My Motorcycle: From Wows to Woes

Jan 30th: After two months of research, which here means reading motorcycle websites, views, opinions and advices of fellow members of a bike forum that I’m a part of, and finally have a really excited talk with another FZ 16 owner, I, with my hard earned, hardly saved money, and a bit of financial backing from the family, decided to take a plunge and bought myself a brand new Yamaha FZ16. It was followed by a nice dinner with close friends followed by a night out at best friend’s place. Next day an early morning ride back to my place on this bike which seemed to glide on road rather than ride it.

It was a like a four year old kid’s first toy bike. I went on with its different ride feel, the way it picked up speed, the way it braked, the way it I could lean with it, the way it begged to be thrown into curves and came out smiling, as if it was born to do all this and hold me in a state of motion forever. It was my bike, made to suit me and fuel my motorcycling passion. The first few weeks went in riding it carefully taking care not to exceed certain limits. A month full of holding myself back from letting the throttle open wild, and escape into eternity.

Everyone close to me was almost equally awed if not exactly pleased by the level of comfort and ease the bike offered. Everyone thought it was the perfect choice for me since, I do not believe in racing down city roads, challenge a few buggers who think their bikes were designed to break records, but yet be fast enough to set my own personal records. With the running in limits off, I was all set to take it out on its first long run, something I that I will never forget….

…Not because it was the best ride yet, but because the return trip changed my bike forever. And this change, I have well realized by now was not anything close to any positive feeling that I ever associated with the bike. A few bumps on the way back, and my bike completely lost its ride feel. It became jerky, difficult to handle and later developed braking problems too. Now there was no comfort to rave about, no cornering capabilities to swear by and definitely no stand out braking to depend on. From being the hero of the day, the machine had gone to become my friend in misery. Yes it was not just my friend; it was itself in a misery, something that has not changed till today.

Despite long arguments with service managers, taking things through the right channels, a few (apparently true) suspension changes, another few tweaks, oil changes, the bike has now become a completely different machine. It has lost the ride feel that I could relate to, something no one else has come to terms with. Even riders with bikes of the same make thought there was nothing wrong with it.

Three of the authorized so called service centers maintained that nothing is wrong with it and continued to give hogwash reasons right from ‘its in your mind’ to the best one so far, something which could put the best physics experts and motorcycle experts to shame. ‘The bike veers to one side because of the slight angle of banking of the road’. And if the road banked “slightly” towards the left and the bike veers towards the right, according to these guys such things are not possible, at least on this planet.

Even an accident did not change anything. It only helped changing the parts that I thought had problems with. To my good luck, the exact parts which I wanted to change got damaged in the accident. Today, three months down, the probable culprits for the bumpy ride, the jittery feeling and the loss of control… that being the front and back suspensions each has been changed at least once. Yet the love is lost between me and bike. It refuses to offer the kind of feeling it did, three months ago, when I had it ready to run with its full heart, and slowly I am losing all my faith in it. And apparently of all the bikes that the company has sold, which I know of, mine seems to be the only one plagued with these issues. So may be its just me and not the bike, whose forgotten what it felt like before everything went wrong.

As a last resort I have decided to put an end to this issue by making enough arrangements and selling the bike at a respectable price. There’s nothing wrong with the bike. It’s just like: “we broke up and now I have gotten over her. I don’t have the feelings that I had for her before.” Nothing about this bike, my liking for it and my passion for bikes is worth letting it affect my life, with my family, friends, co workers and every new person I come across. I want it to be a part of my life and not take over it entirely. All attempts at restoring it have gone in vain, and now the suggestion box in my mind lies empty.

Wish List

A human's basic need is the need in itself. He has to have it, its like something that he lives for or sometimes something that he cant live without. Wishes and desires come under this category. So defining my wishes for the time being:

A certain bike that I've seen and really need to have one. Have argued, discussed, contested with loved ones and the not so loved ones alike. They are so tired of me 'meditating' over this rather than getting it that some of them have sworn to beat me up if i dont get it.

