Friday, April 07, 2006

Lance Jay's Expedition.

In news, Sujee, a friend of mine flew down from US marking the completion of his business trip. Speaking of Sujee, transports me back to that time ..........till that time my left foot hurts .....! Okie .. now go on .... read further to know what hapenned ....!


Once upon a time, in the pre IT boom era of medieval Bangalore , a new bicycle was launched. Bicycles ..er ....bikes as they were called ........were the in stuffs then. Street Cat, a 'bike' that had a funky seat and slick tyres. When, Street Cat was a rage, the world was wondering..... *exaggeration* that was the best 'biking' could get for a while........... and then Atlas Rebel was launched. Robust, rugged and tough .. this was one hell of a 'bike'. Sujee, one of the early birds, was a proud owner of this 'mean machine' .... er .... yeah that was in Std VII, now what was that smirk for??? ;-)


Anyway, the bike was delivered to his residence and he was all excited. Yes, we had to go on a ride on our respective bikes. When 'Tour de Tippasandra' , comes calling can Lance Jay be far away? Huh? *Any smirks on my name being derived from the legend is uncalled far* Oh, that reminds me ......at that point , before placing my order for a new bike, I had a "Raleigh" bicycle. No, it was not a bike!! It was a bicycle, what my grand dad had purchased for Rs.98 long back. Yes, i chose to ride that 'bicycle' and yes we were 'paralleling' ( thats bike speak for going parallel on on a busy road ;-)). It was a steep down and we guys were crusing along. Rebel was gliding along smoothly, when .... I had to do some additional work to keep my Raleigh in parallel.



At a certain point ...... I could sense a eerie silence but an expression of shock in Sujee's countenance. As i traced what he was looking at, i realized something startling ........ the brake shoes of the back wheel ....were just dangling . One look at them , seemed they were mocking at me !! In despair, i try the front wheel brakes, hoping for some support! No .... I guess fate had other plans ........... there were no brake shoes in the first place!


Survival, being the most basic instinct, kicked in .....! Sujee moved to my right, a human shield, to avoid me being exposed directly to the traffic. It's good to have friends. :-) I had to come to a crash halt and i had to evaluate my options soon. I was gathering more pace as the gradient was tilting to the higher side. I had a few options , each one of them measured up as the deep blue sea to the other devil. There we remnants of a borewell, a set of logs and a sand heap near a construction site. Borewells and logs seemed a higher risk and the sand heap seemed the safest. I navigated , used my foot to reduce some pace and directed the bicycle towards the sand heap. THUD!!! The contact with the heap jolted me right from the vehicle and i was hurled to some distance, as i just shielded my cranial section to avoid any concussions!! THUD!! It took some time to come in grips with the situation and as i just managed to get back on foot, i retraced my path back to the crash site. I was still wondering, how a sand heap could inflict such damage ...! The crash site , had an indication that what lay there was my bicycle and as i carefully noticed, the heap was not a sand heap at all! It was hardened concrete!! Some, good samaritan had covered it with sand!I wondered what his(/her) intention, could have been, behind such an altruitsic gesture!!Let me guess ..... maybe it was a ploy to trick desperate "crash site hunting cyclist(s)" aka me!!! The borewell or the logs would have been a much better option! Heck, even the traffic wouldn't have hurt this much!!


As i was walking back home that day..... just one thought lingered .... if I could just meet that good samaritan ...........!

4 comments:

aknowkneemoose said...

WHOA!

Hmmm... although you've written the post so it sounds very amusing, you must've been in a lot of pain that day.

I hope something similar happened to that 'good samaritan'... and that he/she has a lump in his/her throat whenever he/she hears the word 'concrete' :p

Khushi said...

'Tour de Tippasandra' n Lance Jay
AWESOME!!!!!
=))

Jay said...

@Moose,

Well, yeah ... I was just looking at the lighter side of things!!


@Khushi,

He he! :-)

Jay said...

Deepa,

Hmm. :-)