night, with loads of free time, and not enough sleep. those of you who may have been reading the stuff over here for a long time might be dreading another post along the lines of the great circle mapper post, and yep you're right.

this time i was playing around with alt codes, and you will be surprised to find what boredom sometimes drives people into. i started googling the alt-codes, one by one. and i only had to reach as far as alt+3, before i was kicked. please to be sharing the kick.

where is the ♥ ?

well to be honest pretty much every symbol in the alt codes list throws up similar results, and iv tested them under different conditions (blame it on continued boredom), but in case anyone finds different, gimme a shout.

the ♥ is here, btw..

notes from the road..

ill be honest with you, when it comes to roadtrips, im a little superstitious. i stop at places i think are lucky, i consider some things to be omens, etc.. all because of the total uncertainty that comes with hopping on a bike and just taking off. its kinda scary, ill admit. so, when a trip is preceded by a series of unfortunate events that under normal circumstances i would consider bad omens, its kinda amazing the trip happened at all. it was supposed to be a ride to ladakh, but due to lack of preparation i pushed it by a week, only to receive news that the lahaul-spiti valley route that i was planning to take was closed due to unseasonal snowfall and that the army were airlifting people out of there. so i decided it was a good idea that i was going to leave only a week late, only to find out that my laptop blew something and needed expensive repairs. which took a hit on my budget, and left me with too little money to do the trip to ladakh. so i decided on rajasthan instead. all this while poeple who said they'd want to ride along or ride pillion were dropping out of the plan, so along with everything else, i had to consider the fact that i had to ride alone, which is not something iv done except for a coupla chennai pondicherry trips. and in the meantime there was the whole circus of providing excuses and justifications to people who expressed concern about this undertaking, as well as the usual elaborate set of lies to cover my tracks from my parents :P so all things considered, there were enough reasons not to go.

so why did it happen, why did i go? well, have you ever gotten tired of planning something, dreaming of something, talking about something, but never actually doing it? tired of doubts, both from within and from others, tired of being scared of the unknown, and what it'll bring? well i have. at some point the sheer curiosity of what this experience would be like got the better of all the concerns, worries, superstitions, doubts etc.. so i literally said to myself on saturday the 26th, sometime in the afternoon, fuck all this, ive gotta go. so i hastily borrowed 5k, hopped on the bike without the usual bunch of spares, oil and stuff, and was off on sunday. and, on the night of the sixth, reached bangalore safely after about 3700 kms on the road.

so these are the notes from the adventure.. be warned, they are kinda random, copied from my book.

stats :

distance: 3700 + kilometres (speedo cable was out for most of the way to ahmedabad, and thanks to durga pooja, no mechanic was open all the way :| )

fastest stretch : belgaum kolhapur, average speed 100kmph

slowest stretch : 30 km post satara, average speed 30kmph, heavy rain, took an excruciating hour

chai stops : 15 (chitradurga, hubli, kolhapur, pune, andheri, kharod, ahmedabad, baroda, surat, asgani, kankavli, morjim) for a grand total of 37 cups of tea :D

punctures : 1

accidents : 1

birdhits : 1 (hit and killed a crow that was just taking off. couldnt be helped. if i'd managed to avoid it, i couldve added a 'no animals were harmed in the making of this trip' tag to mine.)

fuel cost : rs 4265 wonlee

trucks

most drivers i know hate trucks. mostly because these fuckers are scary on the road. and for the most part i agree. but there are reasons why i like trucks too. the vast majority of them, mostly the longhaul truckers and not those insane ones on eichers and smaller trucks, are professionals. they use the low beam at night, they move right over if you honk before and overtake, and on a slightly evil note, they make good obstacles for any cars you might wanna race :D they also have the most amusing things written behind them. i thought all trucks had the usual Horn OK Please and We Two Ours Two lines written behind, but having seen enough trucks now,im happy to report that some have absolute gems behind them. i read off 'naseeb apna apna' (which kinda struck me considering luck does play a good part in these roadtrips), 'hai bombay chellam' (on a tamilnadu truck, guess he was kicked about doing bombay runs), 'A zara hatke' (which made me chuckle), etc etc. even the simple 'awaaz do' instead of horn please, painted in styles that would make WordArt proud, was refreshing to see. yes, you do get bored on the road, this is one of the many ways i keep myself amused, especially when there isnt much of a spectacular view around.

also, i play this game. the taufeeq vs siyad game. when i was maybe three, i used to categorize the flat fronted lorries as siyad, and the snouty ones as taufeeq, ostensibly since i must've seen examples of the two lorry types bearing those names. so i count how many taufeeqs and siyads i see. siyad usually wins, but then i start trying to give statistical weights to taufeeq sightings, and try and equalize them in my head, by when i realize that im out on a trip to have fun, and not crunch numbers, so my mind drifts on to less tedious matters.

volvos

i hereby state that i hold in high regard every vehicle with a volvo badge on it. especially the buses. pretty much whatever i can do on the bike in terms of speed and manoeuvrability, they can do it too. and that is very, very scary.