A good digital camera. There are moments in life, and then there is life itself which is worth being captured and preserved on film...err...memory cards these days. So saving up for that one too.

A certain Sony Ericsson phone. This brand in particular because no other one could give good music quality and the ability to make calls in one device.

So here's hoping this wishlist gets done with soon

The Dark Winner

11.30 pm on a not-so-drunk Saturday night. I was driving home after a dinner party at a friend’s place. It’s a 20 minutes ride down this straight road at my speed; more so because the road is dead empty at night. Cruising down this lane with a mild breeze touching your face gently is a delightful experience. Racing down this lane, I realized, was another story. No one to stop you, no traffic, no cops, no old grandma crossing the road, no school kids walking in the middle of the road. With the fastest production bike on Indian roads under my ass, I set out on my Adrenaline pumping ride.

The road was dimly lit with whatever little street lights it had. It was a bit darker than usual. May be because the moon was no where to be seen. There was very little or almost no traffic on the road. An occasional car or a bike brushed past me at random. There was this dark serenity that seemed to keep me at peace. Half way down the road, I saw a bright light flashing at my rear view mirrors. The light kept coming closer and soon it was tailing me. Bouncing on either side it was trying to get ahead of me. In a moment it came ahead right next to me and I noticed a guy and a girl on his bike. Well, his girl? The flaunt in his eyes and the way she held on to him said it all. He revved his engine a couple of times in an unsigned agreement to race with me. I complied. Testosterone took over Adrenaline. I had to beat him. Make his girl wish that she was sitting on the opposite seat. Make him swear to himself that he’d never try this again; at least not with me.

With realization of the challenge as the starting point of the race, we started off. Getting ahead and staying ahead was the only finishing point of the race. A couple of smart moves and he was ahead of me. His girl was staring gloriously at me. All I could see was the road ahead, with him on it. All I could think was beating him. All I could hear was engines grunting and battling it out. Up shifting a gear and a couple of amateur Rossi moves, I accelerated past him. In true racing terms, I had smoked him. I kept accelerating with an evil grin on my face. The biker had finally beaten the loser. I could picture the look on his girl’s face, more importantly his face. I had won the race.

My victory trance was broken by the sudden sight of another bike crossing the road at an intersection. It was the only intersection that I had forgotten in the moment of insanity. As a reflex action I braked hard, really hard. The tires began screaming in pain. Smell of burning rubber filled up the chicane. My bike started fishtailing like a shark caught by its mouth with a hook. Within a moment I found my bike piercing into the other like a bullet into glass. The dark calm turned into a chaos of metal clashing against metal, burning rubber and the resultant noise gave a feeling that death’s come knelling down. I saw three people being flung into air; the third one being me. And that was the last thing I saw clearly.

Then everything turned silent. The metal clashing had stopped. There were no screeching tires. The roaring engines had died. And I lay on the ground hoping that those were the only dead ones in the whole story. I thought that the dark calm had returned. It did but it brought with itself the faint moans and screams of the victims of my actions. I couldn’t see who they were, for I couldn’t move. The pain was so excruciating that I had stopped feeling pain itself. The smell of blood had dissolved in the smell of petrol and the only feelings I could associate with myself was that of being in pain and being alive. The darkness had grown because the dim street lights turned dimmer. Everything seemed hazy. Fear replaced every emotion in my mind and life started playing backwards. The darkness kept growing in my mind, in my eyes and in my time. And then everything was just switched off.

Now I lay on a bed. I can feel myself being there, the pain being there. I’m alive and counting reasons for being so. The darkness is gone, the lights are back and so are the sounds, mostly voices. I hesitantly look around and I see people standing near a bed and talking. I see people standing outside the room. I see my dad, I see a doctor and I see a cop. Things look bad. Fear again takes over curiosity. All they say is one thing and all I hear is one thing.

