Going Green with .... a bicycle(!)

my Schwinn Sporterra Sport - as on DayOne: 25Sep2011

Finally my search for a bicycle ended on last Sunday, on a high note. I bought a Schwinn Sporterra Sport 2011. The bike comes with 24-speed gearing, quick release on both the wheels, a lever for quick saddle height adjustment, and good components overall. The bike is very light-weight, runs mighty smooth and is a pleasure to ride. I rode it for around 12km, all the way from Shivram Sales to Kothrud, and deliberately chose non-traffic route with some serious ups and downs. It was 12pm in the afternoon that I started back to home and it was hot like anything. Still, I wasnt exhausted when I got back home. In fact, and I dont mean to drum it up, but I was still feeling quite fresh after the ride. That was a bit surprising since I was riding a bicycle almost after 6-7years.

Along the way that I had chosen, there were few testing inclines. But the gearing turned out to be very helpful while negotiating those inclines. My first time riding a geared bicycle, and I can already see why people actually love cycling.

It was not all rosy though. The front derailleur was out of adjustment it seemed since it kept faltering while shifting between 1st and 2nd chainrings. Next morning, I could fix it after a few turns of barrel-adjuster along with couple of high-low settings on the dérailleur.

Apart from that, two of my body parts were quite uncomfortable with this change in vehicle. First were my wrists and lower palms. And second - were my bums. After couple of rides, the soreness in palm and wrist started to recede. The bums on the other hand, were so sore that even sitting on a highly cushioned chair felt like sitting on a pair of spears. The saddle, like any other performance bicycle saddle, is a hard one and makes for uncomfortable riding. The pain has receded after a couple of rides, but it's still quite uncomfortable. So it looks like, as people recommend, a lycra bib or at least a short with chamois reinforcement is a must for riding such cycles.


Gearing: Gear Inches and Shifting

Gearing Chart

The cycle has 24-speed gearing (8 cogs in the rear and 3 chainrings in the front) with Shimano Alivio as the important rear-derailleur. Before I decided upon buying Sporterra Sport, I went through the drive-train setup of various cycles, including road-bikes. I felt that the sporterra sport's teeth configuration of 48/38/28 on the chainrings and 11-30 on the rear cogs made perfect sense for a beginner like me. I didnt count individual teeth on each of the rear cogs, but assumed a standard configuration as - 11-13-15-17-20-23-26-30. And then with Sheldon Brown's gear calulator, got an idea of what the gear inches will be for each of the gear and how they will change from gear to gear. Here is the chart that I got there, and I have highlighted what gears I will be using while shifting up and down.

As can be seen, even though the cycle is 24-speed, one can hardly use more than 10-12 gears out of those 24. Using the non-highlighted gears can quickly wear out the chain/chainrings/cassette.


Experience with Dealers

There are quite a few cycle dealers in Pune. Some are old timers, selling cycles for ages. Some are new comers, trying to tap into the booming market of enthusiasts with deep pockets (thanks in part to the IT industry). I initially went to the Track-n-Trail dealer - Surendar Cycles on Karve Road. In my couple of visits there one thing I strongly realized that this guy is all about sales and marketing talk. He tried to upsell, he tried to patronize me, he tried to be smart, he bragged, he berated other dealers, and even tried the classic FUD when I mentioned I might consider other dealers if I don't get a fair deal there. This blog is not a place to go in details about bits and pieces of the conversation, but suffice to say that - by the time I left his shop, I was disgusted with him, had not even an iota of trust in that guy, and had decided I wouldn't buy from him, come what may.

I went to Shivram Sales, on Satara Road, one of the dealers he had berated and had tried FUD on. Within half an hour I was out with a brand new Schwinn Sporterra Sport 2011 model, at a much lower price-point, with complementary basic accessories like stand, bottle-cage, lock and a bell; and as per regular practice - 2-free-maintainances and 1-year guarantee on the frame, handle and fork. All of which, this Surendar Cycle owner had written-off as "absolutely-not-possible" in a kind of virtual chest-thumping.

Moral of the story, stay away from such upsellers, and crooks while buying a bicycle in Pune. Look for a better deal with other dealers. These cycles are from international brands, and are not supposed to fail on you. Besides, these other dealers also offer the same maintainance and gurantee that these branded stores will offer. So dont fall for the FUD that these crooks are intent on spreading.

Lifecycle mall, by the way, also offers similar high prices, but they seem to have some ethics. They at least dont brag and berate other dealers, or brand of cycles that they dont keep. I had enquired about Fomas Roadking Deluxe and was told that they dont keep Fomas, but pleasantly enough, upon probing about the bicycle, I was told that apart from the weight issue, roadking deluxe is not a bad cycle for that price. The Surendar Cycle guy, upon enquiry, had told me snobbishly "we dont sell junk". I should have crossed him off my list at that point itself.


