Bunny to Black

The Mooney we flew on a company offsite(on the way to Truckee-Squaw)

Inside the 4-seater Mooney

Beautiful Sierras

Me doing parallel turns

Our cabin on one of our trips to Tahoe

The title describes my journey as I began to ski for the first time since 2007. What a season! Here I am - a strong intermediate skier, a confidence acquired after 15 days of skiing this year at 6 different resorts ranging from Northstar, Homewood and Squaw in the North Lake Tahoe area to Kirkwood, Sierra-At-Tahoe and Heavenly in the South Lake region.

It has been a great learning experience. One might think that Skiing involves just sliding down a hill, but as I studied more about skiing, I began to understand the limitless expanse of skiing -- the varied skiing techniques, the differing terrain, weather conditions, difficulty levels, degree of gradient, or different surface conditions such as moguls, powder, icy, corn snow, slushy etc.

After graduating the green slopes, it was an absolute delight to tear into the long broad intermediate/blue slopes. These cruisers are an absolute favourite of mine, as they are long, steep and broad that enables me to turn at ease. Some of my favourite runs have been: West Bowl at Sierra, Shirley Lake at Squaw, Bonanza and High Grade at Homewood, Bark Shanty/Juniper/Whiskey area in Kirkwood and Meteor and Comet runs at Heavenly.

Having been comfortable on intermediate slopes, I began to venture into some of the tougher black diamond slopes. Some of the blacks that I tried were the Siberia Bowl at Squaw and Upper Zachary at Kirkwood. Skiing blacks can be tough. They tend to be really steep and it takes some courage to shake off the initial chills and jump in. The presence of bumps along the slopes makes it much harder. These ventures really exposed my shortcomings in technique as a skier, but made me determined to really "learn" skiing. I have now begun to work on the art of carved turns, an elusive technique for most intermediates. The more natural way to ski would seem like using the flat skis on snow, but carved turns requires us to tip the skis on their edges and achieve a certain degree of edge control. With sufficient angulation of the body, the skis tips on their edge, and the body's weight pushes the centre of the ski down, so these parabolic shaped skiis carve their way into the turn. Sounds simple, but has been a difficult skill to acquire.

Many experts suggest that beginners should be taught parallel/carved turns right away as that will prevent them from learning such bad techniques as wedge turns. But I felt that wedge and stem-christie turns, bad as they might be, provided me with a defensive platform and kept me interested in skiing. As I learn to use parallel/carved turns and graduate into tougher terrain, it is comforting to know that I have a stem christie to fall back on for tougher terrain.

Although this has been a great skiing season, I am sad that it is coming to an end with the advent of summer. I am already looking forward to the 2010 season (some 7-8 months away) as I aim to take my skiing to the next level.

Discovering America

I arrived in the United States in Dec 2003 and as I rolled through my grad school years, I took a detached interest in the 2004 Presidential primaries and the elections that followed. As an Indian, I guess my "natural" naive inclination then was towards the democrats. Over the course of the next 4 years, I took an interest in understanding many political ideologies and schools of thought: Socialism, Communism, Objectivism, Libertarianism, Anarchy, Monarchy, Democracy, Fascism/Totalitarianism, Pragmatism, and different economic ideologies such as Free-market Capitalism, keynesian and their numerous morphed versions...in this endless battle between the "Haves" and "Have-Nots".

I have taken a particular interest in the Libertarian ideas -- coupled with the idea that the individuals can make better decisions for themselves than the government can make for them, Constitution and the rule of law, and in the ideas of Free-Market Capitalism. I have also been particularly fascinated by the Austrian school of economics. It also coincided with an introduction to the 2008/2009 republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and his ideas for a free and just society. I was totally blown away by the sophistication of the American/Western political thought, the wisdom of it's founders and their understanding of the value of freedom and liberty.

