11th Nov: Chennai

11^th Nov: Chennai

Today was to be a sort of a rest day for all of us and the machines too. First priority were the machines and while the Comet would be getting back its exhaust and new brake pads, the 0793 Blaze desperately needed far more attention. Sunny today would be spending some good time with his better half and it was upto me to take the Fireblade to Vivek, the Tectrac guy, about whom we had heard a lot till date but never met him. For those who don’t know, Vivek has been on xBhp for quite sometime now and members have been using specially made exhausts by him on their machines and swear by his work.

Sunil and I took the Fireblade and we were to meet Chitra (Bikegirl) in Annanagar, from where she would show us the way to Vivek’s place. All right, I was following a girl on an Enticer, and yes I did have more than 15times the power her machine was making, and yes I was thinking what if the ‘girl’ , who also races on the track, decides to rip in traffic and leave Sunil and me on the Fireblade behind! Fortunately, nothing of that sort happened and she very casually showed us the way.

Once there, it was a pleasure meeting the Guru personally but the rains had taken a toll on the Fireblade and that meant taking it for a pressure wash, and I was glad Chitra was there to show me the place once again! After waiting for a good fifteen minutes, the turn of the Fireblade came but as I didn’t know the local language, it was tough telling the wash guys what to do, luckily Vivek’s mechanic came and helped me out. Once the bike was spotlessly clean, I took it back and by then some xbhpians along with Ashish were there too. And the ladies, Chitra and her friend, were kind enough to get the latest Bike India for us to see as I had not been able to find one since yesterday.

Ok, first things first. The place was Vivek’s home, not a garage. No fancy place but with 4 Yamahas parked there, not stock ones, but with definitely with some mods. For a first timer, it wouldn’t be a convincing place to get a Superbike serviced, for then this was Tectrac’s place and I guess the name is enough. Between, Tectrac stands for technology from the track, which is then used on normal road going bikes to make them go faster. Awesome.

Vivek very patiently listened to what I had to say about the machine and I somehow knew that would be enough and trusted him and his mechanic that they would set the bike perfectly for our ride ahead. It was close to 2pm and we hadn’t had any food since morning so off we went to a very popular restaurant near by with Steve, Deepak and Suren. Lunch was relished over debating talks about Ashish’s love for rock music and how we loved Indian music! By the time we were back at Vivek’s place, the Fireblade’s tank was off, the injectors were opened up and the cleaning process was going on. The GIR team interacted with the members in the meantime and cameras were made to good use to capture the realistic moments. We also made a plan for tomorrow, rains meant ride to the fabulous ECR (East Coast Road) towards Mahab and if god decided to play safe, we would be heading to the Sri-Perumbudur race track on the outskirts of the city.

Once the bike was done, Vivek asked me to go for a test ride. Chitra requested a ride and so we went for a small spin to see if the Fireblade was at its best or not. Five minutes later, we were back, with Chitra jumping with joy – yes, the Fireblade was running absolutely like a dream and I did make use of around 60% of its power to use!

We all had a group photo before leaving. Sunil would be the pillion again and this time I did take my own time to see if the Fireblade was responding well at lower Rpm levels or not. Ofcourse it was and I wasn’t even using 30% of the power to keep ahead of the traffic at all the times. Brilliant. Filled up the machine with Speed 97 on way to the Hotel and once there, we met Sunny’s better half, who was caring enough to get Mars for us, the chocolate I mean. Eating Mars in Mars (tho hotel name). We had to catch up a lot on blogging but there was hardly any signal coverage inside the room, with it being on the ground floor, surrounded by buildings on all sides! Sunil did take the laptop to the reception lounge to catch up on work, while my net was screwed up, thanks to reliance, who took their own sweet time to active it.

Comet’s front disc pads had been changed, but Vinayak Jee couldn’t find anything for the Blazes and had to resort to using M-Seal to stop the oil leakage!

Nothing much happened today otherwise, but tomorrow seems to be a far better day hopefully, better here referring to being productive from GIR point of view.