Way Ahead

I had thought about quite a few intersting plans around cycling, before taking the plunge and buying this Sporterra Sport. God-willing, if my left knee (which I had hurt during the Katraj-Sihagad trek last year) holds up, I will hopefully be able to realise those plans. Let's see how it all goes. Exciting times ahead. 

Power, Religion and Social Inhibitions

I have been wondering this for quite sometime now. Why do we have such a huge premium on morality? Where does it connect? Why is a girl/guy who sleeps around, looked down upon with disgust? It's just a physical need. What's wrong with satisfying it? Do we look down upon people who eat dinner at one restaurant and sweets from another? Why do we have this big taboo surrounding anything related to sex? Are we as a society so immature that we cannot handle openness about sexuality? Are we bound so much by religion and religious preachings that we haven't thought about alternative way of life, and fear that way might lead to chaos? fear of the unknown?

We are a land where Kamsutra originated. We are a land where Khajuraho was sculpted. Our Ramayana and Mahabharata are ripe with stories with hidden references, like Ahilya's story, and Yayati's story, Indra's lust, Kamdev's adventures etc. Considering all these, it's difficult to understand why we have inhibitions about sex and sexuality? Are we being controlled under the pretext of religious preachings?

All the powerful and creative people behave uninhibited. May those be actors, diplomats, celebrities, musicians (case in point is an 'illegitimate' child of a Sitaar maestro), sportsman. I wont even mention politicians.

Why then only the middle class considers that staying 'pure' is a way to save the culture? Europeans had a culture as well. The French, for example, come across as some of the most outgoing and free-est people when it comes to openness, sexuality and life. French directors have been handling taboo subjects way ahead of their times, since the mid 20th century. The subjects were controvertial, and sometimes tilted towards soft core porn as well. But they had the openness and courage to try it. Their society didn't burn them for that. And despite this, their culture isn't going anywhere, and is as intact as it was before.

I have an inkling that these probably sound like randomly hewn fabric of crude thoughts, but when you see an Emmannuel exploring her sexuality, or when you see some Dreamers enagaging in acts that border on incest, or a when a Laure lets go off social inhibitions and engages in exhibitionism and free sex, you can't help but appreciate the ahead-of-its-time boldness of French cinema, and lament the fact that even a simple and practical concept like live-in relationships doesn't find acceptance in our society.

Tata Docomo Rocks (er ... not really)

Within 2 days of getting a Docomo SIM card, I am a total convert to Tata Docomo now. Never knew grass was so green on the other side.

First the plans are plain and simple and competitively priced. Then there are no differences in network coverage I could spot between using a Docomo prepaid service and Idea's postpaid service. The 2G GPRS plan that Docomo has come up with recently, is a killer. Rs.65/- for 2.5GB per month is wayyyyyyyy better than the Rs.200/- for 500MBs per month that I was paying to Idea since ages.

Most importantly things happen lightening quick and fast with Docomo. My new Blackberry (a humble 8830 world edition) was up and running in mere 3hrs after sending a subscription SMS. I didn't have to go anywhere, nor pester anyone even though it was late in the night. And out of those 3hrs, 2hrs were wasted due to some n/w issue that I was updated about in advance. Otherwise things would have got setup in merely an hour! That's lighetening quick in my book. And that too without any hassels. The executives who instructed me in setting up my Blackberry for registration, who setup service book remotely to my handset, all sounded highly professional and top notch, unlike Idea.

I have been using a Docomo 3G e-stick for months now, and already had a real good experience so far with it. And now after these awesome prepay plans and quality Blackberry setup experience, I am entirely sold on porting my main postpaid Idea number to Docomo prepay for good. There with Idea I have been paying a rupee for minute since last 5yrs and they never came up with any migration plan for me even after years of second-billing explosion in India. On the contrary, they still charge me Rs.49/- for caller line identification!!

Over last 5yrs, all they came up with, for me, were some ponzy schemes which appeared good on the face of it, but later made me regret for subscribing after I realised the catch. Besides, pathetic website, patchy customer service, terribly late introduction of 3G, absolute lack of imagination and creativity with billing plans and those B-grade Bachchan TV commercials which always embarrass me for having an Idea connection; all of these factors are making me think of dropping this Idea connection of 5yrs and port my mobile number to Docomo on the next tick of a second.

It's gonna happen soon for sure.

