 |
| “Our happiest moments always seem to come when we stumble upon one thing while in pursuit of something else.” — Lawrence Block |
28 Sept 2013
Why I Cycle...
27 Sept 2013
25 Sept 2013
Tour Of Kangra '12 ~ post by Aman Puri
It was my first out
station cycling tour and I didn't know what to carry and what to leave out. I
have a bad habit of filling up my bags with everything possible, and I did the
same on this occasion. I was very excited and eager at the thought of riding in
the mountains, though all I knew was that I could use the 24 gears properly, which was essential as knowing the correct use of each gear assumes greater
significance in mountain riding, especially during the climbs.
On the day of the departure, I found myself standing outside Himachal Bhawan with my parents. I didn't know anyone except Supratim who had gone to buy some sweets from Bengali Market due to a delay in departure. As I stood with the other cyclists, a rider came towards me, smiled and said, “Oh! So you are Aman Puri? I have heard a lot about you!” I was quite taken aback coz' though it wasn't anything new, hearing it put like that even before the start of the tour, added to the pressure and put even more responsibility on my shoulders. I smiled back and just said, hello.
On the day of the departure, I found myself standing outside Himachal Bhawan with my parents. I didn't know anyone except Supratim who had gone to buy some sweets from Bengali Market due to a delay in departure. As I stood with the other cyclists, a rider came towards me, smiled and said, “Oh! So you are Aman Puri? I have heard a lot about you!” I was quite taken aback coz' though it wasn't anything new, hearing it put like that even before the start of the tour, added to the pressure and put even more responsibility on my shoulders. I smiled back and just said, hello.
As the bus headed out towards Mclodeganj in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, I began interacting with those sitting near me. I also took some lessons from Supratim who's a
very experienced rider. Next morning when I woke up, there was complete silence as everyone was still asleep. The only sound was that of the bus
driving into the mountains on a beautiful and chilly winter morning in January.
We reached Mclodeganj and were to stay there for the night, the next morning
being the race day. Now the event isn't actually a race, I just like the sound
of the word, it’s basically an exploring tour, riding 300 KM in three days in
the mountains. The next morning as I went downstairs from my room, I was in my cycling gear when Robin Grosner
asked me, “Hey, you are Aman Puri, right? You ride every day? I see your posts on
facebook.“ At the time, I didn’t know him, but again I was surprised and happy
too, as I realised people knew me, so I didn't feel alone in the tour any longer.
Day 1: 40 riders set off
on what was to be a mostly downhill ride of 70 km on the first day. Being my first time in the mountains,
I was going quite fast due to excitement, at times clocking nearly 60-70 kmph on
downhill. The day went off fine as I found riding downhill easy and
didn’t feel any muscle fatigue. The food was good, the butter chicken awesome and I ended up overeating as I was very hungry. It was a pleasant
sight seeing the monks, and I made friends with Raghav Gangotra from Delhi,
Pooja from Mumbai, Robin and Anita from Gurgaon among others.
Day 2: 38 riders started
off on day 2, which was to be the toughest day as the maximum climbing had to be done.
The ride started pretty late, at around 10 am and by then the sun was bright and shining,
so we began slowly. We rode through breathtaking scenery of the majestic mountains in almost pin drop silence with only the sound of birds and our bike chain and tyres. Being Out There had planned the route well
as there was minimal traffic towards this side of the mountains.
I made friends with Sumender, the fastest rider on the tour. He was
training hard for the Leh tour and was always ahead of me at least by 40 min, while
Supratim was 15-20 min ahead of me. As I
said, although it was not a race, I was timing myself. So, Sumender used to be
the 1st one, followed by Supratim and then me. Day 2 was a pretty harsh one and
I still remember how I made those climbs. Although we started together, once everyone
got into their own pace, we rode alone.
