Sholvaram Lake - oct 20, 2007

Sholavarm Lake, there was a time when I used to go there almost daily and that was when I was 12 years old (1992) when we were staying at Paadianallur (near RedHills(near chennai)). Once I come back from school every day, It was almost a ritual for me to take my Bicycle to the old airport near the Sholvaram Lake. Now this old airport is nothing but two ultra-wide concrete roads criss crossing each other like a '+' symbol. It was used as an airport for World-War II airplanes. But for the past few decades this has been used to shoot Stunt-scenes of the Tamil movies. Infact I had seen a few Movie shootings during some of my Trips over here. Now a days it is used by aero-modelling enthusiasts to test out their Airplane simulations and also some times there are also some exercises conducted by millitary personnel.

Today, Oct 20 2007, which happens to be Auyudha Pooja as well, I decided to go and visit this old favourite place of mine probably to try and rekindle some old memories. woke up at 5:45 , got started from Home by 6:15 and took the NH5 till Redhills and then took the road towards Thiruvallur, 4 kms down the road found the entry for this old airport (infact I had come to this place a month back but could not discover this entry point, what a shame ), so was happy that I could find the entry without asking any one this time(yeah !! we males never ask for routes, unless you know in very rare circumstances which are as rare as rare !!!). It was perfect weather, a gloomy morning with an occasional drizzle, now this was more than what I wanted. So took one of the airport stretches and reached the Sholavaram lake. It was quite a scenic place, finally I found a Lake which had some reasonable water (during my trip to poondy dam, I was unhappy to see that the Dam was not even half-full) . Rode on the Lake's bund for some distance, there were only a very few people. Found a spot to park my vehicle, took some photos of the lake from here and also some snaps with my bike in the foreground (ooh !! does this machine look good or what ? its a real macho !! ), then decided to take the Lake's bund road till where ever it would take me, after a km I found a route to get back the NH5. Took the NH5 and proceeded in the direction of Nellore (odo - 25 Kms). The Highway which is a part of the Golden Quadrilateral was just too good. Slowly but steadily I ramped up the speed of my bike, soon I touched 100 Km/hr and the Bike though having some vibrations was pretty much ok, remmber I am in the final stages of running-in my Bike, yep ! it is nearing 2000 Kms which is the advised running-in period.
Stopped my machine by the side of the road and took some snaps, infact one of this snap was my favourite one of this trip. It shows the road NH5, but it also displays my machine's speedo-meter and the RPM box. Started again and proceeded till Gumidipoondi, infact all this while I was thinking whether to go till Nellore and have breakfast over there !! and call my parents and tell them I was having breakfast in Andhra Pradesh. Like I didn't even inform them before starting on this Trip (bcos my initial plan was only to go till Sholavaram lake) , the weather was still great, no signs of sun-shine yet, so it was cool with some dark clouds and gloomy ..ooh its tough to get such good weather, so has to use such days. But I decided to turn back and head home after reaching Gumidipoondi (decided to go to Nellore some time later).