EDIT: (5Aug2011)
On a hindsight, it was a bit premature to come out gaga over Docomo. I came to know it after using it for a week or so on the blackberry. First, the blackberry was not powerful enough; and second, the Docomo network was not consistent either. So the blackberry kept losing its data connection time and again, and when-in-doubt-pull-it-out policy vis-a-vis blackberry battery didn't work effectively to restore that data connection either. So finally, I ended up disconnecting the BIS altogether. Tried Docomo GPRS instead. But it was neither consistent nor quick. Idea card in the blackberry on the other hand, gave much better GPRS data. And it was consistent too. Not sure if this better QoS was because my Idea connection is postpaid.

So all in all, Docomo has much better plans, very affordable addons and good customer service. It's great when all you want from your phone is calls and SMS. If you want GPRS (2G), at least Docomo prepaid was not upto the mark. Wonder if Docomo post-paid has better QoS that this.

Anyway, time-being, since data is a lot dearer to me than calls and texts, I am going to hang on to Idea. Can't risk bad GPRS connectivity for lesser expenses.

172kmph

Last time I wrote about 151kmph in my Palio on NH4, I had promised myself I was going to take the car on the express-way some day. The revv-happy car begged for a high revv, high adrenaline drive on the wiiiide and loooooong empty stretches on probably the best road in Maharashtra.

I didn't get an opportunity till March-2011 though. Every time I took the car on express-way before March, every time I had some or the other issues in taking the car all the way up on gas. Sometimes it was dark on the expressway, sometimes there was just too much traffic to allow for the risk, and sometimes it was the age of people in the car that prevented me from even thinking about it.

Then came March 8, 2011. I had bought a 21" Wacom Cintiq pressure sensitive tablet from a friend in Goregaon Film-city, and since he was leaving Mumbai in couple of days since, I thought of a plan to make a dash for Mumbai early in the morning, and get back to Pune before office hours. It was a wicked plan, but if successful, it would allow me absolutely ideal conditions on the expressway while coming back - early morning, low road temperature, low traffic, warmed up engine, and most importantly - nobody else in the car whose life would be my responsibility. The expressway and the car would be all to myself. I realized that I may not get such an opportunity to strike 2 birds in a single stone, again.

That day, I left Pune early in the morning, 3:45am, if I remember correctly. I could barely contain my excitement, and could hardly sleep the night before. Even though alarm was set, I got up on instinct, before the alarm went off, and got ready quickly. In no time, my car was on expressway. I had decided to keep it steady while going towards Mumbai, since it was a dark night, and visibility obviously was poor. I was going to cut lose while coming back anyway, so I rather concentrated on getting to the destination, picking up the tablet and then getting back on expressway as quickly as possible, before the Mumbai traffic could bite me.

I reached Filmcity by 6:15am - 2 hours 30 mins door-to-door from Kothrud to Goregaon Fimcity. This was largely thanks to the sometimes-awesome-sometimes-horrible-but-this-time-awesome GPS navigator - Motonav in my Moto Milestone. The maps are probably from MapMyIndia, and the app routed like a charm. That app has been my guiding light in quite a few occasions now, and it has faithfully got me out every time.

After completing the transaction and picking up the tablet, I left Filmcity by 7:15am, took a wrong-turn earlier than the GPS suggested, and then wasted 5-10 minutes further till it got me back on the right route. By the time I reached Vashi toll booth, the sun had already risen up, and it was neither hot, nor chilled - just a pleasant morning with a cool breeze flirting shyly across the face. I was taking in all that while driving in the high speed lane, when I noticed an Innova honking behind me. Before I realized the reason, he changed his lane, cut me in, and then started choking me behind him, as a revenge. That was the kind of provocation I needed when I was all propped up for a high speed blast on expressway in few minutes. I cut in 2 lanes to my left in a wild single swoop, like the auto drivers recklessly do in Pune. Unlike the auto drivers though, I wasn't reckless, but had my eyes on both the rear view mirrors. Again switched one more lane to the left to avoid a bus in front, and was racing parallel to the Innova in no time while cutting through the traffic. But my Palio's 2nd and 3rd gear proved too much for the Innova guy. In a few moments, he was in my rear view mirror, and though he tried a lot to race me, he could never see anything but my car's tail-lights after that.

First it was the cool breeze, and then the pleasure of comprehensively beating a highway bully on his provocation, that set the tone for the expressway for me. I was hyper excited since the plan had worked well and I was on schedule. I was in right frame of mind, with all conditions favorable, to take the final plunge.

