The Indo 500

3am Saturday morning. The sky is stained a deep red from the lights of the city. The silhouette of Mt Merapi looms in the background. H and I emerge from the club, the music still throbbing in our Jack Danielled heads. I push my bike out of the lot and H gives it the once over while I limber up. R and K do the same with theirs.

Side by side, H pulls himself onto my pillion seat and K gets on R's. We rev our bikes while W, the singer from the club, stands in front of us, holding a kerchief in her hand. She raises it and, winking at me and H, cuts it down. We disappear into Jalan Solo in a cloud of burnt rubber and black smoke. We race past Plaza Amburukmo at a blazing 70km/h. My gearbox is protesting from the strain.

At the end of the street, I brake at the very last moment and swerve the bike right into a tight u-turn, my shoe brushing the tarmac. H lets out a whoop. Powering out of the hairpin, the front of the bike lifts in a wheelie. Too late to correct. I lose power and R catches up. Laughing maniacally, he inches ahead of me.

A twist of my wrist and I speed into the tree-lined boulevards of Jalan Gejayan. The claustrophobic confines challenging us to push our bikes even harder. Unhindered by traffic, we criss cross our way through narrow backlanes, waking up the occasional family of chickens.

Now we reach a bridge which gives us a breathtaking view of Jogja by night. Neither of us can resist the urge to slow down to take in the night time scene. The city is quiet, almost dead. In the night, we feel like specks in the sleeping city.

We're at the roundabout at the university, all of us freezing from the cool, crisp night air. One more stretch of road and two sharp turns to the finish. I twist my throttle all the way and hunch my back into a race crouch. R is close behind me. It becomes a test of nerves as the road intersection at McDonalds looms up. I go hard on the brakes a split second after R and lean hard into the turn. My left clutch peg scrapes the road and sparks fly. Oblivious, I change my stance on the bike abruptly as I get ready for the sharp right coming ahead. This time my exhaust is scratched as I shift all my weight to the right in order to make the turn at maximum speed.

The old girl gives me all she's got while H giggles at the ludicrousness of it all.

The final stretch. R is only half a second behind me. We power into the parking lot and our brakes screetch as we stop just short of the fence. W points at me and smiles. I pump my arms in triumph and spin my rear wheels in a burnout to celebrate. The air is thick with the smell of burnt rubber and hard won victory. H slaps me hard on the back.

It is now 4am and, after a celebratory cigarette and a nasi padang breakfast, the dark red sky starts to turn an icey blue. The sun is just rising and the city is starting to wake up. We say our goodbyes, get onto our bikes and slink off into the tight backroads.