Motorcycle Diaries - Page I

You guys ever seen the TVS Suzuki Max 100 R?

It's a 100 cc bike, small and compact.It's got a bhp rating that, well, can be sneezed at.

Small seats, unimpressive build, not too much power, decent enough performance, but overall, one of those thingies that you use to take you from Point A to Point B. So long as Uncle Euclid is on hand to verify that A and B have no more than 20 kilometres between them.

Anything more than that, and you'd be better off on a bicycle, is the general consensus of the know-alls in the biking world.

Messrs. Castellino and Kulkarni, unfortunately, are pretty much lumbering ignoramuses where the biking world is concerned.

There are people in this world who would argue with passion about how we are lumbering ignoramuses where considerably more than the biking world is concerned, but we (you, gentle reader, and us, Kulkarni and Castellino) shall hold our noses high in the air and ignore their rants. As always.

And make a plan to ride to Goa on that aforementioned, much admired excuse for a motorcycle.

Goa, as the crow, or any bird for that matter, flies, is about 500 kilometers away. Roadwise, it adds another 250 odd of the kms.

Though even the crow, or any bloody bird, for that matter, might think twice about making that foolhardy journey. Especially starting at 12.30 at night. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

This particular bird-brained (do you notice an ever so slight tilt toward ornithology in this blog? I thought so) caper had it's roots in an insatiable desire to go to Goa. Given that one of the undersigned thinks of Goa as his spiritual home (think of our trip to Goa as one of those Mt. Kailash expeditions. In a more evolved form), and that the other's thoughts lie in almost perfect resonance... well, it's a wonder that we've been there only once.

Note to self and Castellino: More trips once you return from the Godforsaken land.

There came a time in our lives when a sudden and fortuitous confluence (is that the word I want?) of holidays enabled us to plan a trip to Goa.

We could have flown there, and we could have taken a bus. We could have hired a car, or we could have borrowed a friends car. OK, I made that last one up... none of our friends are rich enough to afford a car just yet, and even if they were, they wouldn't go around lending it out to the two of us. We have this... ah... reputation.

Deserved, I might add.

But still and all, anything being more plausible than planning to ride all the bloody way to Goa. And on that bike. And starting at 12 at night.

Thing is, we could only leave after finishing work that day.

Thinger is, Noel was planning to leave work at 8, but finally said he could leave only at 10.

Thingest is, Noel could only leave by midnight.

So naturally, we left at midnight too.

Neither of us are particularly devout, but Jesus and the entire pantheon of Hindu deities were to do overtime with a vengeance over the next four days.

We'd planned for this trip, as we do for all else in life, with a meticulous eye for detail.

We had two cloth bags, one of which had our clothes, and the other held our medical kit, and our toolkit.

Our medical kit consisted of one bottle of Dettol. We thought we had swabs, but we didn't.

Our toolkit consisted of one spoon. You see, the bike needs an injection of oil over and above the regular intake. This oil, in a fit of unimagination, is called side oil. Now in order to refill the side oil, the side panel needs to be side removed. OK, I got carried away.

In order to remove it, the side panel needs to be unscrewed. We had a spoon in the kitchen that fit our needs perfectly.

So that was our toolkit.

Yeah. Seriously.

Now, the thing is, about 600 kilometers into the journey, we found that our mechanic, during the last servicing, had removed this screw, making our spoon redundant.

Which, in hindsight, was a good thing, since we'd forgotten to take the spoon along anyway.

More later, people.
I'm hoping you can't wait to hear the rest.