“He must have been doing at least an insane 80 when he hit them. What was he thinking? Huh …was he thinking?” “His blood indicated alcohol levels. The guy must be drunk.” “We saved the man but the woman and the child are no more; the unborn child that is.” The darkness is back. Its brought pain, fear, remorse and above all, death. The accident or murder, as my conscience terms it, had killed the lady who was a couple of months pregnant. The impact of my winning sprint was so strong that she was thrown away a couple of meters killing her with her baby on the spot. The helmet saved me and the other guy. I don’t wish to propagate the RTO rule that it implements according to how empty its pockets are but that’s the only reason I can think of that saved us.

They say one man’s loss is another’s gain. He lost the race and I gained a lot with it. A title of winner only to be stripped off to fit in the new one of a killer, not just that loser’s but a lot of other people’s anger as well. I got a lot of bandages as trophies. There’s no other guy, there’s no impressed girl, just a lot of people in pain and two in grave. Now I’m the one who’s swearing never to try this again. The dark calm before the race is back. And it’s brought death with it this time. Clearly there’s just one winner now. And surely it’s not me.

Original post : http://frwmag.blogspot.com/2007/12/dark-winner.html

I 'm some of this. I want to be all of this

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Apple.


Reference : Jamsheed Gandhi

Source: Internet

Let's get Real, Let's Vote

Welcome to the reality, the new reality of vote. Who’s the Best dancer? Who’s the best singer? Who’s the best cook? Who should stay on the show? Who should go? Who should get the award and who shouldn’t. Who should make you cry or laugh? Should the terrorists be punished or let go? Do you think the girl was raped or is she framing the popular guy? Should kissing scenes be allowed in Hindi movies or not? Hell, who will win maximum votes in the upcoming election? Send in your votes to *****. You may also win a prize if your silly, nonsensical biased opinion gets maximum votes. It doesn’t get any worst than this.

Voting on TV shows, in newspapers, on radio by far beats every other in thing or talk of the town. Poor Britney. Swinging the other way too couldn’t get her as much Indian attention that voting gets. After the daughter in law and mother in law serials anything that has the Indian public’s attention are shows which involve voting. Specially the singing and dancing ones. They have more drama queens than any other Indian soap.

‘Baa’ can get as old as she can. Be reborn, travel through time; very soon undertake an intergalactic space adventure to see if she has any great grand children in any other galaxy, ‘to boldly go where no grandma has ever gone before’. But at the end she isn’t real right?

In ‘reality’ she could possibly be 20 years younger to the character she portrays in the serial. They’ve even started voting contests to decide which character can stay and how the story should go ahead. That saves the director, casting director and the writer a lot of trouble. They can spend this time in searching for more places that supply glycerin since there are many other serials using it and new channels with new series are coming up everyday, or more college going or even school going girls to play daughters, sisters, daughter in laws. These could get pregnant at some point in the serial although getting them pregnant in reality is considered an offence.

Here are some examples that get votes coming in like a flood:

‘Meri maa last ek mahine se nange paav ghar se mandir chalke jaa rahi hai. Agar aap chahte hai ki unka aur aapka beta yeh competition jeete toh vote kijiye. Vote karne ke liye …..Shayad bhagwan unki prarthana sun le aur mujhe number one bana de’.

‘Agar aapko lagta hai ki meri (out of tune) awaz ne aapko khush kiya hai toh mujhe danger zone se bachaaye, vote karein’. ‘Sirf usse hi vote kijiye joh deserve karta hai (and that’s me).’

‘The girl was raped and brutally killed while everyone stood and watched. Do you think the Indian public is apathetic? Send your views at….’

‘Do you think the court was right in punishing Mr. XYZ who’s considered a terrorist? SMS Y or N space your NAME to ….’

However the men, women, children, all in all, the people in the reality shows cry for real or at least we think so. Ailing grannies and grandpa’s dragged from their house to the stage, really busy parents, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, even neighbors who have nothing to do with the contestant come and cheer for them and definitely cry a lot for them. Even the judges shed those occasional crocodile tears. The able but otherwise jobless judges who are made to look like monkeys (no offence to the Australian team) cant do anything but sulk about the whole thing and wonder what kind of talent is emerging out of these shows.

