My first bike race, My first accident and My stalking demon-on-a-cycle!

It's Sunday! You know what that is? RACE DAY!

So today was the last day of the 2010 BBCh or Bangalore Bicycle Championship, determined to ensure that I made myself a member of this cycling community, and obviously to race as hard as I could.

So, the night before, I set my alarms (2 of them!) to wake me up at 6:30 am so that I have enough time to wake up and feel awake to cycle there by 7:30. Woke up to the 6:15 alarm, hit the dismiss button, looked at the time, ‘yea I still have time to sleep a bit more’. Went back to sleep, and woke up at 6:45, thought again. Yea I got time... Woke up at 7!

SHIT!

After a quick wash and a banana, I was off on my bike. Since this was going to be a race, I decided to pace myself getting there; I was on the road at 7:10 so I had 20 minutes. It took me 15 to get from Edward road, to Mekhri Circle. I was panicking a bit, but good my good old brain decided to turn on for a second and tell me, ‘Wait, fool! The race starts at 8! You’re just supposed to try and be there by 7:30’

With this new found time, I coasted down the road to the Raman Research Institute.

The race that I was going to take part in was a criteria race, just think a circuit race, but with a time limit and no lap limit. You’re supposed to race around a track for one hour. The people whom haven’t been lapped are first. And the best way to remember how far down you are is to just count how many times the same person passes you.

So the track looks something like this. It was around .9 km in length and was full of tight technical corners at the end of the starting stretch, eventually you’re heading back to the start but you peel off the main road onto a pathway where a murderous s-bend makes the perfect choke point. After that it’s straight down past a warehouse and an inclined turn which eventually leads to the end of the main road. Here, you have to take a right onto a dirt track right before you turn off to the end of the lap.

I got myself a race number, number 369 to be precise. And I love it! Even better when people are trying to call it out,

“Number 963,”

“No.”

“693? Oh! 369!”

I took a few warm up laps and the only thought floating through my head was that this was my first race, the first time I was competitively going against other bikers. I was shit scared when I saw the 90 degree turns and imagined myself trying to deal with those turns with like 10 bikers behind me, especially in the first lap where everyone was grouped together, and if one person falls he can take out as many as 15 people. (So really tempting, but the last thing I wanted was the whole of Bangalore’s cycling scene after me!

The next worry was the s-turn, it was an attempt to make the track longer and get to the other side of the buildings, but the trade off was quite worrisome and rather entertaining as it negated the entire previous section. The turn is so narrow so any speed you might have got to separate you from the pack is gone as you have got to be like Lance Armstrong or something to make that turn in one go. Once you’re out of that turn, there is a mad dash to separate yourself from the group.

It was with these concerns that I sat waiting for the whistle to be blown at the start. In hindsight, I started the race with an incorrect mindset, by thinking of my potential downfalls and the chance of my knees killing me in the race, it messed up my psyche and thus my race.

I must have been in the 4^th row of cyclists on the start. As soon as the whistle blew, the Kynkyny team was off with number 69 at the front. I pushed myself, I needed to break away from the pack so I poured on the speed and was able to make the first set of turns with no problems.  My favourite part of the whole track was the straight to the turns leading to the lap line. It was a muddy rocky road, giving me on a mountain bike a huge advantage over the roadsters, and at the end, there was a small perimeter which over time had sunk in, giving me a perfect spot for snaking off a millisecond or 5!

The first few laps were good, and then the Kynkyny team came again. When I saw that I was getting lapped on like the 3^rd lap, I got to say, it was pretty damn demoralising. Then 2 laps later again, and then again, and again. In the 10 laps I did, I was lapped 4 times. It sucked.

Sadly, the race was called off as a cyclist took a nasty tumble on turn 2. As he was rushed off to hospital thanks to a pre-requested ambulance, the big-wigs in BBCh decided that it was just too dangerous a track and as people got tired, there would be some serious risks.

I watched the kiddie race and rooted them on and then headed back home.

Heading home was also a rather interesting ride.

So I snuck out from the side as there was a prize ceremony that was going to happen and I didn’t want to be the sore-loser who left as they got their prizes and plus, my mom was having a big lunch at home.

I started off and reached the traffic light, I stopped like a good cyclist, but as soon as the light turned green, bang I was at 30kmph in like 5 seconds and I kept it up till I hit 40kmph. Thrilled by the speed rush I settled for an uneventful ride home.

Oh how wrong I was.

