Let me rewind a bit to yesterday’s post. All day i had been dreaming of chilled lager to reward my long ride. The dream had collapsed after 11pm when I knew I’ll get nothing on reaching being 2am and all.
The moment I reached Vizag, and checked in, I had one waiting for me in the mini fridge. I had woken up at 530 am, run aound for the flat, ridden 610 kms, and was beat. By the time i was ready to sleep it was 4 am. I had ordered a club sandwich. It was the reward for being up for almost 24 hours.
Woke up at 930 – with a hung over back – a stiffness that challenged the possibility of 3 last days of riding. Somehow got out of bed, went down for breakfast, and kept thinking how I’ll make it today.
Then of course – a eureka moment – went and got a back massage at the spa, and I felt like Day 1 again. The hotel staff at the gateway was very nice, and this was my second free stay at vizag – one which my friend had graciously offered on my way to Orissa, and this one – which came entirely with my taj membership points.
Took it easy till 130pm or so, and packed and headed downstairs. They had some trouble with my point redemption. Once all that was sorted out, and I got my luggage on to the bike, it was almost 330pm. Tanked up nearby and head out from there.
I hit the main NH5 highway in no time. Fresh as anything, the bike had also gotten enough rest. I was driving west and driving towards the sun at 330 pm is a painful and migraine causing experience. I was ok so far. Found a coffee day soon, had some lunch, picked up 2 red bulls , had one, carried the other and continued.
My horn was still sounding funny. Pulled over and decided to check. One of the connectors was loose. There are 2 horns, both of different frequency. The one with low frequency was loose. So the bike was sounding like a scooty – with only he high frequency low volume horn working. Ha… I didn’t know about this. I always thought both horns are the same, and there are 2 to be able to generate a louder volume. I tightened the connector, and again thanked the travel gods from the night before. If I had not stopped at that garage to get it checked and if I had tightened it myself, that guy wouldn’t have noticed the flat, and I would be stuck on the highway. Wrong place wrong time to get stuck.
Anyway, I tightened it this time and moved on.
I had 2 choices, being 1000+ kms away from Bangalore, either stop at rajahmundry, or go onward to Vijayawada. If I stop at rajahmundry, I would have to do 2 longer last days, if I stretched and went on to Vijayawada, I would have moderate riding days. I thought I’ll take a call once I reach rajamundry – 220 kms away, and then take a call.
Something funny happened. The GPS was showing the distance much lesser than highway signs. So I started calibration while on the move. I matched my odo reading changes to highway milestones, and there was a 3-4% error there. Not so bad. I then started calibration of my odo with Google maps. For every km Google maps showed covered, my bike had covered 1.2 or so kms. A 20% error. Now I know my odo is fine, because I matched it to the highway milestones. This continued all the way. I guess Google maps shows distances by the ‘as the crow flies’ approach ? If not, then this route is considerably off accuracy by a big margin. For a route which showed 220kms on milestones, it showed 224 on the odo, and 200 on Google maps. The 4 extra on the bike could have been lane changes since the x axis distance covered by overtaking and lane changes adds up big time on long hauls.
I reached rajamundry, entered town. Big swanky cars, SUV’s, mercs, Audi’s, BMW’s, showrooms, supermarkets, malls, jewellery stores 5 storeys high. I reminded myself that I was in Andhra again.
Luxury is a big addiction/disease. It gets worse with time, and more expensive to handle. After my 5 star stay at Vizag, a spa’d back, the lovely meal at ccd, and the red bulls, I didn’t feel like staying in some dingy cheap place. I mean, I deserve better – I guess we all use that as an excuse for something we can justify spending money on. Don’t we ? But well I did deserve it after 3000+ kms so far. Ok I didn’t need to, but I wanted to !
So I asked around town for a good hotel, and I found a 3-star one, good enough. Haggled at the reception of ‘LA hospin’ – something which kept sounding like ‘LA horse-piss’ when I was asking for directions – and got a good 25% off because I was to leave in the morning. Was happy, fresh, but still short of sleep. Had dinner via room service and crashed into bed, tomorrow is a 450 km target to reach Bangalore on time the day after.
