There's many a slip...

Just got home from the garage. It is a ride that normally takes me little more than 25 minutes. Today it took me something around a hour and a half. The Unicorn died mid way. At first I refused to heed the signs that she was going to do exactly that. So I doggedly rode on believing that the trouble would disappear if I ignored it long enough. I think there is a Murphy's Law to that effect, wait till I clue him in with my right fist.
More than 2 kilometres from ground zero I was left to fend for myself, and the Unicorn. So I began pushing my way forward with god-awful grunting and puffing sounds towards home. There was nowhere I could get it fixed at that time. It was 9:15 at night(or there abouts), the closest service centre was a zillion huff-puffs away. "Service centre!", bellowed T's Spanner Wielding Ego! "What kind of automotive journalist are you? or ex-garage boy? or technology buff??", continued he.
There was a point in all that. I may be a bit rusty, but what the heck, I could do the basic checks. No point, being one of the sheep and heading straight to the slaughter house, "Bhaiya, gaadi band pad gayi... dekhiye na..." After parking under one of the few sodium vapour street lamps I set about looking for things amiss in the eerie orange glow . Fuel, electricals, fuel supply , oho, the bloody carb and such .. but all to no avail. I was beginning to get panicky by a fair measure (because I couldn't figure it out) and angrier still.
I finally invoked my Gurus for advice; praying for salvation. The Big Man was unavailable, but The Wily One picked up on the third ring. He quickly rattled off some more checks for me to conduct. They did'nt manage to get the engine to do anything more than a weak idle. Sigh, I relegated my minutes to carrying on the huffing puffing progress homeward. Wily One, sagely relegated his usually beautiful Sunday morning to fixing another bike!
Just as I was rolling in to our building (the path slopes downwards) The Big Man called.
He rattled of an echo of Wily Man's checklist and then one more - "Whack the carburettor bowl twice." Woah! This is no washing machine that you kick and it springs to life!, I thought. But without protest I followed his instructions with adequate firmness and diligence.
There, when I finally made it to the parking lot of my building, when I was well and tryuly home, the engine burst into life. Sigh.. there surely is a Murphy's Law for this. Apparently the muck that was lodged in the carb, the very same one I could not drain out of the float bowl or force out with full revs and choke, just fell out of the jets (back into the bowl - anyhow) with the whacks. Neato...
For all the theoretical knowledge and pinhead thoughts, there's nothing that beats hands on experience. Getting down and dirty is the only way to getting around.

"All occupations are lowly; only book-learning is exalted", but "A book is quite a beautiful thing, even more so learning. Together, however, all they amount to is called book-learning."

Hmm...