 

In the map, point A is where it all went down. Completely my fault FYI.

  

So, I was travelling down Jayamahal road at 30kmph or 25kmph with this really slow cyclist in front of me. I was asking him to move (okay, I asked him once) to let me go past. We must have been 5 ft from the pavement on the road, so I figured, let me move inside and overtake him.

Big mistake.

I moved into the lane and the first thing I see was a woman and her gigantic sweeper trolley. I was 10 feet from her and so I immediately jammed on my brakes determined not to hit the trolley cause that’d damage the bike, me and possibly her too.

I’m braking and I feel my front wheel slowing down way, way too fast, and much faster that my back tyre. At this point, I’m sure my subconscious must have told me:

“Dude, you’re going to fall.”

“But I can...”

“DUDE! You are GOING to FALL!”

Just then my front wheel came to a halt and me and the rest of the bike when smack into it, I relaxed my hands and felt myself rising off my seat, and it was almost instant, I was outwardly thinking,  “what the hell is happening” as I was falling through the air. I stretched out my palms and absorbed most of the force with my gloves, I slid onto the pavement and felt each one of my limbs make contact with the same surface.

This all must have taken 5 seconds.

So I snapped out of my mild level of shock and just out of frustration or whatever, I asked the sweeper woman what she was doing! It took me a minute but I got up and apologised to her, and told her it wasn’t her fault. And it wasn’t, it was that stupid git on the slow bike and the effect he had on me.

I lifted up my bike from the ground and assessed the damage, the front wheel was intact (Thank God!) but it had been twisted from the centre, a quick clasp with my legs and a twist and it was back to normal... well kind of.

Telling the woman sorry once again (I think I scared her: P) I continued home, as I approached the next turn I pressed on my rear wheel brakes, and they weren’t responding, forcing me to stop. I couldn’t find a problem so I continued with my hand on the front wheel brakes. I later found out that the metal casing for the brake was bent in so the breaks weren’t really responding.

NOTE – This situation was only after the fall.

As I neared home, I felt like I was in a bad movie with a crappy running joke. This joke, for the next km I saw the guy who provoked me into falling like 3 times, and each time I overtook him and he just managed to pop ahead every minute!

Way to make my injury a joke! Get some demon to mock me whilst I cycle in pain.

Intense stuff but, oh so much fun.

Preparation for the Race

As some of you may know, I've started cycling and have really gotten into it, thanks to Vivek Radhakrishnan, for giving me an enthusiastic introduction to it!

I had been looking forward for this race the whole week, the day that I returned from that 50 km ride, I was thinking about the next race. On Friday, I ended my internship, to be honest; one of my reasons was that I really wanted to cycle, to lose weight, and to ensure that I built up endurance for the eventual 200km brevet ride in January 2011.

So to prepare for this I had been promising myself that I’d fix my seat so that I could sit comfortably and race at my true potential. Full of confidence in light of my new found freedom, I decided; let me fix my seat Friday evening itself!

So I went down, and slid out my bike, I started by spraying WD-40 to loosen it up, no luck, so I thought to myself, let me remove the seat!

10 minutes later, the seats removed, and I go to work at it with pliers, wrenches and a hammer. The god-damned pole just would not budge!

Finally, I’m sick of this so I decide, “forget it, better to have my seat than to not have one!” I look down at the pieces of my seat and I realise, ‘Shit! How do I put this back together?’

After much struggling, I succeeded, the seat was back on and I went up to my bed having spent 1 ½ hours with a net result of a big fat 0.

Saturday morning, I kept thinking, let’s go and get more WD-40 (I had finished what was left the previous night) or let me go to the bike shop and get them to fix it.

Saturday came and went, and I just never got down to it, looks like the race just got even harder.

Just imagine climbing up Everest, that’s hard right?

Now remove your clothes and climb, THAT’S Harder!

Magic is Might - Movie Review

So I just saw Harry Potter and the deathly hallows again, it gave an opportunity to look further into the themes of the movie

----------------SPOILER ALERT! -----------

Please stop reading, and consider watching Harry Potter 7 or studying your Nazi Germany History!

First of all, I apologise if anyone finds me comparing a children’s book to a genocidical murderer wrong, but the truth is, that it just shows how JK Rowling used history to develop her plots.

The most evident theme to me is the relation that seems to have been made with Voldemort and the Death Eaters to Hitler and his SS.

