Curried Away

With Rich and Chris both tied up for various reasons it was left to myself and Ben to fly the flag for Team Curried Away at the final Rickshaw Run meeting in Southampton.

After an eventful Friday night involving beer, broken phones and blind bus drivers (I won’t elaborate), I managed to make my way to Waterloo just in time to meet Ben and hop onto our train as it was leaving the station.

Friday had put me in a foul mood so I was looking forward to a bit of rickshaw related excitement to brighten things up a bit. In fact by the time we’d reached Southampton I already felt a lot better thanks mainly to a chap we were chatting to who, upon hearing of our adventure, regaled us with
travelling tales of his own, ranging from being arrested for Espionage to Swedish lesbian sisters!

Needless to say we reached Ocean Village only a couple of minutes late to be presented with camera crews, fellow Rickshawers and, of course, a lovely, sparkly new, 4 stroke 175cc Auto-Rickshaw fitted with all mod cons including zip up plastic ‘doors’ all courtesy of our good man Steve at TukShop…brilliant.

I was interested to find out that there will be two camera crews coming along for the ride - one independent and one in conjunction with Extreme Sports TV. With Team Curried Away the obvious favourites to win - if it’s at all possible - it looks like next year we’ll be movie stars…in a way!

So after much ‘pomp, handshaking and back-slapping’ we proceeded to be given a brief introduction to the inner workings of a rickshaw. To be honest most of it fell on deaf ears but Rich will be glad to know that I did put my hand up and meekly ask the questions he so desperately wanted me to and so:

What would be the most useful tools?

- apart from the ‘usual’, a feeder gauge

Most useful spares?                                

- Spark plugs, Clutch cables

Jerry can space?                                    

- back shelf or fix a bracket to the back

Fuel?                                                        

- petrol (obviously surely?)

Electrical capability?                              

- Steve very dryly informed me there was a “cig lighter right next tothe ipod port” - it does have an alternator though

Tyres?                                                        

- Valves, no inner tube and 30lbs pressure is optimum

After a few too many nods of feigned understanding next up was to do what we went there for and drive the damn thing! With 20-30 people having one or two laps of the carpark each i’m sure you can imagine it took quite some time to get round us all. But TukShop were good in ensuring everyone got a go. I’m not sure how the power of TukShop’s pretty damn badass sparkly new one is going to compare to our clapped out, 2nd hand deathtraps but the fun factor
must surely remain the same - and believe me it is fun!

After a tentative half a lap, I built up to a good speed as I came haring round the front wing of a parked up Nissan Micra. Then it was clutch in, up to third, release clutch and throttle…neeyowm!

I must’ve got at least 20km/h out of that badboy. Not bad for a first time

From there we moved on to a local curry house interestingly named “Cuti’s”. Despite the name, the food is great and has restored my faith in curries (I’ve had loads of bad ones in the past couple of years).

The journey back was as eventful as the day but to cut a long story short(ish) the main point of interest came from an American sounding, Belfast born post-woman who informed us that in India you can use beeping and lights as a form of morse code.

For example: one beep means hello. Loads of beeps means i’m behind you and am interested in overtaking. Loads of beeps accompanied by flashing lights means get out of the way i’m coming up fast. If you then reply with flashing lights of your own it means no chance stay where you are…punk. Similarly 2 long beeps and one short beep means what’s for tea tonight? And one short
beep, two long flashes and a final short beep means curry…obviously.

Bring on India!!!