It was the last
climb before lunch point, the toughest one, and I was feeling so
hungry that I ate a whole box of chewing gum. I was feeling somewhat weird and
still very hungry, so I looked for some edible leaves, which I guess were Tulsi as I stopped to
rest for 30 min. Then Anita, my newly made friend from day 1, rode in
and came to my aid with some biscuits that she was carrying along. I ate up all of
them and we rode together till the lunch point, which
was a very steep uphill.
After eating Maggie
for lunch, I took off for the remaining 35-40 km. It became completely dark and we
were riding till 8 pm or so. Then when no one reached the end point, the
sweep vehicle came to take us to the BIR paragliding center where we were given rooms
to stay for the night and recover from the hard day of riding 90 km.
Day 3: It was a nice sunny
day again, with around 80 km left to be covered in a mix of downhill and uphill.
After the 40 riders on day 1, we were down to less than 30 riders on day 3. Some riders had gone back home, some had got injured and some had dropped out and were in the sweep vehicle to watch us riding. Since I had plans to
ride the fastest on this day, I wanted everyone to go ahead so I could
ride comfortably on my own.
I was the 3rd or 4th last rider to start. The downhill was
full of gravel and quite slippery as I almost had a fall in the first 10 min of
the ride but luckily managed to retain my balance. But my luck didn't hold out for long as after 30 min, I had a bad fall and slipped downhill on gravel along with my bike for
at least 2 meters. I was bleeding from the scratches on the knee and elbow but
was happy too as it was my first cycling fall. Then as the knee began to hurt, I called up
the emergency numbers we had been given. There was no signal, so I waited for
15 min for somebody to turn up, but when nobody came, I started riding.
Luckily, soon after I came
across a rider from the BSF who had a medical kit. As he started administering
first aid to my bleeding knee, Francis, the reporter from Sports Illustrated magazine came up. He reminded me that he had told me on the previous day not to ride so fast on
downhill. He said that I rode faster than cars and now there I was getting patched up! I
laughed along, saying that I had just happened to lose control this time.
The team asked me
to sit in the car but for me it was just another normal injury. Then the bike
mechanic from Firefox told me the derailleur was damaged and he couldn't be
sure how long it would last. I decided to give it a try and started
riding again, but the derailleur broke after 5 km. I was very sad as now I wouldn't be able to ride my bike and dejectedly sat in the sweep car. But when the car happened to stop after about 2 min, I just knew I had to do it! So, I stepped
out of the car, wore my cycling gear again and told the team to arrange a spare
bike for me. They told me that it was 6-7 km away and asked me to sit inside
again, but I refused and ran till the next point with my injured knee. I was okay although
everyone was giving me shocked looks. I walked/ran till
the next point where I got a BSA bike, It was pretty heavy but I had to ride, so
I started off slowly this time as the bike was new to me and I was scared
of riding on a 1-1 gear combination, which seemed too much with the tough climbs
and a heavy bike only made things worse. But I did it. 
At the end of day 3 and also the end of the tour, Supratim who had also suffered a bad fall and me were taken to the hospital for injections. It was quite bad when they used spirit to clean the wounds, but every bit worth it! The next morning, we headed back to Delhi. The Tour of Kangra was a turning point for me as not only had I gained experience in riding but also made great friends. Apart from Dhananjay and Francis, there was Rajpal who became famous for riding in formals, his son Assespal who was the
youngest rider. Then there was Malhar, a techie from B’lore,
two guys from Hyderabad and Adusyanti, the official photographer with an American
accent, Ashish Kaul from Noida and many others. My first tour in the mountains was an amazing and unforgettable experience. 12 Sept 2013
7 Sept 2013
Another hit-and-run on the x-way!