In the Harry Potter novels, it's brought to light that Voldemort despite being an enforcer of pure blood, is a half blood. This is very similar to Hitler, who believed in his Nazi supremacist theory, of the tall blond haired, blue eyed human when he himself was short, brown haired and brown eyed. This trait was seen in many of the supporters of Hitler, Himmler to name one, just like Snape, a half-blood who hung in the pure blood crowd.

The ideologies supported by both parties are clear. Hitler had his concentration camps and everything else. Voldemort was clear that he wanted the pure-blooded to rule and to force the others (muggles, to an extent Half-bloods) into hiding or into prisons. With the happiness-draining Dementors one can be sure that the prison would have been like a concentration camp.

Next the ministry of magic, the way the ministry is usurped and good old voldie takes control is similar to how Hitler pushed other parties out places of power and made himself leader of Germany. The words Magic Is Might is an indicator to the supremacist ideals of the new ministry, akin to that of Nazi Germany. The same goes for the registration of muggle-born which can be compared to images of Jews having to have bands for identification.

The pamphlets being made in the ministry are the final example I can think of that shows a relation to Nazi's and the Ministry; the booklets are very similar in both design and content as posters seen in Germany.

In the end, I must mention that these comparisons to Nazi Germany are very well executed as it shows the clear dictatorship of the harry potter universe, something which is vital to the seventh book. The dark theme of the movie really show the despair of the universe and the character as compared to all of the other 6 movies, all which had plenty of happy scenes and the thrilling sights of Hogwarts.

Food for thought, no?

To the Airport

Hi everyone,
So, yesterday, I attempted my very first solo ride towards Bangalore International Airport. From my house it is around 35 km so I was attempting a round trip of 70 km.

The night before, I filled up some 1.5 liters of Gatorade and ensured that I had like 4 alarms to wake me up so I could leave on time.

In a city like Bangalore, if you were to plan on cycling a long distance on a route that includes main roads and national highways, unless you are out of the city by 7, you are doomed, even on a Sunday, there can be enough traffic to hold you up and severely ruin your travel time.

I hit the road at 6:20 am and the sun was just rising, I decided to use the downhill portions at my disposal to cut some time off the start of my trip. By the time my distance passed 3.5km I had spent 11 minutes on the road. This was not a good sign, as it is very little in so much time! Just as I realised this, I ran head on into an unfinished road.

Every Bangalorean knows about the pothole problems of the city, the same goes for the unfinished roads. Every time a road is re-laid with tar and everything, within 2 months, the road has massive potholes. Whether it is because of the traffic density or lack of adequate drainage, both very present in Bangalore or just some scam done by the developers to ensure that they can continuously get paid to do the same shabby job. Either way, the city has horrible roads and this can be a hazard to both people and cyclists.

So as soon as I hit this segment I try and move to the side, but, 7 am is nearing and so cars are already on the road. I start to slow down and hit a rock. The next part happened almost in slow motion. My bottle with a third of my water supply managed to fly up and out of my bottle holder and as I turned and stopped, it landed on the road. The next 30 seconds were spent praying that the oncoming cars would be ever-so-kind to avoid the bottle and I kid you not, a few cars moved to hit the bottle and pulled away at the last second. Thankfully, a gentleman who had been walking on the road due to the non-existent pavement saw a gap in the traffic, before I could even move to get the bottle he had deftly reached in through the traffic to snatch up my bottle. After saying thank you, I was off again.

The next segment contained a lot of downhill portions and so, I aimed to pick up as much speed as I could. As soon as I felt the road slope downwards, I punched my cycle from 4th gear to 5th and kept my speed at 30 kmph. The first flyover approached and I knew I needed all the speed I could get to reach the long downhill portion. I hit the uphill at 35 kmph and pushed myself till I reached the top of the flyover, ready for the downhill.

To be honest, this was the best part of the whole route. I peddled and peddled as I zoomed down the flyover, keeping my eye on my speedometer, I watched with shear jubilation as my speed rose from 35 to 40 to 49 and finally to 50 kmph. This was enough to push me over the next flyover and my renewed enthusiasm was enough to get keep a speed of 32 kmph, as compared to my usual 25 kmph average. I was still celebrating my achievement after one hour when I moved down from 7th gear to 6th and heard a crunch, followed by a brief moment of panic as I was unable to peddle, not wanting to get run over by a car or something, I immediately stopped and looked upon a very familiar sight.

On Wednesday, my cycle chain had slipped from the gears between the frame and the gears. After spending my morning seeing how to fix it, I did. This was followed by a visit to a cycle store to get my gears and brakes checked, the weasel there guaranteed me that everything was in order. For Bangalorean Cyclists, this shop was Firefox on St. Johns road.

