Ravings of a Nomadic Mind

The NH 64 snakes through Western Rajasthan with some really nice paved stretches with long straights and some nice twisty bits too where it goes through towns and all this on mostly flat or slightly rolling, gorgeous desert terrain. The semi arid terrain makes for good high speed dashes across the country, the land as I said is pretty flat and as the climate is arid the visibility is nice you can see for ever and a little more. there are some twisty bits to when the road or one of ts many tributaries curls over the Aravalis, I have many memories riding on the desert stretches around this small insignificant corner of the world. For the past 4 years or so the center of my life were two points on this quiet two lane highway on either end of the town the distance was 30 kilometers, one way, my home at one end and the university where i was struggling with an ill timed MBA. But this is not about that, this is about that beautiful stretch of road, and well some of my rides and more importantly one crash that my enthusiasm or some unfortunate circumstances caused.

Well so it was around 7 O'Clock and i was sweating it out, in the August sun, on the basketball court when one of my batch mates came and asked me if i wanted to go out and grab dinner at one of the many restaurants that hand sprung up around our university one in particular called Chanumda served some amazing food, so we decided that we would meet there and as it was i needed a bath if any one else was going to keep their food down so i told him that i would take a shower and then join the rest of the batch at Chamunda. So i finished the game, headed to my room took a very cold shower and then headed out on the road, the sun was going down the road looked beautiful, long and straight and i was tempted so i took off straight instead of stopping at the restaurant i headed of out of town and on a ride, the sun hadn't set yet and i had time before dinner.

Ten kilometers on i slowed down and turned around and i raced back to our dinner place and the night had fallen and it was dark on the highway but this far out of town it was deserted, i came to a long sweeping curve and i leaned over not far out to scrap my foot pegs but enough to carry the same speed i was going as i came around the apex of the curve i saw a man on a cycle to the left on the very edge of the road he was just tottering and i was going at around 90 kms per hour, so i didn't give him much thought and concentrated on maintaining my line thorough the corner. just before i reached him i realised there was a speed breaker there and having forgotten to slow down for it i took off, and landed, upright, just a little behind and to the right of the cyclist, i realised some thing was very wrong at this moment, the cyclist had changed position while i was in the air and now he was angling right across my front wheel and there was nothing i could do.

There is this very funny feeling when you realise you are going to crash, just before the crash, the world slows down and you speed up, you try every thing to prevent the crash even before your brain can think of it, its instinctive, haul in the clutch, switch down a gear to use engine braking to slow down, at the same time you use your front brake to do the actual braking and you are tapping the rear brake to keep the bike straight, all this while you are still looking for options if you cant slow down in time, way out if you don't have the time to brake or space to stop before a crash occurs. well that is pre-crash and as most crash come with out too much warning this period of sped up time is very short, micro seconds, even though you might have done stuff that you do gradually over a period in normal riding. Some times all this helps and you slow down or swear around what ever you were heading towards.

Some times, as it happened then, that is just not enough, instinct and all is just fine but you cant beat physics, a hurtling mass weighing 180 kilos has some inertia and it takes force, distance, time and a lot of other stuff found in mother's chicken soup to stop. Its like the answer to every thing is "42" but you don't know the right question just yet. Any way as things happened i forgot to remember there was a speedbreaker there and well may be it was lonely and i didn't pay it any attention and catching some air seemed like a good proposition, i don't remember what was the case that day. Well i had landed just a bike length behind the cyclist and had realised to my horror that he was angling across me, well all the pre-crash stuff happened and then the crash happened. Now in a crash the opposite happens in stead of time speeding up it slows down, it slows down just before the actual impact and clarity increases, so i saw the bike Tbone the cyclist right behind the spot where the pedals are fixed, it was a old hero cycle. all my speed, all screaming skidding and sliding 90 kmph of it with the added inertia of a 180 kgs stopped all of a sudden and transfered all that energy into the frame of the cycle. Now all that 180 kg was not the bike alone that included me and physics dictates that i keep traveling so when the bike slowed down to a stop i went flying above and over the cyclist, you see the cycle frame bending, some how i realised he was drunk and i was glad that at least i wasn't to blame for the crash or at least not fully. well back to the crash, the second thing i realised was even though we were on a National Highway it was pretty deserted and and since there was no traffic no one was going to run us over, and there was a petrol pump a few meters ahead so if nothing else, help would arrive before some errant truck driver ran over us. then i hit the road, the world slowed down or i caught up to the world and a lot of feelings came back too, feelings as in "i feel a pin prick", not the emotional variety, my specs broke inside my lid and the glass shattered and cut up most of my my face, none of the cuts were deep but the were bloody, then i stooped i could feel the road through my riding gloves and jeans but no big injuries, as in large swathes of skin scrapped off, thanx to the above mentioned items and no head injury either thanx to my trusty lid. which shattered on impact.

There end of crash or post crash, but it takes time to slow down this time its more biology and physics than physics alone, at the end of crash your body is still high on adrenalin, it drives you and numbs a lot of pain sensations and injuries to the extent that they can be ignored, take too much time to collect your self and you might come off the high and end up as a whimpering ball in the middle if the road and no help to any one.

So i pick my self up and do a quick SitRep, no serious injuries, broken lid, scrapped gloves will have to go, not too much skin scrapped off, (note to self buy new lid and gloves tomorrow), the jeans torn in places nothing too bad though, might even look cool in class tomorrow.

"where was that drunk mobile wall that i had run into?" oh there he is, curled up in a ball,


noises of people running, look up the petrol station people have seen or heard the crash and running to help, good, pick up the idiot, he falls down again, pick him again, he is shaking worse than a jelly who got into fight with Mike Tyson, he is in shock, well roll him over to the side of the road.

pick up bike, you rarely realise how heavy your bike is until you have to pick it up after a bad crash and your coming off a adrenalin high, oh good some one has take that off my hands, there are people around now, you see the guy recoil from the stink the drunk is making, good I wont get beat up. where is the cycle, ok that bent up unicycle was once a bicycle. the lids getting constricting, take it off, the guy asking you questions in a foreign language (it was hindi but my mind was too wound to make sense) recoils as the lid comes off, he points to my face and says there is a lot blood, ohh, good i must look like an extra from evil dead or my shower wasn't effective. Need to get help, intelligent help, check cell phone, good still working, bad, no network, a bike coasts to a stop next to you, the rider asks if i need help, tell them about your batch eating dinner, he goes and collects them, get Bhism to go over the mobile road block(the Drunk), no broken bones no scrapes, leave him by the road side and work over his shock and hangover, he is not your problem, some thing does not feel right, the leg hurts like a Bi*** and the hand doesn't feel right either. The adrenalin high is getting over too, my face hurts too. get Amit to take u to your mom, she is a doctor, she know what to do, no bad idea, go to someone else she would freak out. Two broken bones, one in the leg, one in the left arm, broken nose and a few scratches on the face and arms and a very mad girlfriend the bill for dinner out, not bad, for when Physics(inertia), biology(adrenalin) and chemistry(a drunk with alcohol in the system) clash violently.