An eyewitness account of a hit-and-run by Sandeep Phukan
6.09.2013, Greater Noida Expressway: "It would have been one more hit-and-run case, a poor cyclist's life snuffed out by a speeding car, one more entry in the number of accidents on the Noida Expressway. And a routine for me in the past three years. But Thursday was different. My car broke down, so when I started for Parliament at 2:45 pm, I was in a hurry. For the entire 23-km stretch of the Noida expressway, I maintained a constant speed of 80 km an hour, even though the limit was 100 km.Just when I reached the Mahamaya flyover at the end of the Expressway, around 10 km from Delhi, I noticed a white Volkswagen in my rear-view mirror, closing in at a menacing speed, zig-zagging its way through. In just a few seconds, the car flew past me from the left - the wrong side. My natural instinct was to slow down and resort to defensive driving. There were two cars ahead of me; one just in front and another to its left. In between, there was just about enough space for another car to squeeze in. And that's precisely what the speeding driver attempted, when a cyclist, riding against the traffic on the wrong lane, appeared in front of him.
It is standard practice on this stretch for cyclists, in the morning and evenings, to take the wrong side. Usually, the cyclists cross over in groups, 20-30 at a time. But this wasn't the case yesterday - a lone cyclist found himself in a front of a speeding car, being driven rashly. Within seconds, I saw the cyclist thrown up at least 10 feet above, and come down crashing as his head hit the ground.
Instinctively, I hit the brakes and my car screeched to a stop. As I froze for a few seconds, I saw the white car stopping a few feet away from the fallen cyclist.Just as I was getting out, the driver sped off. A motorcyclist just ahead of me gave chase and so did I. Luckily, he was forced to stop due to a flat tyre and we caught him about a km away.
The driver was a young boy, not more than 20. He told us he was a student of a private university in Noida and started dropping names, flaunting his connections. As I stopped a gathering crowd from hitting him, I asked, "Why did you leave the injured man and run away?" "Main aur karta yaar, (what else could I do, man?)," came the instant reply from the boy, almost 20 years younger to me. We called the police and hand over the boy to them.
The wounded cyclist had been taken to the Kailash hospital, around five km from the accident spot. He died five hours later. An ID card on him revealed that he was Vinod, 32, a resident of Madanpur Khadar, a low-income residential colony near Apollo Hospital in south Delhi.
The cops have arrested the young driver, who is the son of an eminent lawyer. And the case will now be fought in courts, where at least one party is well-versed with the rules of the game."
The wounded cyclist had been taken to the Kailash hospital, around five km from the accident spot. He died five hours later. An ID card on him revealed that he was Vinod, 32, a resident of Madanpur Khadar, a low-income residential colony near Apollo Hospital in south Delhi.
The cops have arrested the young driver, who is the son of an eminent lawyer. And the case will now be fought in courts, where at least one party is well-versed with the rules of the game."
BikeTalk: It is very sad that yet another cyclist has been killed on our roads, though to be fair in this case the fault lay with the cyclist in flouting basic traffic rules. Having said that, the errant driver is even more guilty, not just for the dangerous driving, but far worse, his callous attitude. His reaction, "Main aur karta yaar", as a justification for running away knowing that he had grievously injured the cyclist, is the mindset of the motorists who remain unafraid of being punished by the law. Till the time such errant drivers are not held accountable and penalised for their actions, this attitude will not change. It is an earnest request to all Cyclists to practice and advocate safe riding. Please set an example for the others on the road. Although, it will not stop such incidents from occurring, it will definitely go a long way in preventing them.
Ride safe, keep safe!
s.
.jpg)
3 Sept 2013
Fuji Origami 2.0 Folding Bike
Specifications
frame aluminum alloy frame
front fork aluminum alloy
chainring group LASCO RCF1248SDGA5
flywheel Shimano the CS-PROPERTIES OF HG50-9
brake group TEKTRO R-316
brake handle TEKTRO FL-730
Shifters SHIMANO SL-R440
front/rear derailleur SHIMANO SORA-speed
car handle KALLOY AL-006
driver vertical rod KALLOY AS-008
cushion lever KALLOY SP-248D
saddle VELO VL-2071
Pedal WELLGO C089
wheels ALEX R450 the RIM / JOY of
DURO DB-7043
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)