Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Middle-aged Biker Blues
More than ever, a feeling's creeping up on me that I am beginning to resemble the bike. As the thirties roll around my mind, I can feel the flexible approaches to the past fall away. Tool kits in the bike have reduced to just a spare plug and s-panner but at the same time, my insane willingness to wax and clean has leaned away a bit. Probably from years of knowing years of doing the same have not made metal into titanium. All I got was a highly glossed tank and body panels.
Now for the resemblance bit - ever got off the bike and started walking; for the first five minutes, I notice myself pulling changes in direction from my shoulder, leaning into the traffic and cutting diagonal lines through crowds. Gliding: avoiding acceleration and braking. The bike(s) haven't changed much. Apart from the usual personalisation touches such as butterfly stickers, they still do as much as ever and just that. I returned from work last evening to bump into the Akshay whose Rustking/Jasmine would not start. We took the head off, checked the points, poked and pawed all over and inside the carburettor, pushed and kicked. I even got the thin end of a spark plug embedded into the palm of my hand while using a ratchet spanner that slipped. Sultry Delhi evening with all the usual gurlas taking walks up and down the colony street wondering about the two sweaty guys trying to bring a be-he(-he-)moth to life. Dumb lives they must lead if all they can do in the evenings is wear light cotton thingys and walk up and down the same short road in front of their house every evening - can't be much intellectual stimulation in that.
Not that too many people are looking for anything else or are found on a strange street. Same streets where Akshay has shown me three other Yezdis/Jawas parked. Some trawl in twos to bike-spot while others trawl in twos to boy-spot. Get the ambien-c? Everyone's in a rut - those who plonk down for the available automobile for x,y or z consideration might even put a wine cooler in the back but above the skin, they all are the same. I got off the big bus called 'The Usual' and grabbed a lift on an anchorism and it has got me so far - deeper into the woods but at least I've found friends a small backyard where I can take things apart-by-part with my hands after grinding my brain at work.
Currently filled with five bikes: Wily's Stranger that I borrowed on his birthday when mine wouldn't start; Mukesh's Roadking that needs a tank patch up and is currently plugged with m-seal (note to firang peeps: putty adhesive stuff); my Bird Flu who needs a set of bearings and a front suspension overhaul. The front suspension took me four days and five attempts to get right, just to have the shock absorber oil drain out in the next three to four weeks. The arrival of the unobitiquous clank from the front end on bumps meant that I got off her and took out the Black Rider (another of mine).
I just gave in to my poverty and bought a set of chinese bearings for Bird's wheels. Where an Indian brand (say 6304 or some such size) costs around 180/- the chinese ones cost just 30/- (each). I had a slangy exchange with Wily who thinks chinese bearings are 'baaaad' but I am willing to take a cheap chance with my wheel bearings. Mind, just my wheel bearings. For the insides of the engine, I shall be big in budget and buy the mostest expensives kinds arounds.
I'm still looking for the tungsten tipped bolt that i found for Bruiser's contact breaker points. Once I do, I shall start it up and let the Akshay listen to a 60 year old engine. He ought to before his month's holidays are up and he goes back to chennai for his auto engrr. We also bought bearings for the Hero Kangaroo bycycle and that should come up in this month itself.
Before anyone points out that there is more to life than bikes, there's also a bass guitar to practise and the new Terry Pratchett's Science of Discworld Vol 3 (Darwin's Watch) to finish reading and awwww..................life is continous maintenance as usual.
Nobody stops me rolling!
- arunesh
Friday, June 20, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
I wake
I roll
I clean my pipes
I clean your panels
We roll out
as per plan
I leave you
(maybe out in the rain)
You rust and chew my butt
I leave you again
You decide you dont like my plans
I pick her up
You chew me up again
I give up
Either of you will call me again
Maybe I need another plan.
I roll
I plan and pet your panels at the same time
I polish your panels
open communication channels
I paint your pipes -
weekend attention thing types
etcetera,...
We roll again;
She dosen't.
Kickstart Lungs is the name of the condition you develop when a y-bike wont start...
" I dont know why I love her like I do
All the changes you put me through
Take my money, my cigarettes
I havent seen the worst of it yet
I wanna know that youll tell me
I love to stay" *
Kickstart lungs is the name of the condition you develop when a single hunk of two stroke machinery wont start. Life comes telescoping down the funnel spigot of fate's drain and you are more than overwhelmed by the end. Buried, snowed under the absence of further possibilities. If it happens to you in a delhi summer, you get wet with sweat and your breath imitates a pair of leaky cloth bellows. Malviya nagar girls, mostly fair - the ones with heels on their chappals are distinctly uncool while the ones in flat chappals are mod. Things you can't notice then but remember later.
Beer cans in my bag, the girl at the end of the road waiting. Market boys offer to push while making suggestions that i slug a beer there itself to replenish loss of body fluids - dosent get too far. Call the Coyote who tells me to tilt and kick. This after an hours attempts have run me argound like a beached whale. Thinking things like, 'ah, milady will take care of the shambles the bike has made me, I get on and ride the thing (Stranger, they call it!)finally; hoping the breeze will dry my shirt out.
