Bangalore to chennai on hero octane cycle

I had planned to start at 4 in morning from home in Uttrahalli, so got up at 3.20 and was ready in fifteen minutes. ate a pre cooked chapati and packed 2 for later, picked up everything and I was off by 3.50. by the time I reached Hosur road I was chased by dogs at least 5 times. they are really king and night life in Bangalore. I started out quite good and was hitting 25kmph avg easily. Ii stopped only for a picture the end of electronic city, after which it was a straight shot to krishnagiri. thanks to lights that i bought from bums on saddle on the day before, it really illuminated the road and lorry drivers gave me good margin on road. i reached krishnagiri (100km on odo) at 8 am and felt really good at the speed I started off. finished the 2 more chapati and refilled my 1.5lt bottle and started off at 8.30. 

After 10 the sun started to have its toll on me, my speed reduced to under 20. I had aimed to cover for 170 km by 12 o'çlock but had made only about 150km. Exhausted I stopped for lunch break. I ate an apple and a bunch of grapes that I got from home. I started out again at 12.30 but had no energy. I covered about 15km in one hour and felt horrible in the sun and pitied at my speed. At 1.30 I was completely burned out and decided to take longer break and ended up sleeping in a paddy field under a tree shade. I slept for about 30 mins and started out at 2.30. Even tho I had rest the sun and wind was too strong. I set a goal to reach vellore(210/220km) by 4 and end the journey. This part of the ride was absolute horrible, I ate couple of energy bars(lots of stops) that I had picked up at decathlon, but they were completely useless(or my stomach didn't agree with them). Utterly exhausted I reached Vellore, called my friend to come near the Vellore fort and asked him to take me to eat. he took me to a really nice hotel next to the fort. I ate 2 plates idly and a Masala dosa with the idea of stopping..........

After about 1 hr 30 min break, and some air conditioning I started to feel good and decided that I should try till I feel completely miserable. With sun nearly down and energy back I set off at good speed. I hit 40 kms in 2 hrs and felt good. fatigue and soreness started to kick in at 8pm. My crotch felt like wood. i had realized that I was tired early in afternoon due to food shortage I decided to have food again by 9 so that I can continue into the night. ate 2 paratha and omelette and started off again by 9.30. With loads of energy I averaged 20 again and was covering good distance. I had to take lot of breaks because my ass hurt as soon as it touched saddle, so most of the time I was standing and peddling or stopped for cool off. I nearly reached Chennai(320km) by 12. next 20 km was happy time, I was in the glory mode. at 1.15 i reached Poonamalle completely exhausted and I had covered 340km. I was happy that I completed it. I was so tired that I slept in a bus stop for 1.5 hrs before my friend picked me up and took me to IIT.

the end.

total distance traveled from Bangalore to chennai

only one pic that I took in the entire ride

PS: I was stopped by police at least 3 times, and with my broken tamil i explained them my purpose and they were all super happy and surprised. On one occasion i even had police escort for about 1hr

License to kill

As soon as we turn 18, most of are eager to get our license (ofcourse to drive not to kill). But should everyone get license? I don’t think so. Here is a list of people who are not fit to drive.

Old people: Reason is that they are extremely slow drivers; they are so slow that even the toy car I made 5 years back used to go much faster. They always put the indicator in the previous turn itself. The worst thing that can happen is to get stuck behind these kind of people in a traffic jam and see others going by (Indian road jam).

Aunties: They are the worst of all. They get their license by learning in an open field (at night) and during the day time, they harass us thinking that they are still in an open field. They will always drive in zigzag pattern, no matter how straight the road is. Most accidents occur due to these people. After crash, even though they are not hurt they create a hell lot of noise. Most funny thing is that is that they fall off or crash into light poles without any reason. They get their license by either hook or crook, ho…no no it is only by crook not hook.

Teenage girls (pre aunties): their hotspot for crashing is parking area. They force their parents to buy them a vehicle and then they can’t maintain it. 90% of them can’t put center stand for the vehicles they use everyday. They are so weak that they ask help to get their vehicles out of parking area, if no-one is there, then they are sure to crash. Other than this they are pretty good drivers.

Drunkards: no need for an explanation.

There are more people out there who don’t deserve license but because of our Indian road system they all get their license to kill.

Jose's sandals

Along time ago, so many years ago that we can no longer remember the exact date, there lived in a village in the south of Brazil a little seven-year-old boy called José. He had lost his parents when he was very, very young and had been adopted by a miserly aunt who, even though she had lots of money, spent almost nothing on her nephew. José, having never known the Meaning of love, assumed that this was simply the way life was and so it didn’t bother him at all. They lived in an extremely affluent neighborhood.

but the aunt persuaded the head teacher of the local school to take on her nephew for only a tenth of the normal tuition fee, threatening to complain to the Prefect if he declined her offer. The head teacher had no option but to agree; however, he instructed the teachers to take every opportunity to humiliate José in the hope that he would misbehave and give them a pretext for expelling him. José, having never known love, assumed that this was simply the way life was and so it didn’t bother him at all.