The midnight rant

1:30 am. Me and two of my friends leaning against our bikes and chatting as the rest of the world is in a lights out mode. One of them, someone whom I’ve come to know recently, is as good with the smokes as with his machines. As he lights up another one I look at him and wonder how the only thing that I’d love to see that smoke come out of would be my motorcycle’s exhaust and not my mouth/nose. Then again given the recent emission norms and my inclination towards ‘mother earth’ I feel this one’s lot less polluting and try to stay away from the area of its coverage.

The conversation is about bikes …well it’s always been that. People find it hard to understand how a bunch of guys gang up till late nights and talk about machines that just take them from one place to another and are a monthly expenditure in most cases. Girlfriends are jealous and surprised but not worried , that their guy runs away to meet another guy not because he swings the other way but because he wants to discuss how his bike swings the other way when accelerated too hard. They end up feeling neglected due to the lack of SMS and phone calls that their boyfriends would otherwise die to send or make.

We rant and curse the motorcycle makers for not making an all round bike. Though it’s a good strategy to make a bike that looks good and just about that so that the ‘Indian’ masses (who these vendors count as fools who judge a book by its cover and are right to a certain extent) will eventually buy it without worrying about how it performs, it's dampening the enthusiasm of guys who want their bike to do a lot more besides looking good.

We talk about this bike that we’re really interested in buying. However there is no clear opinion on the performance front and hence we are confused as to how it will perform. One of us who already has a ‘faster’ bike suggests that we go for the bike that he has and he swears by it. We scratch our heads, butts and in some cases armpits too indicating we are not that convinced about it. After much brainstorming, we come to a point that we should wait for the performance figures to come out and then do some planning.

The car makers have realized that there is a breed of buyers who want cars that perform when pushed to their limits and not just give GOOD mileage and this has seen the advent of the likes of the Hondas, The GMs, The Skodas and so on. Civic, Octavia, Swift, even the good ol' fiat premier padmini performs. However the same has not translated to the bike world. The country hasn't witnessed anything like it after the Yamaha RD 350 and the RX 100. The current lot seems to perform, they have the bhp and they have the cc's too. However they lack the design, the aerodynamics, and the flare that their performing four wheeler contemporaries bring with them. The one's that have managed to look good have done just about that.

The confusion these days is not whether I’m in love with a particular girl or whether I’m in love with my current girlfriend. We already have that figured out. Somehow the new machines that the country is witnessing lately has put us motorcycle enthusiasts in a lot of confusion. One is a blonde the other is a brain. One has the looks the other has the performance. Like the perfect girl, we’re not yet close to the perfect bike in terms of our standards.

Biker Boy:uncut

I had just returned from a ride. Having parked the bike I looked up at my window just to check if everyone’s asleep or awake. I came home and headed straight to my room. Pop comes out a bike magazine from under the jacket which I bought on my way. I put down all my gear namely the helmet, the gloves, and the jacket. The computer is switched on, followed by Winamp playing songs in shuffle mode. I dropped down on the bed with the magazine in my hand first going through all the pages to check what catches my eye and then reading through each of the articles in detail.

“New BIKES are coming to India”, “Faster BIKES being developed”, “Concept Versions of BIKES being introduced”, “Road testing of 150 cc BIKES”. I read through each of them carefully while replying to my girlfriend whose SMS’s said that she won’t be able to talk tonight. So I’m left alone with my first love BIKES all ready to be lost in her …err…them.

This was not the first time it had happened. The thought of a new bike only had me hooked on to it. Fantasizing about bikes goes way back to my childhood. The best fantasies are the ones that a human being experiences as a child. Everything’s possible in the dimensions of his mind. He then keeps growing and so does a certain fantasy which he holds on to ‘forever and ever’.

