A short trip to Bahrain. Started on Tuesday and Back on Friday.

Very different experience compared to Dubai. Currency being so strong makes a big difference in shopping. We tend to buy more as everything looks cheap before you covert!

Interestingly, Bahrain is a very relaxed place and looks like a party place. Place where we stayed had 2 discos in it. People party till 6:30AM, which was very different from other countries.

Did see a few drunk people on the street, which is never heard of from the middle east.

Highlight of the place - World trade center with windmills, Clear sea water & the awesome hotel room with a view!

My Journey started with going to Austin. I had a small presentation to do with one of the hitech companies there. It was my first time to Austin and I was amazed by the number of companies and the number of flyovers going all around. No wonder it is called the second silicon valley in the US.

By the time I could get used to the time difference of Bangalore and Austin, I hopped on to a plane to visit my sister and broter-inlaw in California. It was a red eye flight with a stop over at LA.

California always excites me for the bike lanes. So the first thing I do when I land there is to take out my bro-in-law’s bike and head out! Never ever have I seen dedicated bike lanes and also exits for bike lanes to goto work. California is truly a bike friendly city and a road bikers paradise.

The next two days we relaxed in the bay area roaming around in the car and playing a lot on Xbox kinect.

We visited the golden gate park and rented a few bikes there. It is a very nice park and I must say is a great place for runners. Not the best place for bikers, but we enjoyed going around the place. Beach was right across with wind surfers all around.

SFO is of-course  incomplete without viewing the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked around on the bridge for sometime and it reminded me of the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I wanted to go to the Muir wood forests after seeing the movie. Even though I have visited both these places before, visiting again after watching the movie gives you a different thrill!

The weekend was too short and I head back to Austin. I had already planned to head out to New york for the coming weekend. At the same time I didn’t want to miss seeing Austin downtown.

To my surprise we (My cousin Dheeraj and I) decided to go to the downtown on a Wednesday evening and found it “ROCKING”.

Austin is not just about visiting the Capitol building, It is truly the Live Music Capital of US. I was so shell shocked to see the quality of music by every single band in every single bar we went to! For crying out loud, it was a Wednesday evening and never every have I seen so much energy in a downtown.

Live music varied from heavy metal, rock to the good old texas country music. Each one of them were masters of their space! Being a music lover, I enjoyed every bit of it!

From the music city Austin, I head out to the city of lights! Times Square, New York!

NY is a place that just never sleeps. It is so lively all the time. I enjoyed being in New York, but best of all spending time with my Brother and Sis-in-Law.

Best part of NY that I like is the Central Park. It is amazing to see the number of people running and biking without worrying about the weather. We also joined the band of runners at 32 degree F. Call it crazy, but we loved it.

NY has wide range of things to do, right from Toys R US to the rich buildings of Donald Trump!

From NY I head straight to Dubai via Amsterdam to meet my Lovely wife!

I had heard so much about Dubai being the mecca for shopping, so the first thing we did was to get into different Malls of Dubai.

Dubai has all the major brands that you see in the west. If you love shopping, then you will love the number of shops in a single place! All shops are really crowded during the week as well. I’m puzzled till date if these are localities or tourists making best use of their time on a weekday! They also have a ski resort inside a mall!

From the fancy city Dubai, we decided to go on a road trip to Al Ain. Al Ain has a lot of things to do right from Palace, Museums to Zoo. Our favorite place was the camel market which is not too touristy. This is a place where people buy and sell camels. It was nice to see so many camels in once place.

These guys were very friendly. They talked about different types of camels, their life span, what they ate etc. Most of these guys speak Hindi, which made it very easy to communicate.

The way these camels were transported was a sight. Cranes to lift them. Some of these camels are used for races and some for meat!

I’m heading back in the next few days from here. Plan to see more places in Dubai!

Nevertheless, I had to install an app on my phone to keep track of different time zones!

This one is a back dated post, I wanted to write down my experience doing my long distance cycling in a single day!

Summary:

Distance:102.46 mi (163 KM)

Total Time taken: 7 Hours, 21 Min

Avg Speed:13.9 mph

Calories burnt: 5,127 C

I started this journey early in the morning to avoid too much traffic and sunlight. Packed 5 Liters of water, some food for the journey and some energy bars.

Headed out towards the bangalore mysore road. Coincidentally when I hit the Bangalore mysore road I saw a few more fellow cyclist as well. All these guys were on a Road bike doing the Bangalore Brevet cycling event. Below photo is taken by them:

What I realized that day was how inefficient these mountain bike tires are when it comes to long distance cycling. My journey till Mandya was fairly easy as most parts of the road was a down hill. It was quite challenging when I was coming back. Took a lot of breaks and finally made it.

The weirdest feeling was after I reached home and having burnt around 5000 calories… my body felt the need to eat a lot. Not matter how much I ate it wouldn’t satisfy me. My stomach would feel full, but my body needed more! It is a very different feeling!

Overall, it felt great to have done this distance! I’m looking forward to do something like this this year as well!

Dates: 25, 26, 27, 28th of February 2011

Total distance: 239KM

This has been one of my best adventure so far! On the road for 4 days… camping wherever you can!

Here is the path and the gradient information. Yes! we did a LOT of climbing with good downhills!

Day 1: Golden temple of Coorg and Backwaters of harangi dam

Before starting our journey we visited the golden temple of Coorg.