puncture

when i had planned the ladakh trip, i wanted to keep a puncture repair kit with me in case i got a flat in the middle of nowhere. but when i started this trip on impulse, i didnt bother to get one. but i did get a flat, and it so happened that it was right in front of four puncture shops. i didnt know whether to put it down to fate or to the possibility that these same shop guys might have planted nails in the road there. either way, i needed a new tube, and pintu (the mechanic i woke up with great difficulty from his post dussehra revlery slumber) and i did a 1.5 kilometer trek to the tube shop. i say trek because it was a tough walk, negotiating between deep potholes on the side of the road as well as the garbage piled besides them. the tube guy was again woken with great difficulty, and in his drunken slumber he sold me a tube worth 350 for a mere 200. pintu mentioned this fact to me only after we left the tube shop, saying 'woh chutiya ban gaya, aap ka tube 350 ka tha'. to celebrate, i bought him tea n snakes at a restaurant that was open on our way back. it is a different matter though that pintu did a piss-poor job of fitting the tube and i had to stop 17 kms later to get it fixed properly.

police escort

ahmedabad is a very confusing city to drive into, and i lost my way almost immediately. the irony wasnt lost on me, after having navigated bombay and pune without a map. i stopped to ask a two policemen on a bike, who were talking to two other chaps on another bike. they noticed the KL registration on my bike and asked me where i was coming from. once they heard my answer, and once it sunk in, they insisted on driving with me to show me the way to paldi. on the way, we stopped for tea, and i was only too grateful and glad to answer their questions about my ride. one of the guys on the other bike, pravinbhai, was a building contractor, and wanted to know if his hero honda splendour would make it to delhi. i told him yes, i dont know why. and he wistfully said, yeah i guess the rider has to be strong, not the ride. the cops turned off before the paldi bridge, denying me the childish glee of riding into nid as part of a motorcade :P

dogs

i saw the cutest stray puppy ever on the road to khed. the little guy nearly ran into my path, but this time i was slow enough to stop, unlike with the crow. i wanted to bring him with me to bangalore, and actually pondered the possibility with midhun, my cousin who was riding with me part of the way, but decided against it. i was worried he'd get run over out there, and sure enough there was a dead puppy a few kilometres later. felt kinda sad. and ironically, today i spoke to marion and she told me they are looking for a puppy, and i felt like kicking myself for not having brought him with me. i hope he's ok.

wipers

old boyhood notions never die, they just transform. i used to think as a kid that spectacles with wipers would be kickass cool, now i think helmets with wipers would be kickass cool.

rain ride

as much as i hate riding in the rain in the city, id always wanted to do a long trip in the rain. well, i got my wish this time, except i was least prepared for it. of the 3700 kilometres, 500+ were done in pouring rain. if i count wet roads too, i could add another hundred odd kilometres to that. and it was hell, to say the least. the rain was so strong on approach to pune that i couldnt see a thing except the tail lamp of the car in front of me. it took me an hour to do 30 kilometres, stopping multiple times on the way. not that the stopping helped, there was usually no place to shelter, and i just stood by the side of the road looking like an idiot while people in cars which were warm inside passed by. i had to remind myself multiple times that i asked for this adventure, and iv gotta take what i get. my phone and camera died, and my clothes, even the ones inside my allegedly waterproof bag, were soaked.

but to be honest, if it werent for the rain, the experience wouldve been much less exciting. there were random moments, like when i sheltered in a shed in the middle of a sugarcane farm with some 20 odd people, and waited out the storm wondering if the shed would hold, while someone passed around masala peanuts. no one spoke a word, but the gratitude was visible on everyones faces.

riding from bombay to khed on NH17, i realized i may have found a motoring heaven in india. it was a beautiful twisting mountain road, treacherous due to the pouring rain. we hit this stretch towards sunset, and the lack of light compounded problems. and then we ran into fog. visibility was reduced to a few metres at best, and i was honestly wondering whether im gonna be one of the first guys in history to die after reaching heaven, as opposed to the other way round, which im told is more conventional. after a few minutes of literally stumbling around on the mountain road, a jeep came along and i decided to follow his tail lamp. god bless the guy who thought of tail lamps. if this jeep was gonna drive off a cliff, i didnt care, i was gonna follow that tail lamp.

the only time we had to succumb to the rain was at chiplun. after 270 kilometres in continuous pouring rain, we were dampened both spiritually and physically. my eyes were red from the raindrops hitting it at high speed (helmet visor down meant poor visibility), all clothes were soaked, the bike which had so far been misfiring like a north korean missile upped the ante a bit and was now misfiring like a pakistani copy of a north korean missile, and i was shivering too bad to even be able to hold the cup of chai i had in my hand. my cousin midhun, who had joined me for part of the ride, was rubbing his palms against the chai cup for warmth. i made some kinda lame joke asking him to rub it on the cigarette for more warmth, and he had this incredulous expression on his face before he asked me how on earth is it that the bad jokes section of my brain is still intact after all the beating we'd just taken. i guess this news would worry a lot of people :D

bad jokes

bad jokes are a good way of killing time on the boring stretches. you could thank the stars that i dont even remember half the ones i came up with, though the folks over at the daily punnedits page wouldve appreciated it. place names along the way are a good source for generating these jokes. for instance, theres a place called Kim on the way from bombay to ahmedabad. so if you take your car and make a dash for Kim, you could be Kim Car-dashian. its terrible, but i was chuckling for miles after i passed the board that said 'Kim' :P

oh and on the hill roads outside bombay i came up with this one.. which town exists merely to inconvenience you? khed in maharashtra. asuvidha ke liye khed hai. :D

other funny place names for which i had made up jokes but forgot them include watre, gangwali, aani, garag, kundi and unn. next time i should somehow attach a dictaphone to my helmet :D

but all things aside, humour is a good way to keep going especially when you're tired after riding hundreds of kilometers, but would have to do a hundred more to get to where you want to go.

BCU, BHU

one astronomical unit, or AU, is equal to the mean distance between the earth and the sun. similarly i made up the BCU and the BHU. the BCU stands for Bangalore Chennai Unit, and BHU for Bangalore Hosur Unit. they are roughly equal to 340km and 40 km respectively. they serve no practical purpose except to boost my morale. when i've ridden 400 kms, and i have another 350 to go, i tell myself, hey thats just one BCU away. and bangalore chennai is a route i've driven 8 or 9 times. and even though the road im on would be hell compared to the beautiful highway to chennai, the fact that im only as far away as chennai from bangalore would lift my spirits a little, and keep me going. BHU is used similarly, during that last phases of rides, when you're getting into a city and have to put up with tons of traffic after having done such a long smooth ride. so i remind myself i take an hour to get to hosur, and that is far worse than what im facing right now.

push the mind, the body will follow

while im loath to give a moral of the story, i will admit that each of these roadtrips have given me little nuggets of learning. on the morning of friday the 2nd in ahmedabad, i woke up with a fever. i had to ride to bombay and then onwards to goa that day, and the plan was to do over a thousand km that day. i didnt tell anyone of the fever, and made excuses for not leaving in the morning while i slept all day to see if the fever will subside. it didnt. im the evening i decided to leave anyway. and i was amazed for the next twelve odd hours. once i made the decision to leave, the fever disappeared. there was no more body ache. the ride to bombay was smooth, and i halted at bhartiyas house for three hours of rest before heading to goa. three hours of sleep later, things were still fine. then i got the news that goa, along with pretty much most of southern india, was flooded and that i wouldnt be able to ride. and once that realization hit me, the fever and aches returned in half an hour and i was popping crocins. that sorta thing has never happened to me before. i was genuinely amazed that it happened, though i make no claims of being able to repeat it. but, at the cost of sounding like one of those pesky self help book authors whom you see on shopping channels, ill say that if you push the mind, the body will follow.

since this has been a random assortment of trip notes, i dont quite have an end piece for this. but considering all the experiences, only about a third of which ive written about here, ill say the same thing i told my friend nithin on the phone.. i got out looking for a kilo of adventure, ended up with a ton instead.

the end minus five minutes..

In almost all the movies i've watched, there comes a point just before the end where i think, it would be so much more beautiful if the movie ended right here. this is usually because i either already know how its gonna end, or wish it would end a certain way, and i'd rather imagine it than have them show me how it's actually going to end. its different with books, though. i might have figured the ending of a book long before i even picked it up but would still read on, devouring every word, including an afterword if there's one. but in movies, i cant help but think that it would be so much better if they left the ending to you and me, and our imaginations.

but then, again, i'm well aware of the possibility of a mind blowing twist or change lurking at the very end so i keep watching anyway, reservations notwithstanding. and that's how i discovered the absolute nuggets of joy hidden at the end of pretty much every mr. bean movie, long after the credits are done rolling :)


this post was triggered by watching the movie, 'the red baron', btw..

On Flight..

I was watching a program on the History channel the other day, about the life and work of Burt Rutan, one of my personal heroes. This triggered another trip down the lanes of aircraft history, and I started reading up on the net, yet again, about various airplanes and their makers and their stories. And I realized that they were people who fascinated and inspired entire generations in their quest to make flight safer and accessible for all of us. They put their lives and fortunes on the line to prove to the rest of the world that what it thought was impossible was merely difficult for these guys. And ironically, all their adventures and risks went to making aviation that much more safer an commonplace for us, that chances are that a kid today wont give much thought to it when he looks up in the sky and sees and airplane leave a contrail across it.

I sometimes like to think, naively or not i leave it to you, that I'm a part of a dwindling group of people still fascinated enough by the whole idea of flight that we decided to go and do something about it. But ironically again, my meagre efforts too would go towards making flight a little bit more commonplace, a little bit less fascinating. oh well..