It all started with my dad buying a shiny yellow toy sports bike look alike which to me, was faster than any bike on planet earth or at least the neighbor’s kid’s toy bike. The next few days were filled with the whole house going ‘VRRRROOOM VRRROOM, BRRR BRR BRRR and all sorts of engines sounds my bike (rather my throat) could make. This bike could take on anything and anyone and could go anywhere. It could ride all day on the flooring or jump in air and keep flying in the air, if it got bored of the flooring. It could run in circles on the insides of utensils and, buckets even if they were filled with water. It could climb closets vertically or ride along windows. Hell, it could even climb my grandpa’s pot belly and ride on it till his annoyed grunts started to sound like another bike engine growling.

One fine day it had an accident (a different kind of fantasy of mine) and so it HAD to be repaired. I stripped it down to the last part with my dad’s toolkit only to realize that my engineering skills were limited to breaking it down and not putting it back together. My dad swore not to buy me a toy bike again. I guess he feared I might grow up to become a garage mechanic and he obviously had dreams much more ambitious than that. So the bike fantasy was replaced by fights with Skeletor, teaming up with He-man and enjoying Disneyland with Mickey and Donald. But the love for bikes did not die there.

One fine day my dear little idiot box decided to air a series called Street Hawk with a guy clad in black clothes and riding a bike which was equally black all over. It could go faster than all other vehicles, could jump over cars, could chase bad guys and also save the girl in the end. Wow, this was new! Dad too seemed to enjoy this and hence let me watch it. This brought back all the bike fantasies I cherished as a kid and also made room for some new ones. My neighbor got a new bike and since his son was my friend I would get an occasional ride on his dad’s bike and I would go of to sleep every night wishing that I had one of my own.

My need for bikes was later supplemented by a bicycle. It dint have an engine but what the hell …my throat could still give that extra grunt. I would ride it all day with my other friends and soon a “BIKER GANG” was formed. Impressing chicks wasn’t the agenda. Getting even with other boys was. Street hawk had indeed inspired me and I turned to doing wheelies (flipping the front wheel up), stoppies (flipping the rear wheel up) and skids. My ultimate fantasy then: Become the coolest rider in the group, which I had achieved.

The next few years went by watching older guys ride bikes and drooling over their bikes. Occasionally we’d see a cute looking girl seated behind a guy and that concept slowly dawned upon us. Getting female attention was also important. So now it was time for me to graduate from riding a cycle to learning a bike. I had to learn it. The next few years went begging with cousins to teach me a bike, who wondered that this guy couldn’t touch his feet to the ground when seated on a bike, why the hell does he want to learn it? I was left with my bicycle again. My ultimate fantasy then: Become a bike rider. Period.

I entered college life and we moved into a new place near my college. Moving into a new place gave a new life to my bike fantasies. Everything but my college was far off so a bike seemed the need of the hour or at least I’d make it sound like. And my enthusiasm towards riding a bike gave my parents the idea to finally get me a bike. And they did get me one as soon as I turned 18. The mother of all fantasies of owning my own bike had turned true even before the fantasy of riding it had. Soon I learned to ride and I ride it to this very day. Another fantasy turned to reality.

In the next few years the love for bikes kept growing. It has actually grown with me. What started with a plastic bike which could ride on my grandpa’s tummy, then turned into Street Hawk which then again turned into a bicycle that had ultimately turned into a real bike. The movie Top Gun inspired a new fantasy which had the opposite sex sitting behind you and enjoying the thrill of the ride like you do and loves you like you love the bike. It was not just the movie though. Observations of the outside world also induced that feeling so to say. Another excuse is evolution of the human mind. As of now, this fantasy too has been turned to reality. I must say, this reality has been the sweetest of them all.

But then it’s not about impressing your friends with your riding skills, getting some female attention or being popular with a neat looking machine under your ass. The real fantasy is above all this. It’s just the thrill of being on a bike, riding it fast with the wind blowing in your face, and performing those occasional stunts to get a new high. And so my current fantasy is getting a fast bike, mostly a sports bike like the Yamaha R1 and riding it really fast but on a road which allows me to do so. If that has to be a race track then all that makes the dream even nicer. Hope it turns into reality too.