Safe Riding Workshop

It it all started with Me getting a Sms from Venkat sir that we were to meet in Autoservice for "bringing in a change" I thought i got the sms by mistake initially :P Later i called up Sachin and he too confirmed of recieving the same sms. Now i thought there must be something and decided to see what was in store. Funny thing is i had never been to autoservice, so i didn't know the route! Called up venkat sir few times and he tried to guide me, but with my pathetic sense of directions and knowledge of places in bangalore, i ended up else where!

Finally, Sachin met me from my stranded place and guided me to Autoservice, where it turned out it was just us and Venkat sir. What followed was kind of surprising discussions, We were later joined my Venkat sir's friend who works with competitor of bajaj (will reveal later :P) We came to know that the idea was to conduct a Safe riding workshop, which would be sponsored by a major two wheeler manufacturer and learn the basics first and progressively learn the various aspects of biking.
The aim was to cultivate a core group, who have passion for biking, touring and are willing to pickup to skills and become part time instructors in such future trainings.
Soon, Santoosh from Xbhp, our dear/beloved/bajajhating friend Renukumar :P was also involved in the coming weeks. Details were posted in various forums like Xbhp and Bikenomads soon responses started to trickle in and the list of aspirants grew to 40!

Now, we had imagined that the starter batch would be of 15 People plus the usual guys like me, sachin, santoosh etc so the total crowd was expected to be 20 max. So we had to filter out some guys and choose around 15 so that the remaining guys can be accomodated in the next batch.
Later due to Autoexpo, Venkat sir got busy and the date and venue were left to be decided. Once boss was in town, things started to happen and it was decided that date would be 19th January saturday and Venue was near Happy Layout on the Padmanabhnagar- Kengeri road.

On the D day, we all met up in Autoservice. The suspense part to others was, who was the sponsorer for this event, we had kept it a secret so that the junta who make it to the workshop alone will be able to find that out.
Now remember that i mentioned Venkat sir's friend had joined us for discussions on day one? and that he worked for a competitor of bajaj? Guess what it was HeroHonda! Venkat sir's friend was Mr manjunath and he works in Herohonda Regional office of Bangalore. Herohonda conducts Safe rider sessions sometimes on their own as per their company policy, this time due to venkat sir's efforts, they conducted it for us bunch of enthusiastic bikers!

The Workshop went very well, Am too lazy to do write up on the nitty gritties.
Pictures from Sachin
Pictures from Prasanna


So here's the details of the workshop taken from Sachin's blog:



The ground zero guys from HH were from Sai Motors. They started out by selecting a patch of side roads away from the main road.
Poof!! appear nosy cops enquiring about what’s going on and all! Upon their advice one of the Sai Motors technician went to the nearby police station and got an acknowledgement/ permission for the workshop.
Next the bikes were brought and a van full of equipment like wooden planks and rumble strips and traffic cones.

1. Basic Tips for riding: First off was the correct posture and stance.
• Do not wear any flowing clothes that might tangle in the bikes running parts.
• Sit on a comfortable position, with a relaxed stance.
• Keep your knees tucked into the tank recesses this centralizes the bike-rider mass..
• Hold the handle such that you do not grip the handle tight but in a comfortable grip.
• Bend your elbows at 120 degrees so that the shocks from the front suspension do not get transmitted to your shoulders and tire you down.
• Your feet should be placed at a position where you can apply the brake or change gears easily. Feet should always be aligned along the bike and should not protrude out.
• Use all the fingers except the thumb to grasp the hand controlled levers. This helps in getting a better grip and faster reaction.

2. Ride On/Ride Off techniques: These are tips when you start off riding and stop and park.
• When taking a bike off its stand hold front brake and then mount the bike. Remove the stand and then mount the bike[this habit helps to take the stand off every time before you move out]
• Once on the bike leave the front brake and hold the rear brake.
• Check both rearview mirrors are set to the right position.
• Before moving off look over your shoulders and check if there is any traffic coming from behind.
Repeat the same procedure in reverse order for ride off i.e. when coming to a stop and parking the bike.

3. Panic braking: This activity basically helps you in case of panic braking i.e. when you brake all of a sudden to avoid a car or something ahead. Here are the steps.
• In case you need to brake all of a sudden then always remember to apply both front and rear brakes and ease off totally from the accelerator.
• Do not press the clutch until the last moment so that you also use engine braking for coming to a complete stop.
• Once you come to a complete stop check over your shoulders if there is any traffic coming form behind you and then using the appropriate indicator before moving off.

