It’s been a month since my bike’s hubs were damaged and was not ridable since then. 2 weeks back Naveen and Nelly helped fix the bike, and we decided to hit the trails at our favourite destination Nandi Hills. Nelly was on his foes, which he got it from his friend on his recent trip to Mumbai and I was on my old trusted friend, my Trek 3700.
After years of riding and battering, my trek has taken as much as it could. And after a couple of downhill rides I could feel my back wheel wobble and decided to call it quits where as Nelly continued with his practice runs, in preparations for his race in a couple of months. Packed our bikes and headed back to town. A thorough analysis of my bike revealed that my axle was bent, had a damaged, shark toothed sprockets, elongated chain, and ofcourse a damaged crank…and because of all these even my rim was bent.
Naveen and Nelly applied a quick fix and my bike was back to riding condition again. We decided to ride the BBCh – 4 trails near Turahali. The plan was to ride the hiking section that was used during the race. Me, Nelly, Dilip and Naveen started from merida junction and reached the bottom of the hill, hiked up and did one round of the entire BBCh - 4 course. After that we hiked again with our bikes and rode all the way down. It was a bit scary…after this me and Dilip stopped as my bike’s back wheel started to wobble again and Dilip was not comfortable riding downhill’s on his bike (Merida Sub – 40).
On our way back from Nandi hills Nelly and me were discussing on which trails to practice and a couple of trails came to our mind. Incidentally he had been training at Turahali, but wasn’t timing himself so decided to time his downhill runs. After some brainstorming on the terrain, distance and technicality he took the challenge to nail the trail under a minute in the coming months.
It was fun to ride the BBCh - 4 downhill. We’ve been riding Nandi for quite sometime now and am used to the terrain there, but this trail was altogether a different ball game. The rains had washed off all the top soil; all that was left were small pebbles and stones and was bit off camber in most of the places.
The basics, while hiking up a downhill trail always concentrate looking for the line you will be taking while you are coming down, most of the times since we are starting off we might not be able to follow that line, but as a practice it’s a good thing to do, because as you gradually improve your riding skills and get used to the trail, the lines you take will eventually make you faster. There was this one turn towards the end of the trail, where I had made a mental note to take a right, as it was not clearly visible while riding down. Nelly started off followed by Naveen, me, Dilip in one-minute intervals. At the turn I lost concentration, Nelly was shouting to take a right, which I took but grabbed both the brakes to slow down and my bike pivoted on the front wheel and I came to slow stop, now in the direction facing upwards. Naveen also missed this section and went straight-ahead over the rocks luckily didn’t crash. It was damn funny. After the stop had a look at Nelly and Naveen and both were laughing their hearts out.
I decided to hire a bike from a friend for the long ramzan weekend, since my bike was almost in a junk state. Yeah the bike was a specialized XC. Destination Nandi hills, this time around we had Srikanth for company, packed our bikes went to Brahmins café coffee bar had some lovely idlis and kara bath. Drove to Nandi and started rolling over the trails. Riding a full suspension when compared to a hard tail phew!! Huge difference. Did a lot of riding this time. One particular section I kept taking the wrong line and every single time had to jump over the ruts to avoid the fall. Tried this section over and over again till I took the right line. It was an exhilarating experience riding a full suspension bike; finally I’ve decided to buy one pretty soon. Time to start saving money.
Sunday being the BBCh – 5 didn’t do any rides, but the next day we again went back to our new backyard Turahali. This time learnt tons of new stuff; Nelly showed us how to negotiate a turn without braking by just using our body to balance. Me, Sree and Naveen practiced this for over an hour and did the downhill runs 3 times and Nelly had his personal best time of 1.08min. Decided to head back as the clouds were closing in. I was completely famished and pedaled slowly towards town, 5 mins after we left Turahhali it started pouring and reached wheelsports completely drenched…a perfect end to a week of cycling.
This time around all we did was ride, ride and ride, we didn’t have any camera…except a few pics taken on mobile and one video of nelly riding the trails.
