I was in a cage, a cage of a different kind. I was cursing myself, cursing the Kinetic Blaze, cursing the lack of spares and basically cursing everyone in this world. The world was passing by me at a boring 90km/h and I could see miles and miles of beautifully laden tarmac in front of my eyes, with next to no traffic, surrounded by amazing scenery on both the sides. And Sunny had ripped past me on probably 150+ on the Fireblade. I was inside the Tata 207, our back up vehicle.
Some 30 minutes back, the 0793 Blaze was loaded onto the back up vehicle once again and this time I was damm angry and frustrated about it. We were on our way to Vizag from Rajahmundry, shade under 200kilometers, via NH-5, part of the Golden Quadrilateral, which meant riding would be on multilane highways, with enough scenery around to keep the senses busy. But my luck wasn’t gonna be good today. The 0793 Blaze, which I was riding yesterday, had died when I took it to 100km/h and held it there for five minutes. The tiny crack in the crankcase had opened up and so today in the morning we even got it fixed but it didn’t work. Within kilometers of joining the highway, oil started leaking a lot and I thought it would be better if we could simply put the machine to rest in the back up vehicle than to risk the engine. Off went my intentions of riding on the smooth roads at good speeds, enjoying the music and being myself for the day!
Earlier in the day, we had managed to leave Rajahmundry by 12 noon only as in the morning first time was spent working on the Blaze and then time just flew by somehow before we realized. Frank was really very supportive and understanding and infact he and his friend took Sunil and Sunny for some pictures in the morning.
Frank, our 'god sent angel' in Rajahmundry
We knew, the ride was just over 4hours long and hence leaving late didn’t bother us till the Blaze died. I had no option but to get into the back up vehicle and ride with Gurjan and Vinayak Jee. Taking the laptop along was a nice idea and it helped me kill time by surfing around and also the Ipod and the small speakers which made sure I had some good music to pass the time. But still, to an extent, I was disturbed by the sight of the highway, the inviting roads, the curvy roads and what not. Sunny decided to tape the video camera to the rear seat of the Fireblade and seeing the video sometime back made it seem worth it.
We all got lost from each other but I got a call from Sunny around 40kms from Vizag. He and Sunil were at the Reliance A1 restaurant but we had already left that behind so we decided to patch up with Ashish and find a decent hotel to stay the night in. As we approached Vizag, the roads, for a city, remained cleaned, the dividers had flowers and grass and the overall feeling I got once in the city was very good. I was surprised to see the city quite clean and big but unfortunately we couldn’t locate even a single Kinetic showroom on the way to the hotel, Hotel Meghalaya, as we had to drop the Blaze off for repairs. The hotel seemed quite nice and at Rs 800 net, was a bargain. We have had enough of beaches and hence had no plans to head there, instead relax and catch up on work. Ashish went off with a friend of his while we three are working on pictures and blogs.
I am still pissed off as it seems tomorrow too I will have to be in the back-up vehicle till Bhubaneswar, 400kms away! No way, I am either going to snatch a machine from the other three or drive the god damm truck.
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