Thankfully I knew how to fix the chain back on my bike, it's very simple actually, and there is a video walkthrough on wikihow. You loosen the knob that holds the wheel in place so that the frame moves away from the gears ever so slightly, just so that the chain is no longer stuck but simply between the gears and the frame. Once this happens, push the peddle forward so that the chain is slack, with your other hand, carefully move the chain back onto the gears and if you need to rotate the peddles so that it is moving smoothly. Tighten the knob and your set once again.

Heaving a sigh of relief that it wasn't anything more serious, I remounted my saddle and continued on my journey, again on a downhill which can give you some serious speed. I pushed myself down the hill and was faced with two routes; one was a flyover (Hebbal flyover) or the route below, which had no road, but rather a train crossing. Not wanting to lose my speed, I checked behind me for any large vehicles (cars, buses, lorries, etc) not seeing any, I zoomed up the flyover. I reached the top and was able to see a beautiful vista of Hebbal. Turning to the East, I saw the sun rise, in a magnificent red, it had managed to turn the morning sky pink and orange, for the first time that day, and I hit myself for not taking my camera.

At the start of the highway (NH 7) I, lost all my speed from a wretched bus which had stopped for no reason at a bus stop, people weren't getting into the bus but it still waited there. I moved over to the service lane as I'm still unable to make it up uphill stretches in one go. I check the time, and was thrilled to see that only 25 minutes had elapsed and I had covered almost 10 km. for those keeping score, that's 7km in 14 minutes, including the chain problem.

Pretty content with my speed and distance, I started walking my bike up the hill. I wasn't cycling up it because I couldn't and two, I needed to stretch my legs, my bike seat has gotten itself jammed so my leg doesn't get a full extension when I peddle. 3/4 up the hill, two bikers passed me looking like real pros with wrap around shades, packs on their backs and coolly peddling up the hill that I'd had so much problem over. Pissed and at the same time challenged by them, I got on my bike and started moving up the hill.

For all of you who have never met me, I am a bit of a talker, not necessarily to others, but to myself. And when I’m alone, it's even more (I could just think in my head but really when no one is around, why talk in your head?) So as I was covering the last 1/4 of the hill, my mind began to wander about the bikes gears and the relation between momentum and speed. When you increase your gear, you increase your speed, but you keep your momentum the same. Similarly, when your momentum begins to fall, you lower your gears to reduce your speed and increase your momentum so that it's constant.

I reached the top of the hill and zoomed off hitting 40 kmph.

The segment on the highway was filled with uphills and very few downhills. As I pushed myself through them I kept an eye out for those cyclists whom I was determined to catch up with. I passed Jakkur, and hit the halfway point for the airport with ease at 17km. by now; my knees were starting to bitch. I moved over again onto the service lane as an uphill approached.

The next break I took was near the turning for the Canadian International School. At this point I was convinced that I wouldn't be able to make it to the airport. I checked my distance and said to myself, okay, let me try to get to 20 km.

I moved on and begun to realise I was approaching the Yelahanka Airforce Base, after it, I knew that there was a long downhill followed by a climb back up another hill. I thought I should turn back, that I would never be able to do the next section. Suddenly, a small voice in the back of my head (really, everyone, I am not insane) said, you're not feeling tired yet, c'mon you can make it up this hill when you get there you decide if you want to turn back.

I followed its direction and managed to get to around 22 km, 3 km short of the entrance to the airport segment. I turned back as the sun was starting to get rather bright. And I knew I had to make it back as well!

I ended up stopping on the way back. Roping the return with the rest of the journey I did 37 km in 1 hour and 45 minutes. From there to my home 15 km, took me 1 hour, but with traffic and the sun in full force I don't think it was so bad.

That was my first long distance solo ride, I didn't get to my goal but I feel that it was quite an accomplishment for me. I covered 50 km and I showed myself that I could do the peddling if I put myself to it.

About this Blog

Hi everyone, this blog is an insight into the crazy world we live in, hence the title Inside the Asylum.

The posts here may be about crazy scenes I've seen while walking/cycling around Bangalore, or they may be about the problems the city faces.
I am an amateur photographer, so be prepared for some photos!
There will also be occasional posts about the world news and reviews of movies which I find hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

I hope that you like infrequent posts cause that's what this will be. Oh, and thanks for reading!