Being an engineering student. The catch word being "student", I have to get an NOC on any and all decisions from my parents. Its a bit tacky at times, especially when i want to ride off to Nandi/DD hills bang in the middle of my college internals

That very NOC never came when i brought up the topic of riding till Hogenakkal with the Bangalore xBhp chapter on Sunday, 22nd of March 2009. Since the Zma had come after me being such a 'good boy' at home for the entire second half of last year, i didn't want to tarnish that very same image with some compelling arguements

With roughly 340kms on the clock, i had a good 200-300kms to the first service. And i wanted to get the all-important first couple of services done with fast. Hence, the idea of doing a running-in ride was born. Breakfast at Maddur was my first choice, but i was open to changes.
A college mate with an R15, A college senior with a 500LB, A buddy with an Electra 5S and Mr. Rossiter with the R1 and a P180 were all hurriedly contacted in a last ditch effort to get some company for the ride, with the following results :

*The R15 guy agreed to come, but backed out at the last moment due to some personal commitments.

*The 500LB guy was bed-ridden with a case of food poisioning.

*The Electra fellow was willing to come but being a hostelite, he got into trouble trying to sneak the Bull past the gates and was hence out...

*Rossiter had just spent the better part of 14 days (Nights included) trying to get the 'One fixed from a mysterious case of misfiring. He might have made it on his P180 but for the rear M45's torn sidewall...

So, due to these events that transpired, it was either a solo ride or a no-ride. The answer to that question however was a no brainer
With the NOC given for Maddur (I didn't let word out that it was a solo ride), i set off for Maddur at 7.30 AM on Sunday. The earlier plans for having breakfast at Maddur were scrapped as i was alone. I decided to hit the last Maddur CCD, take a butt-break and then ride back to Bangalore.

Since i do not have a digi cam, my trusty Nokia 6233's passable cam was used to shoot all the pics

Butt-Break at Ramanagaram :





On seeing a couple of boards indicating that the Kanva reservoir was roughly 20kms away, i decided to visit Kanva instead of going for the Maddur CCD darshan. The Zma's tacho casually dropping from 4k to 3k and back was a routine affair, as id been instructed to keep the revs below 4k and also to keep the revs varying continously.
Watching auto's and a bevy of cagers going past me was painful, but i endured all that in favour of the Zma's future health

After several anxious minutes of signboard watching and wondering if id already gone past Kanva, i came across a board indicating the deviation to Kanva off Mysore road.
The road was pretty bad and i feared bending the Enkei's, but as id heard of SkSy's exploits on the Zma, i knew she could handle bad terrain. Kept the speed in check and maneuvered past all the rough patches as best as i could.

A couple of kms into the deviation :






The path steadily went from bad to worse.

A shot of one of the better stretches of asphalt :




A shot of one of the not-so-better-stretches :




After several minutes of threading through craters, going past cows and people, evading patches of cow dung, the dam was finally upon me :





A few minutes of walking around the dam (currently under renovation/construction ?) and i was off again :



Turned the bars away from Kanva and headed home !



Reached home and settled into the usual Sunday routine of lazing around
So that completes my running-in ride !

Thanks for reading through my extremely long, uneventful and not to mention boring log.
This is my first trip log ever and i hope to improve on my tripping and my logging abilities henceforth. OF, Sunny, rossiter, Aryan, SkSy, praveenkm etc (Many more actually and i would've gone on and on if it weren't for time constraints ), You guys are an inspiration to newbie tourers such as me. Hope i can tour with you guys someday !


Cheers !