4. Tackling rumble strips/off-roading: When you go over a rough surface the bumps are transmitted straight to your back and sometimes can cause injury! To avoid this we were advised to stand on the foot pegs with slightly bent knees and incline our body forward, then move slowly over the rumble strips, using the accelerator and clutch in tandem to accelerate over the crest of the bumps and declutch on the way down. The whole exercise was done in 2nd gear.

5. Balancing on a plank: Here we were supposed to ride the plank in second gear without using the clutch. The aim was to ride very slow and learn to balance our weights on the bike. The important thing to note here was that the mass of our body had to be as close to the bike as possible. So we were advised to keep our knees as close to the tank a possible.

6. Slalom Course: This determines our control over clutch accelerates and brakes. We were supposed to accelerate in between the cones and brake near the cones. The aim was to cross the cones without hitting any one of them.


During all these activities the Sai motors team was scoring us. They had chosen 5 participants based on their performance and they did a lucky dip. And Voila! Prasanna [flyingfiddlestick] won the lottery. He got a boxed brand new helmet.

After all these fun activities in the hot sun we headed to a restaurant along with Mr. Venkat Raghavan and Mr. Vandan from HH and had a hearty meal.
We cannot thank those guys enough for all the patience they had for the workshop. They totally bowled us out with their professionalism and kindness.
Hats off to Mr. Venkat Raghavan and Mr. Vandan!!!!
After lunch they left for their work and we discussed a bit about the next Safe Riding workshop we were going to conduct.
Then after that we parted ways back to enjoy the remaining weekend.

Marriage! Am i old enough for that?

As per the cartoon, iam already married :P This rant pertains to the female species:P

It all started few months back, My company gave me name sake promotion of "Assistant Manager - Systems" (only the first three letters fo the quoted text are true :P) Name sake i call it because i was neither given responsibilities that goes by that post and definitely not the moolah worth it!
Ok, that was the appraisal story of 2007 april, Now folks at home always expect that you will increase your "quota" of moolah that you give home per month after each hike. Now in my case, apart from the designation given, i had no effective hike and moolah remained almost the same, worse was my tax bracket went up with grade and i was paying more to Mr chidambaram!

So what do i do, i know tempers will flare at home, parents will be like, what the fuck! you can't give more money to home? not even this year? why can't you stop spending on wasteful things and stop your stupid bike rides (:P) and save some money atleast!So i neatly went home and showed my folks the promotion letter with the visiting card that was thrown in free with it :P Now imagine the joy of my folks, in their world, the word "manager" associated with any thing means i have my own cabin, with few people to lord over and i the work i do is work on my machine (comp) and see through files! I still have hard time to give them a clearer picture of what work i do at office :P They fail to understand each time, can't blame them, the generation gap is all that has to be blamed.

Well, coming back to the story, my folks were overjoyed that their son was some manager now and lo, he had his own visiting card! :P i was happy that they didn't talk about moolah part :P the promotion part worked! i managed to keep them quite for 1 more year from asking for more money from me while my earnings remain the same. Heaved a sigh of relief that i can continue with the same juggaad with my finance and still do my bike rides once in a while :P
Then after few weeks, i was going through newpaper and my mom was trying to tell me something but was hesistant, i could make that out from her reluctance and the way she was changing channels so frequently. But trust me, i never imagined that she will tell what she told me!

She first asked me for my err "biodata" :P My my, why would my mom want my "biodata" for? i already came to know that i was going to face the most embarassing moment in my life soon! So i pushed it around and asked her if she's gonna find me a better job with that :P Then comes the bombshell :
"you know, now that you have become manager and all, there is a nice girl who's done her studies and is working as a software engineer.........."
Yikes! heck no! pls pls don't make me feel old, iam not ready for it yet! (my thoughts ran so) still pretending to read the newspaper, i asked her, "So is the girl known to you? you want me to find a job for her in our company?"
Hehe
But mom was determined, she had enough of my bullshit:P
"No, she's one of our far relatives, i think she'll be a perfect match for you"
Now i had no where to run, i couldn't manage to give smartass replies now that she had finally dropped the bombshell.
I was embarassed (NO!!! not becoz i was happy!!!) i didn't know how to tell her what i had in mind. We are such a non emotional/silent family, that we never had "bonding" thing or family time crap. Both my parents were non expressive and i grew up most of the time getting used to being alone and they both being at work. They are god like people no doubt, but we maintained our distance from as far as i could remember, we never discussed any thing so personal till that fateful day.

