Sunny

Day 11 : Mumbai - Pune

Sunny

Day 17th : Strawberry Day (Mahabaleshwar)

ankitmohan

amazing pics there.......thanks for the updates..

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rohitmundra

How come the R15's front tyre not changed and you guys have traveled a lot and there's more to go.
Heard negative reviews from you earlier. what about now?

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its all about CC...

Sunny

The Mumbai event went off very well. Vardenchi was the guest there with his modded motorcycles!



A guy called Malcom, Wheelieboy's friend won the Mumbai event, we are heading off to Daman tommorrow

46wannabe

Me, Ripper(Rohan), Durvesh and Viren(my friend pillion with me) reached Juhu beach before everyone else. Sharp at 08.30am

We waited for what seemed like the longest 60minutes of our lives. Okay I exaggerated the last part. But anywho, we didn't require any sort of honking or headlamp dipping to know you guys arrived. First it was two geared fellas, followed by 2 more and then Spidy and others.

So we all went to the spot opposite Mochas and parked our rides randomly. Pleasantries exchanged and queries about missing riders done with, some of us were hungry and thus headed to the nearest one of the popular Juhu-beach stalls. A few minutes later the Panvel gang arrived. I specially loved the two moving "Wall-E" replicas. They were simply too cute. For those that couldn't comprehend, imagine two R15s stripped off their front fairings leaving just the two(extra wide)RVMs. Courtesy: Anirude and Calvin.
Customary phot-op done with, we headed out, all 20-30 of us towards the event location.
We enetered into the outside parking area(the event area was obviously pandalled and -fabric walled). The line up of bikers for the registration tables was crappy. In true Indian-fashion, read, unorganised. But I guess we could live with that. Once the formalities were over, we all re-grouped and decided to make a big entry. All the Mumbai xBhpians(atleast those who could make it) together. Lining up the bikes inside the event area, one after the other, soon Dheeraj,(I believe that was his name. Correct me if I'm wrong), the MC for the day, said, "why don't y'all rev up your engines and give us a grand wake up for the morning?"
Well he didn't actually say that, but then who cares. On that high(rev) note we all were waiting for the process to start. the rules were read out and pretty soon there were bikers lining up for the "Figure-of-eight" round. It was slightly different from the Pune event, in that here we all had to do "4" complete 8-rounds in the least possible time. The slow biking round followed up immediately. Anirude was competing with Vijay Jain(Wheelieboy) and Vikram (Me is Rossi). I think Vikram was the slowest here, with Anirude as the first runner up. Yours truly was up against an R15 dude and an Avenger Uncle who by the way, was genuinely surprised to read my helmet. For those who haven't met me search for a red Boolean with perm. marker rantings all over in the Helmet Thread. Ok, enough of virtual posing now. I was the slowest among these 3. Although at the end, despite Anirude and Calvin shouting on the top of their lungs, I throttled up! Forgetting that the test was for the 'slowest' and not for 'wheelspins'. Heehee, felt really stupid after that. But then those mud-tracks are very tempting even for a non-stunter like me.

Next up, was the questionnaire round. I don't know how many sets of questions were used, but everyone didn't have the same set of questions. I'm pretty sure I did well in that one. Was a piece of cake. By now it was almost 01.30. And the registrations were allowed upto 2pm. So we went ot for a lunch break. That was a ride in its own. From parking our bikes in a NO-Parking area(I shall come back to this later) to fuming at one of the maniacal riders who was showing off his stupidity when we were returning.

We stopped for vada-pavs and some of those classic Energy Drinks(TradeMark). As for the parking, turns out it was a no-parking zone between "5-9hrs." We couldn't care less for whatever that discreet info meant, except that it was 2.10pm and hence....
Our great Mr. Spidy decided to do an impromptu Juhu ride-around. We all followed with Winzee leading. Some of the riders were going too fast for city roads. We eventually managed to slow them down and were doing a much safer city-cruising speed. The Mumbai xBhpians had their fare share of on-lookers and jaw-dropped by-standers in the run.

When we were just a turn away from the event site, a crazy lid-less guy comes speeding on his stroker and screeches hard, right in front of startled women and children. Ripper(Rohan) and a couple of others were at the lead of the pack just about to take the final left turn and this chap speeds through again, much to Rohan's amazement and anger I might add.

Finally we were waiting again for the results of the first elimination round. An initial total of 170 participants was cut down to just 68. Most of us made it to this list. But our names were announced almost towards the end. So was kinda frustrating for some of us. The next round was the Slalom round. Aman(the.absurd) was my favorite amongst our group in this one. Calvin gave him his '15' to ride for the slalom, along with a word of advice and caution not to hurt his bike.

Apna, Aman-ji blasts through the slalom all safe and sound & quick too. On his way backwards in the slalom, he brakes hard at the end almost losing it. But I hear he saved the bike with the leverage he got from his long limbs. Now, he was at the last track on the opposite end of the ground from where were standing. Before Aman could even start the R15 again, Kalyanji(Calvin) had already reached the spot, Flash Gordon style. "Score gaya bhaad mein, mere baby ko toh kuch nahi hua na" seemed to be his attitude. But it was all in fun and good humor. Aman has promised a ride of the R1 for a week to Calvin. Woh baat alag hai ki none of us made it to the final round.

I managed a DNF(Did Not Finish) in the Slalom round. Reason being, the other 2 competing with me had almost finished theirs and I just lost concentration. It had nothing to do with the females present though.
I headed home early along with Aman(the.absurd), Winzee and Viren(pillion).

Stars of the show: 1) Biker on a blue Gladiator
2) Biker who came down from Agra directly to the show, riding all the way on his Royal Enfield TBTS.
3) Vardenchi's entire garage of custom bikes were on display. Including the famous skeleton bike.
4) Pinaaq(an old acquaintance I know from Pune) With his awesome control on his 220. The same guy with the AStars on a stripped 220 as pictured on the Pune Blog on the Castrol site. His 220 had one huge Torque-happy rear sprocket. And I really mean HUGE!!!
5) Sumit on his FZ. Fun to watch.
6) Malcolm and Badal Doshi. The latter being a famous name among the Motocross circuits.
7) Experienced fellas, throwing around their expansion chambered strokers and modded fieros.

No major crashes. Just a few minor spills. Sadly, some idiot flicked Vijay Jain's trusty yellow helmet. Really fu@#all some people can be. But.......

Pics will take some time guys. Please bear with me. For now just a pic of the Juhu Beach line up.

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10 Commandments:
1)Thank thy God for being alive.
2)Thou shalt respect one's own life and the live's of other road users.
3)Thou shalt respect one's own bike.
4)Love thy bike as thy self.
5)Always wear safety gear.
6)Alcohol is a strict NO!
7)Thou may lust after thy neighbour's bike specially if its of the R1 kind!
8)Thou shalt ride with 'ultra-most' care and caution when on Indian roads.
9)Thou shalt never leave the engine running at long traffic halts.
10)Thou shalt follow all of the above.

wheelieboy

event was awesome i am impressed by the castrol guys, i highly appreciate the way crew member treated us and helped us during the event. i was on my trusty-rusty bajaj chetak, i came in top 68 out of 120, but missed in zig-zag cus i kept my foot and got 5 sec penalty, it was good experience though some one flicked my LID, i'll miss my lid, :-(

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www.wheelieboy.co.in

winzeee

+1 The event was very well organized.

W

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strider

Cant wait to see you guys in Bengaluru....Ride safe....

Sunny

In Daman: