Indoors the whole day... almost

It is amazing, today was a bright and sunny day and I did nothing but stay at home all day and stir out in the late evening when temperatures dropped necessitating use of heavy jackets and winter clothes. I am amazed at myself.... all the more surprising is the fact that I didn't do much the whole day. I spent the entire day lounging around on the sofa reading substantial parts of the book Planet India by Mira Kamdar, a person of Indian origin who was born and brought up and lives in US.
Feeling claustrophobic, we finally decided to head out and hit the gym so that our sedentary bodies would get some sort of exercise. Our apartment complex has a small gym with some decent treadmills, steppers, cycles and loads of free weights. It was tough to work out after a long gap of time or is it that I am getting old?
I hit the exercise bicycle and couldn't achieve any speed higher than 19 miles per hour.... indeed that is abysmally low considering my own past track record... Telling myself to buck up and not to get bogged down by age and weight I pushed the pedals harder till streams of sweat tailed down my brow.. and my calf and thigh muscles ached out of the sudden stress and protested as they were being woken up after a long and comfortable life of no stress. After cycling for around 15 minutes, I decided to hit the mill and setting a high slope and reasonable speed I started a brisk walk on the rolling rubber mat, 10 minutes my calf legs were refusing walk and telling me to take break and stop this madness. I just willed my body to listen to me and plodded on for another 10 minutes before getting off the treadmill and wiping the buckets of sweat off my face and neck.
Now I am back at the cybercafe doing what I have been doing during the past few months in the US, browsing the internet, blogging, checking mail and noting that there are none from my friends from India. I wonder whether they have all forgotten me or are they thinking "good riddance to bad rubbish"... whatever the case maybe..... I definitely miss India for more than a few reasons... the first and foremost being the nice bright and sunny weather... it is another matter that it gets unbearably hot sometimes... next is my bike and the freedom of being able to ride whenever, wherever I please. Here I still don't have a motorcycle to ride and haven't been able to make too many biker friends in the area I live so I am stuck without independent transport... there are lot more reasons but for now this is enough.
But the good thing about being here is our creek side home. The last in the apartment block and we have the beautiful open view out of our window and when it rains the birds come in flocks and throng the creek looking for insects and scraps of food. The fantastic roads and orderly traffic (sometimes gets to my nerves) are the bonuses of being in America.

First summitter of Everest is no more

Edmund Hillary the New Zealand mountaineer who in 1953 conquered Mt. Everest along with Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay passed away. He was 88. Apart from climbing the Everest, Hillary was also the first man to drive a tractor across Antartica. He was ranked among the greatest adventurers of the 20th century.

Hillary achieved international fame when he successfully scaled Everest in 1953 along with Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay. The adventurous and hardy New Zealander devoted much of his life to help and improve the lives of the mountain people of Nepal.

Born in 1919 in Auckland and made a living as a beekeeper and climbed mountains as a hobby. He has successfully scaled peaks in New Zealand, Swiss Alps, The Himalayas in India, Nepal and Tibet. Despite all these achievements and fame Hillary remained a very down to earth and humble person. He lived and worked among the hill people of Nepal striving to get them benefits of modern civilisation, science and technology.

I culled out some of his pictures from the web and here they are. A great man admired for his resourcefulness, stamina and humility. The world has lost a true hero.

During the brief period of my life when I was actively into mountaineering, I had nurtured an ambition to meet with this great man. But somehow I never could make the opportunity to make the meeting happen, now due to his sad demise it will not happen at all.

Getting Mail from another RTW Biker


I got a mail from Christopher Dawe on behalf of Hubert Kriegel, a biker who is currently travelling through Columbia on his motorcycle with a sidecar. He started off from New York on February 16, 2005 and is planning to travel 10 years on the road. He just wanted information about India because his plans are to travel to India this year.



Well I wrote back apologetically saying that I was in US and not much help to him and then feeling curious I visited his website http://www.thetimelessride.com/ and voila! I was surprised to see the simplicity of the design and directness of the approach.



The site is more of a photoblog with numerous pictures of Hubert's travels on the bike and the sights he has seen on the road. I kinda feel envious that at 52 he is still up and about on the road travelling on a motorcycle... hope I will be fit and able to take time off at that age.. if I live that long by the grace of god. He has an interesting bio worthy reading... he has been doing various things for a living from running a restaurant in Paris... to being a real estate agent in New York... But being a perennial biker wanting to hit the road is what I like about him.

Super High Performance bike from Shelby and Rucker

When will India have these bikes on road? I don't think it will happen in my lifetime. We still don't have roads to run such bikes on. We have to be content with our 100-225 cc motorcycles grappling for space on choked city streets. Here is one bike I'd love to ride let us see if and when I will get an opportunity to have a go.

Shelby Automobiles Inc, Texas has teamed up with Rucker Performance, Fort Worth (Texas) to build a limited-production Shelby motorcycle. The bike was introduced at the recent Cincinnati V-Twin Expo.

"It's no secret that stuffing a powerful American motor into a lightweight chassis has been my formula for success," said Shelby, the 84-year-old chief executive of Shelby Automobiles and creator of the Cobra and several hot Mustangs.

Bill Rucker, a creative motorcycle builder who loves performance, definitely took that approach in the pro-stock-style bike.

The all new motorcycle features racing-style front forks, high-performance braking system with ceramic rotors, a Pingel electric shifting system and air-ride suspension. Carbon fibre wheels and upper body, and the other panels are aluminum.

The heart of the bike is the massive fuel-injected 128 cubic-inch twin from S&S rated at 150 horsepower, which is seven more than the Suzuki SX4 sedan. A limited number of 25 motorcycles will be available for purchase by the third quarter of 2008. So if you are looking for a high-performance twin head to Shelby Automobiles.

Back home in India we must be content with a R1 Styled 150 cc Yamaha motorcycle. Hope that will not be a damp squib like the other recent offerings by Yamaha.

Hill Climbing Sport Competition

My dear adventurer, hiker, trekker and rock climbing friends, get ready to test your fitness and agility. You have been climbing hills and hiking slopes for fun now how about doing the same for glory and to compete with others of your kind?

The Gujarat government is organising a hill climbing competition at Girnar Hill in Junagarh district. The Girnar Hill is part of a series of mountains with the highest point being at 3600 ft asl. A long, winding and knees-testing, 9,600 step ascent takes one all the way to the top-most point via several peaks. Girnar Hill, around 300 km from Ahmedabad, has around 10,000 stone steps to climb before one finally reaches the ultimate peak of Dattatreya.

The competition will be held early next month (February 3, 2008) and will be completely sponsored by the Gujarat government’s Sports, Youth Services and Cultural Activities Department and the Junagadh district administration.

The competition is open to all school and college students and categorised into 14-18 years and 19-35 years. The men in the former category have to traverse 2,200 steps uphill and downhill in a span of one hour and 15 minutes. The time limit for women in the same category is two hours.

Those desiring to participate in the event can contact Devkumar Ambaliya at +91-9825261871 or at 0285630490. Ambaliya is a Junagarh official and he had set a record in climbing the Girnar hill around 1979 that was unbeaten for almost 20 years.

This Girnar competition was started in 1971 by a local newspaper, Phoolchab, as a way to mark its golden jubilee. The newspaper held the event until 1979 before handing it over to the Junagadh civic administration.

Here are some pictures of the ascent to Girnar I found on the web



Source: MSN

Pictures: Flickr and Pbase

Video of Pictures

I was just playing windows movie maker and another movie making software with some of the pictures shot during my travels in America. Here is the result a one and half minute video. I don't know how it is... but then a beginners attempt... it is too fast during some frames and too slow at others... but nevertheless I have tried to capture the best possible results.