I joined the expressway by around 8:15am. Cut through the initial "slow-moving" traffic and once the stretch was long and inviting enough, I cut lose. This was the moment I was waiting for. I built up the speed right from 2nd gear; flirting with the red mark on the RPM gauge. Soon I was racing with the wind. A Swift Desire (VDI if I remember correctly) tried to race with me, in vain. He never made it to the front and gave up trying around 140kmph mark. I kept on building the speed. I literally whizzed past a lot of cars, which were probably doing a respectable 120-130kmph. I bet they would have wondered if Audi/BMW had started building a hatchback, and since when. ;)

I was comfortably past 160kmph mark now and the car was stable. I kept the peddle floored. 165 - 166 - 167 - 168 ... the progress was a little slow in this band, despite the gas. 170kmph - 171 - 172 ... and I noticed the car was a little wobbly now. The same car which was rock steady in 160s, was noticeably wobbly during the 170s. I had a pair of Bridgestone Turanza ER-60 in the front, which are rated for high speed till 190kmph. But in the rear, I had a pair of old Good-Year Assurance, which I was not very confident about. The wobbliness of the car, added to the lack of trust on the rear tires, created doubt in my mind, and in a flash I took my foot off the gas.

I kept it around 145kmph till I again got a psyche and went till 165kmph just for the fun of it. But in the back of my mind, I had accepted 172kmph as the tops for the day, and felt there was no point in going any further till I get something like Micheline PP2 or Yoko S-Drives on. I had already breached 160kmph, which is the psychological 100mph (miles-per-hour) mark. I had already breached 165kmph which the manual mentions as the top-speed (bollocks!) of Palio Stile 1.6 Sport. And besides, this was an accurate 172kmph speed, since it was measured on the GPS. I am sure if the speedometer in the dashboard was working, it would have hovered somewhere around 180kmph mark, due to inherent measurement errors in the mechanical speedos.

Not a single car overtook me on expressway that day.

I reached home at 9:30am - 1 hour 15 minutes after I took to the expressway, and 2 hours 15 minutes after I left filmcity. In all, I left pune at around 4am in the morning, and came back from the heart of Mumbai on the same day by 9:30am in the same morning. Many didn't trust me on that, but the Cintiq stands a tall witness to the fact.

For a driver who had learned driving 8-months back, achieving 172kmph in a stock car, without any mods, is a booster to be cherished for long time. And cherish it I will. But equally true, it doesn't stand anywhere in comparison with those who have scaled 200kmph and higher in their cars, modified or else, on the same expressway. John Krakauer maps this emotion to words well, when he gets fascinated with the life in Chamonix, in his Eiger Dreams, and muses -

"It's a luminous fall afternoon in downtown Cham,
and I am sitting on the terrace of Brasserie L'M,
loitering over a strawberry crêpes and café au lait,
wondering whether I might, given my limited talents,
ever rise above the life of terminally banal."

Shivneri, Sangli, Online Booking and Me

PART1: ~8pm, Friday, 17-Jun

Every time I go to Sangli using public transport, something just has to go wrong. This time round, I booked a ticket for 6pm Shivneri to Sangli from Swargate. After waiting for one full hour at the bus stand, for the 6pm Shivneri, which never turned up, a quick, sane recheck of the ticket printout suddenly made me realize I had actually booked a ticked for 6AM bus rather than 6pm!

So even after leaving office by 4pm, here I am on the way to Peth now, just crossed Katraj ghat at ~8pm (!), with Pethnaka still (at least) 3hrs from here. Then Sangli will still be at least 1hr from there, via a truck, or if I get really lucky - an asiad. Not to mention that there is this constant worry about rain killing those books and laptop in my backpack.

To add to this misery, couple of idiots sitting on either side of me, are constantly chatting on phone for last one full hour. There was a 10 minutes break. But now they have started up again! How fucking difficult it is to stay calm and silent for sometime? Why dont their batteries just dry up? Doesn't their mouth ache due to so much of continuous talking? Don't they get exhausted holding the phone near ear for so long?

If there happens to be a break between all these phone calls, they start chewing something like those salted and roasted peanuts, the smell of which gives me a kick in my guts and strongly reminds me that I am hungry too.

And as if all this is not enough, there are these lamest of the lame and gayest of the gay songs playing in this Kolhapur-bound Shivneri's stereo, that are driving me nuts. I mean I pay premium price for a Volvo ticket and I can't even get a moment of silence forget a peaceful journey? If anyone wants to hear this lame and meticulously-chosen-to-torture 90's Hindi music, he should get his own player and shove those ear-buds up his ... ears. Why force everyone to compulsorily listen to this junk? But that's the way it is, and I need to bear this for 3 more hours at least. Best of luck to myself!

So in short, yet another miserable and fucked-up journey to Sangli via public transport. Jai Ho!



