Nightmare in Coimbatore

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I don't like Coimbatore. There I've said it, got it off my chest. It's probably all in my head but nothing ever seems to go right for me in Coimbatore. The last time I was here the Evo I was going to test got damaged in transit and the planned test with the rally car got cancelled at the last minute - after I'd landed in the city. I spent four days in Coimbatore (connectivity to Pune is a nightmare) waiting for either one of the tests to happen and let me tell you, Coimbatore is the last place in the world you want to be stranded in. On a Friday night, with the football world cup in full swing, Bikes & Barrels, the happening (I think only) pub, had probably ten people in it with not a single lady in sight. Sigh... ....

On the podium!

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5 left into 4 right commit over crest. Rally driving is all about ba***. Watch the big boys drive flat out in a rally - guys like Gaurav Gill, Naren Kumar, Vikram Mathias - and you'd of course believe that; from the outside it is breathtakingly spectacular, sideways, flat out over the jumps, car ragged and on the very edge. Terrifying to be honest. And then when you drive the very same road, clock the 200 foot drops and bounce and bottom out on the vicious bumps, you'd convince yourself that rally drivers have footballs between their legs. And most rally drivers are only too happy for you to believe that but trust me, rally driving isn't about ba***. Ba*** can only take you so far before you find yourself wrapped around a tree or barreling down the side of a mountain. I....

Love at first drive

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She's bare in white. Unadorned save for Red Rooster Performance radium-taped on all four corners. In normal course she wouldn't draw a first glance, forget a second. But there's a simmering latent intent drawing me in like a tracer beam. You know this isn't your plain-vanilla Cedia. The bonnet pins are the first giveaway. Then you notice the roof scoops, the tyres that fill out the wheel arches, the shouty red mud flaps. It's probably just me but she seems to sit better on her rubber, stronger, prouder, primed for action. Fire it up and bam the whole city turns around to have a look. It is a brand spanking new rally car. And it is mine! Oh how I've longed to drop 'my rally car' into casual conversation; I know it's utterly childish, that it in no way marks me out as a 100-octane petrol head in a....

Living life in the side lane

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Life. Sideways. I know; probably doesn't make much sense. You see I've been mulling over a blog for a very long time. A very very long time. I had it all planned out in my head. It was going to be called 'diary of a petrol head'. The first post was going to be about petrol heads; I'd steeled myself for a lengthy diatribe on diesel-vs-petrol, set fire to the simmering debate, emphatically state why I was not a diesel head. Here's what I was going to say - sure diesels are as powerful, with the fat slug of torque probably easier to drive, but where are the maniac revs? Where's the singing, zinging sound track? The joy of hell-toeing, rev-matching, blipping the throttle, banging down a gear, keeping the revs up ready to fire out of the apex - what equivalent does a diesel have to that?....