This was my life and i had to reclaim it, more importantly, not let my parents get any false notions from my actions. So i managed to put an expressionless dead face and looked at her and told that marriage is something that iam not ready for yet and even if i was ready, iam dead against the concept of arranged marriage and iam capable of finding my own wife myself! I promised her that my wife that i find for myself will be of same religion for sure!
My mom was totally caught unawares by my reply, she felt as uncomfortable as i felt when she dropped the bombshell on me, then she had to tell something to end the conversation, so she told " you people have become very forward" and she went in to kitchen and i went to my room.

The events of that day, made me thing hajaar things. From as long as i remember, marriage was something that used to happen to older people, older than me, my cousins of earlier generation or that neighbourhood senior etc. Now, from when did i start getting slotted to that category? No, iam not averse to getting old, it's what we are programmed for, getting old! But the grouse is, are you supposed to marry just coz have reached a certain age, which as per the society is the correct age to find your match and get in to holy matrimony?
or are you supposed to feel the need to settle down with in you and then marry? I believe in the latter ideology. I tried to pose this question to my colleague who got married recently (arranged marriage ofcourse!:P) and to my best friend girish, who is getting married by april, surprising, they all spoke the same language as my parents. They feel that you have get married because you are old enough for it! parents will find you a suitable match as per horoscope and astrology, then you marry the girl of their choice (sometimes your choice if you are lucky :P) and "adjust" to her and try to live happily ever after, with 1 or max 2 kids thrown in in due course!

Whatta idea! I ofcourse felt that they were talking to me like brain washed zombies. But fact is they are not risk takers, they don't want to "risk it" coz they say later you won't find "decent" girls. You gotto get married by 27/28 they say.
Hmm, i think i would rather "risk" it. After all it is this "risk" which i took in to biking, i was able to go to the most wonderful places and meet various like minded people and learnt a thing or two about life.
No, i won't say that iam 18 till i die like bryan adams :P I would rather say that iam getting old and my time is running out for my next ride! Marriage can wait at this stage of my life, i have bigger fish to fry, like say get a better paying job for once! :P

Bikenomads Hampi Meet covered in Autocar!

It is a pleasant surprise indeed!
Bikenomads Hampi meet is featured in Autocar Magazine! I was surprised indeed when i heard about it from my good old friend Renu. Infact, later i came to know that, it was Renu's contacts in AutoCar mag which made this possible. Posted on the forum too, We are being noticed i say :P

Here's the scanned copy of the article:


Till next time!

Stag partying sucks!

Well, whatta way to start newyear! with a rant ofcourse!For me newyear's eve meant another excuse to get drunk and party at friend's place. No big deal i say, it's just a friggin number change in our calendar! As usual, for this year too i thought my friends and me will go through the usual drill of boozing at my friend's place.But no! my fiends had a brilliant idea, they wanted to go to one of those newyear parties organised by pubs. Now as most of you know, these parties are strictly for couples only. In our case, we were the much hated stags!

I knew this wasn't gonna take off, so i tried to talk some sense in to my friends and told them let's stick to our routine drill, instead of ending up embarassing ourselves outside the pub. They suddenly seemed have been stuck by optimistic streak, they won't hear any of my words, my friend had a "contact" in one of the pubs and since he's a regular there, we can be assured of an "Entry" inspite of being stags. Well, i gave up, anyway i had informed folks at home that i was going out, so i had to go through their plans.

We all caged up and next thing we know we are stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in sankey road. It was already 8pm and traffic was horrible, just when i thought things couldn't get worse, bang! what was that!My overenthusiastic friend had banged his Ikon in to the rear end of a Getz! Geez! there goes my new year party money i thought! thankfully both the drivers got out of their vehicles to inspect the damage and both stared at each other and walked back to their cars! i was surprised! turns out there was no visible damage! Newyear spirit or was the other driver in spirits? well whatever, i just wanted to get off there and soon we were parking in the pub.

My friend neatly goes up to bouncer and says something, next thing i know, it was the usual stuff. The bouncer shaking his head and focusing else where, my friend trying to maintain his composure and false sense of pride and i can see him literally pleading with him! I had enough, i just wanted to go back to his place so we could get back to our routine drill. But no, these chaps won't have any of it, they wanted to get in by hook or crook! Then my friend's "contact" shows up, silver lining? But even his words to bouncers are met with cold stares. They way the bouncers would look at us made me feel ashamed, they would look at us as if we were street urchins! Then somehow after some time, They let my friend in and my other friend and me were left standing outside!

