Back in August of 2006, my brother was getting his stuff ready to go to the US. He took away the laptop, the digicam and even the MP3 player. But one thing he couldn't take with him was his Pulsar! Hence I had no option but to sell my small moped and inherit this huge motorcycle. There was however a small problem with that, I didn't know to drive a geared bike! So he offered to teach me how to drive the bike. I was under the impression that it would be more or less as easy as driving a moped. But wrong I was! I would drive the bike inside the IIT campus but away from the eyes of security guards.
My bro sat at the rear seat and would instruct me on how to use the clutch, brake, accelerator and of course the shifting of the gears. I had never driven a geared vehicle before and was not used to this new system. Initially, it was indeed difficult to hold the clutch with the left hand and change the gears with the left foot simultaneously. As was the case with pressing the right-leg brake. But the most difficult of them all was the cliched 'Starting problem. Big problem!'
It took me nearly a week to just master the mechanism of putting the first gear and slowly releasing the clutch whilst accelerating slowly. The bike switched off many times due to sudden release of clutch and he used to lose patience often, yelling at me!
Ultimately, I did get a hold on the basics of it and started practicing in my neighborhood streets. I went about it systematically not least due to the influence of the single-cycle processor that I had to assemble in my computer lab! I was impressed with the systematic way of building the memory, the control, the register file and other parts to assemble into a processor. Inspired by that method, I practiced one aspect of biking every couple of days. One day it was about gear shifting. Another day, it was about clutch and braking. Then, I practiced turning and steering etc. Putting all things together, I used the wide bypass road at Velachery, albeit at night! Ultimately, within a few weeks I had learned to drive my pulsar very well indeed!
3 comments:
Hmm.. inspirations one and many ,turn around take a turn , right from a man to a corn , get us thinking , wonderful wonders might drive you forlorn but for all the they did to you ,they did good :)
And ya ! dear me ! it's tough when there's shouting to add to the learning :D
I guess you got so lost in the charm and poetry of riding a bike that you forgot the bigger metric, efficiency. Guess you know what I mean :)
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