EDIT:PART2: 10:30pm, Friday, 17-Jun to 12:15am, Saturday, 18-Jun

I was partially dozing when I suddenly got a jolt and woke up to find that the bus was standing near a fly-over on NH4. I cursed the conductor for not even announcing that the bus had reached Pethnaka. Hurriedly I got down after one other guy, and thanked my stars for waking me up just at the right moment. A 2 minutes walk after getting down and I realized I had actually gotten down near Karad fly-over and not Pethnaka fly-over. Bravo! It was 10:30pm and it had started raining too! Just what the doctor ordered. Life couldn't get any rosier.

Just then, as if it was all scripted, I spotted a Miraj bound asiad entering Karad, and after a 10 minutes wait on the pavement, I was in the asiad, on the way to Sandli-direct, sitting comfortably by a window seat taking in the cool breeze.

So just like that, I was out of the hours long misery and into a blissful state, sure that I wont be stranded anywhere, and will reach Sangli today night itself. When I am hungry and such a stark transition takes place, it makes me feel like someone up there is playing with me, telling me - "see that fella? see how I can screw you? and then unscrew you too in a jiffy? that's my power. now surrender." Well, guess what, here is a finger for you.

Then I reach Sangli in the dead of the night, eat something, and I get my sanity back.

Of Androids and the Everlasting Fetish

It's just been an year since I bought my Moto Milestone, but it has already started looking very old and outdated in terms of hardware. The 600MHz single core processor on it pales in front of the 1GHz dual-core Tegra's and Snapdragon's that have come out. Responsiveness is the most essential feature of any cellphone, and the Milestone seemingly lacks that now, in comparison with those dual-cores. Not to mention the buggy 2.2 Froyo upgrade from Motorola that kills my home screen time and again, and adds to my frustration.

I have been contemplating buying a new blazzzing-fast, top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art android for sometime now. Samsung's Galaxy series automatically comes to mind, even though their reputation is notorious when it comes to delievering pure android experience. They spruce up the UI quite a bit I hear. The other option being Nexus-S that has launched recently, but looks overpriced when compared with a similarly juiced Galaxy. The Galaxy S-II with its super hardware, was looking very tempting and then came the news of Samsung working on its next flagship Galaxy S-III. Though the release is slated for 1st quarter next year, another news that has grabbed my attention, and put my Galaxy plans on hold, is that of Nvidia being in the process releasing a QUAD-CORE(!!) mobile processor, code-named Project Kal-El. Even my laptop doesn't have a quad-core as of now! The details about the graphics performance are impressive, and makes me longingly look forward to its release and subsequent release of an android featuring it.

Besides, now that not many handsets are being released with hard qwerty keypad, the focus having been shifted to swype instead, I think I will need to reorient myself towards swype, let go of the hard-qwerty drool, and grab the first Tegra quad-core android that comes out in the market.

Beyond Crossroads - A Month Goes By

World beyond C++ has been perplexing and kind of intimidating so far. Probably the same reason makes it quite exciting. I mean, it's not like c++ was a cakewalk or something. I had worked hard to get some good purchase on the linux workflow - builds and makefiles and scripts and editors and gdb and the gamut of technologies that make a c++ backend work.

By the way, this 'getting purchase' thing has come from John Krakaur's highly influential Everest disaster saga - 'Into Thin Air'. I was blown away after watching 'Touching The Void' and then was literally breathless reading 'Into Thin Air'. Couldnt put it down. Anyway, I better keep this newfound fascination for mountaineering, for some other time.

So coming back to c++, I never had a full grasp of how much different the world is outside c++. Python, ruby, rails, php, java, javascript, jquery, struts, ejb, soap, xml-rpc, spring, swing, ajax, django, php frameworks .... the world was oozing with tools and technologies for the web platform, and here I was sustaining some glorious yet already-implemented c++ backend for last couple of years. I was happy only learning and reverse-engineering the marvelous architecture, even though I knew it wasnt going to be implemented again.

I kept neglecting my hunch that entrepreneurial chances are more prevalent in emerging technologies, precisely due to their relevant immaturity; rather than in a time tested technology that's losing its relevance over time.

God knows how much time I am going to take to get a grip on this fish-market of web-technologies, but till then it will be very painful to feel so incompetent whenever I come across a fabulous webapp (or framework) and understand zilch about its internals.

These days I feel like some stone-age tribesman from the amazons. Just out of the wilderness and smack into a modern civilization. I know how to make a stone-spear and hunt using it; but hey, these modern civilizations eat processed food and besides have sharper weapons much more effective than my hand-made stony meanie weenie. So where do I go? All that's useful, and left with me, are some leaves wrapped around my waist ...... and some instincts.