I thought that was it, we had to take a rick back to his place, while this guy who got in is gonna be partying. Then after about 15 mins, my friend came out and took us in, not before we coughed up the usual fee, yeah, we had to fork out for "couple" entry tickets, inspite of being stags. I paid and told myself, now that i've blown my money, i better enjoy it! :P
We are met with a chap who had laid out welcome drink, now what the fuck was that? Well, it turned out to be small glass or rather the ones you take it as a shot (bottoms up!) They had choice of wine or vodka. Me being totally allergic to wine, i took vodka. I mistook the vodka to be mixed, how wrong i was! Freaks had kept raw vodka and i took it bottoms up!

Welcome to hell! My insides started to burn, i felt like a raging fire was burning inside me, i wanted water, but no, they didn't have water, we were told to get in to the pub. We got it. I was still searching for water, but finally resigned to my fate that there was no water available immediately, so i lit up a cig.
Hmm, now after the initiation ceremony, things started to clear up, the cig did help, i was slightly in trance state :P I hadn't had dinner either and the vodka +cig combo didn't do any good. I was surveying my surroundings, Gawd! was i really there? there were just too many chicks around, outnumbering guys infact!
It was like each guy had come with two chicks! and there we were, 3 stags all oogling like a kid at a candy store!:P

The hunger pans started, it was already 10pm. So i asked for the menu and there was the real horror! all prices jacked up! courtesy of newyear's eve! I was literally searching for something that costed below three digits in rupees, but no, they all were in 3 digits, resigned to my fate, i didn't want to ruin this with my miserliness after having forked out the entry fee! My friends neatly proclaimed that they had emptied their valets for the entry fee, so the party was on me! Heck, this was just too much and i wanted to just get through the damn newyear party. Then we ordered for couple of over priced beers and over priced chicken and other over priced dishes. As soon as i got my hands on beer and food, i gobbled up and drank to my heart's content. After satisfying my hunger pangs, i started surveying the surroundings again.

The atmosphere was cool, Dimlights, candle lights on tables, open air dance floor with dj playing some good numbers and beautiful skimpily clad drunk chicks shaking their stuff all around! Now, i was having fun :P My friends wanted to shake their leg in the dance floor and try to hit with one of the pretty young things, while i was happy just gazing around. I settled down near the dance floor with my beer and snacks while my friends were making fools out of themselves with their ridiculous "look at me" kind of dance steps :P I wanted to just fade in to the crowd and didn't want to be associated with these fanatics dancing like idiots!

Then, i spent somemore time observing people around, apart from chicks, i notice a couple, they had their hardly 6 month old baby in their arms and these two were dancing away to glory, while the baby was trying to sleep! Poor thing, it was being made to go through this jig just coz it's parents wanted to party! There was a chap sitting next to me and he was smoking, next thing i know, the smoke coming from him reeks of very icky smell, turns out this guy is doping! with in few minutes, the same smoke starts everyone, it looks like iam in some joint heaven!
Then there were a group of 5 guys, all dressed in white blazers and white pants (!!) but they had a very attractive skimpily clad chick with them. All 6 were blown and were high on dope, the girl was really shaking her stuff, that too right in front of me! These guys used to take turns in dancing with her and when they got tired, they used to sit next to my table and dope. But girl really had lots of energy, she just didn't care who was dancing with her and it was free for all!

It was like watching one of those B grade films, that too live! i was the director :P or so i felt. Meanwhile, the two dancing idiots (my friends) had gone in to the crowd and got lost for sometime. Then suddenly they came back, thoroughly exhausted. Their animated conversation followed and it was the usual story, how close they got a chick and when they were almost gonna hit on her, she lost interest or her guy came in and such stuff. Well, i was feeling miserable, firstly, i didn't want to witness this free for all show, secondly, i was getting ripped off for being there and thirdly, i was not enjoying it! Well, it was another 10 more mins to go for the clock to hit 12, so i knew that my ordeal would end soon.

Predictably, the clock stuck 12, with a count down and with fireworks. People suddenly had energitic boost and they all started to howl and cat calls and cries filled the air, greeting each other. Couples smooching each other etc...
Ok, it was done and i wanted to get out, 20 mins past 12, i dragged my friends out of there and we started our drive back to my friend's place in his cage, i was smoking in back seat and watched as both my friends started their animated conversation of how good the party was and how the chicks were happening etc.

We reached his place and had food. As i hit the bed, i decided, in future, if at all iam going to any goddamn newyear party, which is couple's only, i would go there only if had a member of female species for my company, definitely not as a stag! no matter how much my friends force me. I would rather reach home early from work and watch tv, than go through the embarassment as a stag in a couples only party!

Happy new year!