Monday, February 07, 2005

Destination Nandi Hills



Again lazy me leaving the honours of trip log to Nithin Nath:

Once again the duo strikes.... After the Shivasamudra trip,which we are still trying to forget, its destination Nandi hills. Again I take up honours to bother u guys with a loooooooooooooooooooooong trip log. Total distance form Hebbal Flyover- 54kms (1way)

Bikes:myself on an ageing 5yr old lady and survivor of an accident few days back, still the culprit hangs around with her(read my CBZ with drum brakes) :D
praveen on his spanking new(did he say its almost a year old) CBZ* with self start (I keep mentioning this coz I love that unit on the cbz/zma)
After the accident I din bother changing the drum shoes since I had planned to upgrade to discs this weekend. And that was not going to stop me from jumping into this trip... and I mean it when I say... That was not going to stop me :)

We meet at the flyover at around 12:15pm, and then,.....before deciding the route itself ---- ripppppped! And for a moment I forgot I almost don't have brakes up front.. Thanks for the lumbering trucks. The road was much bettre than previous ride with some stretches where u cud really rip and not find a kid in the middle of the road. Since neither knew the route,we went askin for the way and in about an hour and half we made it upto the destination... it wud be a waste if I din mention the route. Though not as enticing as the 22 hairpin bends of Ponmudi hills of kerala or the NH209 which praveen mentioned, there was quite some challenge scrapping the foot pegs on the sloth paced and amazingly wide hairpin bends..which we ate at 70kmph!! Badri now u know u shud go with the right bike to such places..u shud have been with us instead of splendors etc..which wud hardly go beyond 40 on those bends,if they didn't stall that is. Wait until I do 100 with an ZMA. The gradient didn't seem to poise any problems and we raced past struggling honda activas and 100cc bikes.

Unlike we were told the nandi hill ride gave presented some beautiful sceneries even at this time of the year... thanx to my friends digicam,I've captured a few. Even the destination was gud enuff...with some nice windy roads which we were denied. I shall upload a pic of one S bend which we were deprived of coz they din allow bikes beyond that point! :(

Nice view from top.. And ther were some chics too man... and did I forget to mention monkeys??? Oh f*** how can man call himself the dominant species?? Those dudes scared the heck out of the visitors with their planned surprise attacks,and they come in all shapes,sizes and ages. They also seem to have peculiar affinity towards chics and lays chaat street-golgappa flavour.....ok these 2 don't have anything in
common and no pun intended! ;)

Took snaps of a lucky b**** hangin out on a glider for nearly an hour. We cudnt figure out from where he was starting,else wud have tried that one too. After chattin abt our bikes and praveens NH209 trip with moonie n sojish we started a photo session which included a few snaps on way down n blasting the way down n scrapping the foot pegs at 50k speeds.... Though not intensional from my side,my drum brakes simply wudnt let me do speeds below 40 in 3rd gear.

I dared not to scrap footpegs coz my centre stand lever was the first man to land on ground and that tingled my spine more than once... But the CBZs handled the corners really well at speeds.. I was surprised that my quixie did those with ease considering her near fatal kiss with a santro! But I still feel a bit of instability at speeds above 90 in corners.. Probably forks r culprits.

On our way back we had a glimple of the sukhoy air show here..man that dude up there was having all the fun... he was playing around with all those 80,000+horse power and teasing us puny guys who even mention and fight over the decimal places in power specs!

Ok...I did manage to capture him in my cam :D but missed a few chics around :( nevermind.... U don't get to see a sukhoy perform in the flesh everyday...sorry gentle men don't read between lines :D Well that's a trip log.. If u cud call that... non bikers can stop reading here... and if u r a biker then did some one tell u heaven existed even in bangalore??? Then u shud have listened to praveen when he kept braggin abt tumkur road... though we cudnt make use of the entire stretch, u have a 75km long stretch of absolute paradise... both of us achieved nirvana on
these very roads.... To make matters more interesting, praveen wanted to race. We decided to put the bikes to torture,and the race length was between the two toll
gates, around 65kms apart. He kept tellin me my bike was faster and his was much slower in pickup as well as top speed.this was his oppurtunity to see if he really was slower... Well.. The rest is history!!!

It was the longest period of time when I repented riding a CBZ.... Id do the same even on an ZMA... man the road is really flat and never seemed to end! U cud easily take an R1 to max speed and wonder why its not goin any faster! Both of us had the throttle twisted to max throughout except for 4 medians and 3 trucks!!! Ie; both bikes were running in 5th gear and engines redlining at 9000rpm!!! But then that's not all, we tried various aerodynamic positions to beat each other. But then I cud hardly touch 105 on speedo while praveen did 110. donno whats up coz she usually maxes around 112k. Still I managed to overtake praveen quite a few times,maybe coz of better gear utilisation.. But once ive used up all my gears,at 100k and the engine in no mood to go beyond 8000rpm, I was sitting duck with praveen overtaking me everytime with is trademark aerodynamic riding posture!!! His bike even redlined in 5th gear! Add to that if some tom or dick thought of pulling into the road from the medians,it was end of story for one Mr.nithin coz I left my brakes home! The problem is my handle bar is bullet 350's. so the damn throttle rotates the right switch unit along with it and at max,the brake cable conduit fouls with the front brake lever and I cant press it!!! So every time I do ma speed I need to pull the unit back.. Imagine me doing this every time I need to brake and overtake someone!! Poor me.. Life is so unfair to some people.

All said and done... I won the race :) towards tumkur toll gate!! Then after tea from a dhabaa, we decided to race in the return route and this time,the cross winds were much higher and it was getting darker...not to mention the harvest of bugs n insects stickin on our helmet visor! It was touch and go many a times and ppl in slow moving cars were staring at us when we over took them at 100+ from either sides!! Wow that was a real good ride and unless I kept my baby close to 8k rpm and
prayed,praveen was overtaking me with ease :(

All said and done...(once again!) I won the return race!!! He he.... I guess even though Sete Gibernau has a better(?) n faster bike, Valentino Rossi simply seem to win the races in the final laps :D Ok ok..cool it guys,I din mean to say I am a la rossi...
Then we discussed the spoils of the day(and discussin why ppl call it 'spoil') and looked at the snaps we took,having coffee at Coffee day at malleshwaram 7:00pm.

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