Christmas Eve arrived. The village priest was on holiday and all the pupils had to go to mass in a church some distance from the village. The girls and boys walked along, chatting about what they would find the next day beside the shoes they left out for Father Christmas: fashionable clothes, expensive toys, chocolates, skateboards, and bicycles. Since it was a special day, they were all well-dressed, all except José, who was wearing his usual ragged clothes and the same battered sandals several sizes too small (his aunt had given them to him when he was four, saying that he would only get a new pair when he was ten). Some of the children asked why he was so poor and said they would be ashamed to have a friend who wore such clothes and shoes. Since José had never known love, their questions and comments didn’t bother him at all.

However, when they went into the church, and he heard the organ playing and saw the bright lights and the congregation in their Christmas finery, saw families gathered together and parents embracing their children, José felt he was the most wretched of creatures. After communion, instead of walking back home with the others, he sat down on the steps of the church and began to cry. He may never have known love, but only at that moment did he understand what it was to be alone and helpless and abandoned by everyone.

Just then, he noticed another small boy beside him, barefoot and apparently as poor as he was. He had never seen the boy before and so assumed that he must have walked a long way to get there. He thought: ‘His feet must be really sore. I’ll give him one of my sandals. That will at least relieve half of his pain.’ Although José had never known love, he knew about suffering and didn’t want others to experience it too. He gave one of his sandals to the boy and returned home with the other one. He wore the sandal first on his right foot and then on his left, so that he didn’t bruise the soles of his feet too badly on the stones along the way. As soon as he reached home, his aunt noticed that he was wearing only one sandal and told him that if he didn’t find the other sandal the next day, he would be harshly punished.

José went to bed feeling very afraid because he knew what his aunt’s punishments were like. He lay all night trembling with fear, barely able to sleep at all, and then, just as he was about to drowse off, he heard voices in the front room. His aunt rushed in, demanding to know what was going on. Still groggy from lack of sleep, José joined their visitors and, in the middle of the front room, saw the sandal he had given to the little boy. Now, however, it was surrounded by all kinds of toys, bicycles, skateboards and clothes. The neighbors were shouting and screaming, declaring that their children had been robbed, because when they woke up, they had found nothing beside their shoes at all.

At this point, the priest from the church where they ad celebrated mass the previous day arrived all out of breath: on the steps of the church a statue of the Baby Jesus had appeared, clothed entirely in gold, but wearing only one sandal. Silence fell, everyone present praised God and his miracles, and the aunt wept and begged for forgiveness. And José’s heart was filled with the energy and the meaning of Love.

Disclaimer: This was not written by me, but a great author paulo coelho. I just felt it is very good so I posted it here.

Jeopardy at gym

Recently have been eating more than what a normal person should eat and this has inflated me much faster than a hot air balloon (now my friends call me football). I had acquired so much fat that a walrus would think that I am its distant cousin.

So to reduce the overgrown midsection I joined the college gym. My first impression of gym was “why the hell have they put so many mirrors here” (perhaps to show how fat I am from all sides). I got up in the morning 5:30 and started out to gym. It had been long time since I came out of house at this hour. The whole lane looked like a ghost town. As I walked down the lane a dog started following me, after a few minutes another dog joined in. then another dog joined in and started growling at me. This brought about ten dogs from no-where. All the dogs started barking at me. This was the most frightful situation I have ever been. I was sweating and shaking from head to toe, not knowing what to do I started running and all the dogs got excited and started chasing me. One god even snapped at me and got a piece of my pants. I ran as fast as I could and jumped into a nearby house. Phew this was the scariest moment in my entire life. The owner of the house woken up by all the noise came out with a cricket bat in his hand and chased away all the dogs. I thanked him with all my heart and made my way to gym, with a stick and some stones.

Finally I entered the gym hall, some people had already started working out. When I came in everyone looked at me as if a international sumo wrestler had just walked in. I went straight to the instructor’s office and knocked at the door. But the instructor had not yet come so I went back to gym hall and started walking on the treadmill. I had not even finished 1 lap and I was panting like a dog and had to stop for a drink. I saw some dumbbells lying nearby and a really dumb idea struck my head. I took a pair of 7.5 kg dumbbells and tried to lift it. Most of my fellow body builders were gaping at me. I did 2 counts and there was a sever pain in my left arm. The pain increased so rapidly that I couldn’t even keep the dumbbells down. I just rolled over like a gunny bag of peanuts. Thanks to the people looking at me they lifted me and took me to the hospital. A nice big guy had a car and gave me a ride.

The ride to hospital was memorable because the car I was sitting was a modified Skoda. He was driving at such a terrible speed that he could have been selected as F1 driver instead of Narain Karthikeyan. When we arrived at the hospital the doctor was sleeping on one of the beds reserved for patients. The nice bug guy bluntly shook him. The doctor was in such deep slumber that he screamed Ahhhh!

The doctor was surprised to such an extent that there was no trace of sleepiness after that. He examined my arm and gave me an injection. The needle was so big that it was probably ment for a cow but since I was so fat he used it on me. He said that I had a muscle tear, and had to rest my arm for a whole month.

The lesson learnt by this incident was dumbbells are for dumb people so be careful before you lift a dumbbell.