In 2008/2009, it was surreal to watch Barack Obama galvanise the Americans as he "rode the wave" into the White House. Having watched him talk from a few feet away, I could sense the excitement and inspiration he had on his audience. Surely, Obama was smart, articulate, young, inspirational, but the main question was: will his government-solves-everything policy work? Can an entity such as the government manage trillions of dollars in capital investment or is it best left to private enterprise? I thought Americans missed a trick by not understanding and voting for the Ron Paul revolution. I think a majority of the world's political problems could have been solved with Ron Paul as president. He seemed to have the most sensible, logical non-interventionist foreign policy. He is a fiscal conservative, a constitutionalist (with the belief that the individual should be protected from the government, not the other way round), a proponent of individual liberty, lower taxes (it's possible!), free market and sound monetary policies. But then he is not the president, and maybe, just maybe, the World and the United States missed it's best chance for peace and prosperity.

At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Arnold Schwarzenegger gave a speech and explained why he was a Republican:
"I finally arrived here in 1968. What a special day it was. I remember I arrived here with empty pockets but full of dreams, full of determination, full of desire. The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon-Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend of mine who spoke German and English translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which I had just left.
But then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting the government off your back, lowering the taxes and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air. I said to my friend, I said, "What party is he?" My friend said, "He's a Republican." I said, "Then I am a Republican." And I have been a Republican ever since."

God

Courtesy http://xkcd comics

Funny comic strip! The comic author parodies the sense of purity among the various fields of study. This got me thinking -- when we think about life we probably start off with the sociological and pyschological aspects of it (relationships, personality, behavior, family, society), then try and explain it with biology and chemistry (all bodily/life functions are chemical (re)actions, my teacher once said). This leads to a discussion on physical matter and the universe -- the physics of it. We then try and reason it with mathematics, and when all fails, we abstract it with the notion of God.

I recently watched the movie Dasavatharam (btw, highly recommended movie) and there was this one quote I really liked. At the end of the movie, the protagonist (Kamal Hassan) says: "It's not that I don't believe God exists, all I am saying is...it will be good if he did (exist)".

New Years at Guadalupe -- An account

The great state of Texas is a boring flat land, no mountains or forests in sight for hundreds of miles. But with us being in Dallas during new years of 2007, we decided to drive across the state, from it's eastern border to it's western border with New Mexico and camp at Guadalupe National Park. Guadalupe is a beautiful National Park -- bang on the border of Texas with New Mexico. We, a bunch of 4 guys -- Vijay Mishra, Vikas Hegde, Sudhi Murthy and yours truly, had made up our minds to camp at the park and celebrate new year's in the wilderness. We planned carefully, listing all the required items under the 3 categories -- Food, Clothing and Shelter. We noted that the park is devoid of any amenities (including drinking water) and we were advised to get everything possible. We packed a lot of food, tents, stove, lots of water, but surprisingly we didn't pack a lot of warm clothes. We regretted this later though.

Renting the car was an adventure in itself, as we got delayed in reaching the car rental center at the airport as we missed a few exits. Tempers flared as a mini blame-game began as to the cause of the delay, but we made it just in time with a minute to spare as we picked our car at midnight. We quickly dumped all our stuff, and fled Dallas at 3 am on the morning of Dec 30, 2006 with me at the wheel. I had slept for most of the morning and afternoon the previous day, so was feeling fresh (it was "day" for me then). It was a gruelling 9 hour drive across the great state of Texas as we reached the park headquarters in the afternoon of Dec 30,2006. Then, our first surprise, it was snowing -- in the middle of this freaking desert!! I knew the kind of landscape to expect, having lived two years in Tucson, but snow was a pleasant surprise. It was the first snow experience for my friend Vikas as we got down from our cars, rolling in the light half inch snow. The majestic El Capitan and the Guadalupe peaks greeted us as we entered into Indian territory and New Mexico.


We had originally planned to camp at Dog Canyon and trek a day towards McKittrick Canyon, camp in the wilderness, and then trek back to Dog Canyon. The rangers at the Headquarters of Guadalupe said that there is atleast 3 inches of snow at Dog Canyon as it is at a higher elevation. He also said that we would pretty much be all alone in the campsite as no one had registered to camp there for the night. We drove to Dog Canyon, warming up with a light hike at McKittricks' and then driving up to Dog Canyon. Then it hit us, snow everywhere, atleast 6 inches of snow and we were in a sedan with no wheel chains. Luckily, there was a truck ahead of us and it made a clear cut path across the snow on the road. We reached Dog Canyon just before sunset and it was a fairyland there -- snow everywhere, everything covered by a blanket of snow.