"I dont know why you treat me so bad
Think of all the things we could have had
Love is an ocean that I cant forget
My sweet sixteen I would never regret" *
Get from station to station like, to find milady engrossed in a movie. For some (obvious to yez-riders!!!) reason i don't bother to ask which one it was. Hang around and face the cold wave moving from her face glued to the monitor towards me. I take it into the kitchen and get the beers and act like the leftover vegetables from yesterday's weekly market.
"I dont know why I love you like I do
All the troubles you put me through
Sixteen candles there on my wall
And here am I the biggest fool of them all" *
After setting the poor girl up, can any man affect a cool and suave attitude when on the way the yezdi took an hour to start? I give up and offer this lil bit of advise:
Avoid dates when yr bike wouldn't start along the way.
Maybe it's the hand of fate, maybe it's your clutch plates, in any case its a loosing fight that all of us who know what it feels like smile at the memories of the pain and understand that to own a y-bike is to take on a personal cross that you bear much to the cynosure of all around but the vital connection with the bike. I swear, its a rare yezdi owner who will leave the bike behind and continue.
"I wanna know that youll tell me
I love to stay
Take me to the river and drop me in the water
Dip me in the river, drop me in the water
Washing me down, washing me down." *
After the long fight trying to start the bike, you get like Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway] and you no longer want to leave behind what nearly killed you because even this has become part of you and your lifestory and regardless of the ugly bits of the experience, what ever it is- it is yours. It's like a connection or a bond with something - anything, which takes you to the limits of yourself or depths and stays with you through it all. Can't explain it too much, it all sounds 'fishy.' In case of Yezdis, I just call it the Union Mechanica. A mystical union between man and (muddahfuggin!!) machine.
Peace and twin-pipe rule,
- arunesh
* Take me to the River (song lyrics) - Talking Heads (which i am fixiated by because adrian bellew plays this excrutiating solo in the studio version which reminds me of the sound made by a running seizure the yezdi happens)
All the changes you put me through
Take my money, my cigarettes
I havent seen the worst of it yet
I wanna know that youll tell me
I love to stay" *
Kickstart lungs is the name of the condition you develop when a single hunk of two stroke machinery wont start. Life comes telescoping down the funnel spigot of fate's drain and you are more than overwhelmed by the end. Buried, snowed under the absence of further possibilities. If it happens to you in a delhi summer, you get wet with sweat and your breath imitates a pair of leaky cloth bellows. Malviya nagar girls, mostly fair - the ones with heels on their chappals are distinctly uncool while the ones in flat chappals are mod. Things you can't notice then but remember later.
Beer cans in my bag, the girl at the end of the road waiting. Market boys offer to push while making suggestions that i slug a beer there itself to replenish loss of body fluids - dosent get too far. Call the Coyote who tells me to tilt and kick. This after an hours attempts have run me argound like a beached whale. Thinking things like, 'ah, milady will take care of the shambles the bike has made me, I get on and ride the thing (Stranger, they call it!)finally; hoping the breeze will dry my shirt out.
"I dont know why you treat me so bad
Think of all the things we could have had
Love is an ocean that I cant forget
My sweet sixteen I would never regret" *
Get from station to station like, to find milady engrossed in a movie. For some (obvious to yez-riders!!!) reason i don't bother to ask which one it was. Hang around and face the cold wave moving from her face glued to the monitor towards me. I take it into the kitchen and get the beers and act like the leftover vegetables from yesterday's weekly market.
"I dont know why I love you like I do
All the troubles you put me through
Sixteen candles there on my wall
And here am I the biggest fool of them all" *
After setting the poor girl up, can any man affect a cool and suave attitude when on the way the yezdi took an hour to start? I give up and offer this lil bit of advise:
Avoid dates when yr bike wouldn't start along the way.
Maybe it's the hand of fate, maybe it's your clutch plates, in any case its a loosing fight that all of us who know what it feels like smile at the memories of the pain and understand that to own a y-bike is to take on a personal cross that you bear much to the cynosure of all around but the vital connection with the bike. I swear, its a rare yezdi owner who will leave the bike behind and continue.
"I wanna know that youll tell me
I love to stay
Take me to the river and drop me in the water
Dip me in the river, drop me in the water
Washing me down, washing me down." *
After the long fight trying to start the bike, you get like Hemmingway's Old Man and the Sea [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway] and you no longer want to leave behind what nearly killed you because even this has become part of you and your lifestory and regardless of the ugly bits of the experience, what ever it is- it is yours. It's like a connection or a bond with something - anything, which takes you to the limits of yourself or depths and stays with you through it all. Can't explain it too much, it all sounds 'fishy.' In case of Yezdis, I just call it the Union Mechanica. A mystical union between man and (muddahfuggin!!) machine.
Peace and twin-pipe rule,
- arunesh
* Take me to the River (song lyrics) - Talking Heads (which i am fixiated by because adrian bellew plays this excrutiating solo in the studio version which reminds me of the sound made by a running seizure the yezdi happens)
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
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