Accidentally falling LOVE…

Just the other day a young man in my team crashed his bike head-on into a moving car and got severely bruised… His bike was almost totaled and it took him quite a lot of cash and time to bring both his ride and himself back on track.

I was talking to him a few evenings ago and told him the importance of having proper riding gear. Since I am older and a bit more experienced in the riding scene, I almost bragged about my vast array of riding gear… from multiple pairs of gloves to a few riding jackets; a couple of riding pants to the set of knee & shin protector and my collection of various helmets…

The morning after this talk to him, I was getting ready to go to work as usual. The weather in Bangalore is slightly different these days, it’s been raining on and off (sort of reminds me of Seattle, only dirtier and more crowded) It has been my daily regime since a few weeks that I wear my knee & shin guard along with my city riding jacket, gloves and helmet every time I ride out of the house…

This morning, I was feeling cocky and decided that I don’t need to wear the knee & shin guard since they need to be worn over my office pants and they spoil the LOOK! (Big Mistake!) I rode the bike out from my house to the open road, it was still drizzling and the roads were all covered in slush, I reach the first main road crossing and as usual took the showoff lean turn, the bike was impressively tilted at low speeds on the busy crowded area… I noticed a few people admiring me and smiled at myself and my skills inside the helmet… just a split second of attention diffusion… and suddenly in the turn I notice a car blocking the onwards road and I panicked (another big mistake) I hit the front brake hard and the bike spilled taking me along… all the show that I was giving just a second ago had turned into a crash. Thankfully RedEye seems to have a mind of her own, she didn’t give a very fabulous looking crash with sparks flying all over, she just dipped and dropped on her side… this was one of my crashes where I actually got thrown away from the bike and sprawled on the road.

A few guys huddled around me and pulled me to my feet; two of them even used some brut force and pulled RedEye on her feet. They asked me to sit down for a while and assess the damages done to me and RedEye… I was hurt, not physically but my ego was totally shattered… how can an experienced biker like me crash?!! Why didn’t I wear my Knee guard? Coz my left knee was bruised pretty bad. I got on the bike to notice that she had done some damage to herself just to ensure that I am safe… her foot rests were broken.

I managed anyway to get her running and took her to a garage on my way to work. Got her damage fixed, while the mech was doing what he does best, I realized that just a little bit of cockiness and overconfidence and bring you down bad…

Now, I am back to normal with my feet firmly on the ground… the bruise and the pain in my left knee reminding me that it’s human to be humble… and I am thanking RedEye for being the beauty she is… She has saved me and my grace so many times…

(Image Courtesy: T. McCracken http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.mchumor.com/00images/7783_accident_cartoon.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.mchumor.com/accident2_bframe.html&usg=__A1v_VQPsZZD2zGtF8i80QZ0sq40=&h=435&w=330&sz=34&hl=en&start=8&tbnid=9mdjUAKDh24R2M:&tbnh=126&tbnw=96&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dmotorcycle%2Baccident%2Bcartoon%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den )

Accident

Last Thursday was a very busy morning, we had woken up earlier than out scheduled time since both the wifey and I had decided that we’ll start our new workout regime once again! Went for a nice little jog in the park next to our house, came back just to realize that we are running late now.

A quick shower, some breakfast and hop on the bike to start the grueling day.

Since we were slightly late, the traffic had started picking up on the roads and I noticed that the amount of the ‘idiot commuters’ had increased relatively… those who are still new to the idea of ‘idiot commuters’ lemme give a bit of gyan; these are the people who will ride/drive anywhere on the roads (this includes pavements, gutter lids and other pedestrians’ feet) they will try and put their vehicle in the smallest gap available in the traffic… anyways, because of these ‘idiot commuters’ I had to be extra cautious and extra calm since wife was still pillion.

Dropped her at her destination and took off towards my office… the traffic in Bangalore is like an anthill after rains… everyone is running around crazy, everyone is in a hurry and everyone thinks that everyone else on the road are idiots. So I was one amongst the few thousand idiots on the roads, listening to music on my cell-phone and trying to be as careful and calm as I could. I was happy that I was avoiding most of the idiots around and keeping a pretty decent gap on all the sides for my bike.

Suddenly all the traffic came to a bottleneck… there were two BMTC busses racing each other on the really jam-packed road. The busses looked like giant caterpillars bursting at the seams with loads and loads of passengers. The drivers ‘saale Schumacher ki aulaad’ were all over the road and I kept my distance way behind them looking at the sheer stupidity happening on the road.

At the signal the busses stopped neck to neck and the drivers looking at each other like the drivers on a drag-strip. But this ain’t any strip! This is the main roads in an overly populated town! Anyways, I slowly rolled ahead of them with the movement of the smaller vehicles and got in front of them, the signal went green and whoosh both of the maniacs were at it again! I tried to be as far from them as I could, one of the busses shot past me like a loose cannonball! I was worried now and wanted to stay as far as I could… I was almost riding on the divider of the road, when boom! One of the bus drivers knocked the bike from the back… I fishtailed out of balance and crashed on the bloody tarmac!

Thank god for all the crash guards I had put of the bull… I was pinned under the bike but the weight was not directly on me and I wasn’t hurt too bad, also the protective gloves and the helmet ensured that all my important parts are still safe and in working condition… I ended with a slightly busted knee and a lot of rage in the brain! (just wanted to pull that god$%$^$%^ effin driver out of his effin buss and kick his effin eff off…

The cops arrived at the scene almost immediately (hoping to fleece some poor bugger) I got up and screamed at them for the horrendous behavior of the bus drivers and shouted again in general to vent off some steam… the cops realized that I’d be a tough nut to crack to fleece they consoled me a bit, pulled the bus driver away and asked him to scoot… by the time I realized what was happening, the inspector (or whoever he was) came up to me and told me that I’m obstructing traffic flow and I should get the eff outta there, if I want to lodge a complaint I should very well go to the police station 3-4 kilometers away from there and do so…

I was getting too late for work and I’ve learnt out of my so many years of experience on the roads here that nothing works better than, beating up the bugger who hurt you and roll out of there…

I took the bike to Saleem to check if there was any major damage… nothing much, just a bent crash guard and some more scrape marks on the sides… the bike was A-okay… from there I went to the office to meet my doc and see if I had any major damage… she checked, put some iodine and almost made me cry of the pain and then said that everything is okay, I might have some swelling for a couple days and that it might hurt for a while…

The day went on… I limped for 2 days and then am back to normal… but somewhere I’m also thinking;

Will we ever have roads with ‘responsible’ commuters on them? Will the public transport actually be avant-garde? Will the cops actually learn to be more courteous and give respect to people?

Too many questions that I guess have no answers…

Well, let’s learn to be one amongst them… WHATEVER!