Light fades fast in these mountains as we scrambled to setup the tent. It was cold, and we tried to fix up our torches as we bought up the camp tent. Our stuff was not organized and we dug up the whole trunk to find the stove and matches to heat up some veg pulao that our friend Vijay had prepared. Call it inexperience, but we realised that the stove we had bought didn't match the propane gas tanks and we couldn't light a fire. There was only one other guy in the entire campsite. He gave us his stove and a spare gas tank, but then we still couldn't light it up (and we call ourselves engineers!!). It was cold, and we were hungry, so we decided to eat the cold pulao and call it a day. We cheered ourselves with some vodka which made us warm for a little while. Luckily there was a campsite restroom nearby, which had a heater and that saved us a bit.

Night was cold, with each of us trying to curl up as much as we could to keep our limbs warm. Sun shone above us and I came out to see my shoes frozen so hard that I could't put my leg inside them. The camp ranger came and chatted with us a bit, saying he didn't expect us to camp the previous night. It was time for the hike and and our chef Vijay made hot tea and heated some rotis (we had figured out the stove by this time, after all we are engineers!!). We decided to leave our campsite as it is, as none of had the strength to dismantle and setup the tent again. We just packed lots of food and water and decided to trek for the day and return.



With ample sunlight on our backs, we set out from Dog Canyon onto the Tejas Trail hoping to touch Lost Peak and return. It was beautiful. Snow covered trees and mountain slopes greeted us as we walked in foot deep snow across the valley in our worn-out running shoes. Some mule deers crossed our paths along the way -- pretty much the only mobile life form we saw in the entire hike. I think it was just us 4 doing the hike on this trail. We stopped at all the "patel" points we could find, taking profile pictures of ourselves. The hike towards Lost Peak is quite a steep one along the ridges with a sharp drop. We were huffing and puffing our way up with power bars to energise us. Sudhi pointed at a few mountain lion tracks on the way, but we couldnt confirm. Supposedly these lions are always watching and would have been aware of our presence. We had made our decisions, if a lion attacks, we run, the slowest one loses, hard luck.



We finally reached Lost Peak, jumped about as we took in the magnificient view of the valley at such a high elevation. I was trying to visualize an ancient sea that is supposed to have surrounded these mountain ridges. We had our food there, took the mandatory pictures and decided to return as it was getting darker and colder. Hiking back was a breeze as it was down all the way. We quickly made our way back, bearing the biting cold. As we reached campsite, we talked to the ranger who gave an account of his various travels around the world and also gave a book on mountain lion encounters for the night.

We decided to cook something up and had bought some rice along, with various ready-to-eat gravy stuff. It was painful, trying to boil rice in the cold night. Not much heat was being contained in the open vessel and we tried to cover the utensil with plates and sticks. It was long and painful and in the end we gave up and decided to eat the half boiled rice and mask it with the gravy stuff. This was new year's eve of 2006,with 2007 about to dawn on us. We took the last sips of vodka and cozied into the tent. Sudhi was reading the mountain lion encounters book aloud with a pen torch. Maybe we were tired, or maybe it was the gruesome encounters of the mountain lions, or even the eloquent voice of sudhi (ahem!), we quickly fell asleep...well before midnight.

Jan 1, 2007 -- a new year and a new hope. We dismantled the tents, packed all our stuff, dumping it into our trunks and left Dog Canyon as a 11 hour drive stared before us. Roads in Texas and New Mexico is characterized by long straight roads and we shot forward. I looked around as we drove across the state, and the most striking aspect of the state is the flatness. It hits you, not a mountain or hill on sight, just plain flat. Amazing. Why is it so flat?

We reached Dallas close to midnight again and scrambled to return the rental car with minutes to spare, again! I had a flight to catch early in the morning, so packed all my stuff as I thought about the momentous trip to Guadalupe.