Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Y-nudr (sh)Long Ride back Home


Off the sand and up the dusty berm onto the road, for a brief moment I thought I could catch up with mickey ahead. Up the flyover and down the long road filled with trucking interlopers and pesky mass produced plumbing jobs otherwise known as modern third world automobiles. Long flyovers and average speeds of 80, she flies with front legs in the air as i shmoodle down further onto the back seat to take the weight off the front end. Two weeks or leaking suspension/shock absorber oil had left the front suspension going 'clunk-clunk' on bumps. Piston heart pump on the right wrist and we were sliding up to car corners and looking for the edge to flip the whole bike through. New speedometer showing 130 km on the odometer, since I just connected up the thing in the morning. Needless to say, the actual mileage that I was getting was a little lower than the one in my mind. However, she still flew. Throaty rumbles that expand into more urgent growl/roar that the Y-bike makes when you ask the two-stroke engine to take on traffic. It's not really like the blatant beat of a Bullet which seems more like an onomatopoeic 'blat' at speed.
Long rides are good for knocking out rust and driving away (from) people but can be hell on the back by the end of the week, I seemed to have the same ten-pager cover article to write up for the magazine where I work, in the morning. Weekends have been swinging but I'm not too sure if that it was the wind or the way it was, I definitely knew the way I was on the way back from...stopped at an all-night petrol bunk for some 'pre-mixed' 2% oil fuel that I usually never touch. My pockets were empty so was the 100ml cough syrup bottle I carry my Castrol GTX in. See I don't trust the 2-T oil available. 20w-50 for me always.
Missed the DK roundabout and took a clover-sloper turn back on track, heading straight down the ring road. It would be an hour before I crossed the river home. The nice thing about long rides is the fact that in the middle of one, you scarcely get much space to think beyond the thrill vibrating with and through you. Till I crossed the south extension flyover, a rather longish one with the usual trucks overtaking each other who only pause to notice you if you come close and make a noise. On top of the flyover, somewhere around 80, the engine went into a scurrying squeal and sounded like a tin sheet wrapping itself around a gear sprocket. The back wheel spun free of the engine without any power transmitting to the rear wheel. Well, what does one do in such situations. I'd already done my connecting before the ride, so I wasn't too panicky about it. The engine squealed and I had to shut throttle hoping that nothing had broken inside the engine. At the same time I was hoping to carry on rolling till the flyover started to slope down. We only coasted a few meters, still far from the point where we would start rolling down. A 30-second pause, followed by a heartfelt attempt at the kick starter; she started. Engine sounding scragged from the pre-mix fuel, we kept it to a lowly 60kmph till the bridge and the rest of the way home. A minor seizure, I suspect and plan to open her up and take a look inside this weekend. Till then, trust me when I insist that sometimes bikes get you there and back while those who carry on don't

1 comment:

Abhijith said...

A great ride indeed I see, I feel the same acceleration riding up & down flyovers & happen to have experienced a few seizures in my bike while riding on Palm Beach road in Navi Mumbai, it feels bad when the engine seizes this way.

Today While riding on the long Bridge to cross over from over Mumbai, to Navi Mumbai, my left muffler just made a rocket take off from my silencer but I managed to stop with less traffic around me & retrieved the muffler from the road without getting damaged but lost the outer cup.

The noise out of an unmufflered Yezdi CL2 is the best noise one could hear & it feels like a high octane speed racer, riding at 70-80 Kmph is absolute sweet music.