After this we reached Shree’s uncle’s place and started our biking journey. I was quite excited as it was the first time I was set out to do something like this. Now no turning back, 4 days on the road.

Our first day was completely on the back waters of Harangi dam. It was such breathtaking experience!

We cycled through some rough terrains. It was not about covering distance, but enjoying the view around us. No man-made things around us, just nature for as long as we went.

Here is a small video of the place:

Finally end of the first day, we camped few KM before the Harangi dam. That night Deepak cooked a special dish made out of broken wheat called Dalia.

Day 2: Harangi dam to Bisle Ghat

Next morning we woke up and had filter coffee, uppittu and kesaribath – courtesy Shree! It was so amazing to have filter coffee and kesaribath in a forest! When I initially thought about this trip, I had only noodles and some ready to eat food in my mind.

We ate and got ready and then I realized I had a flat tire. There was a bamboo thorn in my tire! I had recently replaced my tires with Continental touring plus which was supposed to be puncture resistant. I guess that explains how bad our first day terrain was!

Second day journey was mostly on the roads. We wanted to reach Bisle ghats, but we camped very close to it as it was getting dark. We camped in one of the village paddy fields. Our main criteria was to have a flowing water source nearby! Just the way all civilizations developed on the banks of different rivers, we always looked for a water source!

That night we made soup and had vegetable pulav!

At around 4AM Shree woke up with lots of ant bites! Yes… we realized our tent was under attack of the ants! We had to sacrifice a date fruit outside the tent and used lots and lots of AXE deodorant to get rid of the ants!

Day 3: Bisle ghat to Todikana

We covered some rough patch of road for the first half of the day and then traveled through different forest area.

End of the journey we found the best water source in 3 days. It was right under a bridge and a flowing river!

Needless to say we all jumped into water and had a lot of fun!

Day 4: Thodikana to Suntikoppa (back to Start)

We had a lot of distance to cover with some stretch of unknown road. We wanted to be back by 5PM so that we reach Bangalore by midnight.

After the first 5KM of normal cycling, we reached a paved jeep road with a lot of climb. We biked a little and had to push for atleast 2KM…

…after a lot of huffing and puffing, we saw a jeep come next to us. We asked the jeep guy how long does this road go like this? The jeep guy said for another 10KM! At this time I know we needed help. Shree quickly asked the jeep guy if he could get us through the climb. He finally did! Phew! This saved us a lot of time.

Once we were on top, we still had a lot of distance to cover! The last few KMS to Madikeri was again a bad climb. We took a nice lunch break at Madikeri and continued another 25KM to our destination!

It felt real good to have completed the whole trip!

Click here to view all the photos.

PS: if you liked what Track Every Coin does, do sign up for FREE!

Few of my fav pics:

The tiger:

The peacock: We were lucky to see the peacock spread all its feathers and dance. I loved the way it shakes its feathers.

The Zebra looked so beautiful…

The python behind the glass:

Loved the birds as well:

There were lots more animals. If you visit Mysore and have not visited the Zoo, I’d highly recommend it.

Click here to view all them.

The printer is more than a year old so it has no warranty. This is a way to discourage refilling of cartridges. The sad part is that even if you change the cartridge it will not reset on its own. It needs to be serviced by a technician.

Anyways I read a few articles on the net and found an interesting hack. Here is what I did…

First of all open the back panel of the printer…

Now locate the IC 93C66. This is an EEPROM that the printer uses to store the number of sheets printed.

Now short the pin number 1 and 4. These pins are the Chip Select pin and the Data pin. So when the main micro controller tries to read the number of sheets printed it will not be able to do so.

Connect back the printer and it should work just fine after this. I enjoyed doing this hack… thought I will share it!

In the common market, if someone asks you “Which i-pod do you have?”.

If you say you have a nano, shuffle, touch… he would be confused! But if you say that you have an Apple, Sony or a Philips i-pod he understands!

I wonder how this happened. How did the word ‘I-pod’ takeover the name for an Mp3 Player? Is it because Apple did not spread the awareness very well in India and the buzz spread through word of mouth? I wonder if the following could have happened:

Person A: What is an i-pod?

Person B: It is something that can play music!

Now when Person A sees an MP3 player he thinks it is an i-pod!

Not sure if this is a boon or a bane for Apple! Yes, the word “i-pod” is now widely used, but not sure if that is translating to sales for them.

Anyways we are keeping a short name for our product. The hardware device will be called “TECI”, short form for Track Every CoIn. So that it is easy to refer it – “Do you have a TECI?”

Blog also posted at our company web site.

For the first time I heard all the big industrialist of India speak on stage. This was a three day event and every day was better than the previous.

First day the main highlight was the talk of Ratan Tata and Narayan Murthy. I was hoping this talk would be more about their experience and how they had built such an empire, but for some reason it was not moderated that well.

The talk was more of a political twist than an Entrepreneurial journey. Nevertheless they both answered the questions asked very well.

After this I heard Capt. Gopinath speak.

He really seems like the guy who has started from scratch. It was amazing to hear his talk about how he built such a big industry and sold it. He had a vision, a vision that everyone can travel and afford to travel by flight. How he raised money when no one was giving him any money. How he started off with just one aircraft by taking a loan. A very inspiring talk.

Now Entrepreneurship has become his lifestyle. He seems to have started a new logistics company.

On the second day my favorite talk was from Geeth Sethi and Leander Paes. When I saw these guys, I was wondering what are these sports celebrities doing in an Entrepreneurial Seminar. I was so moved when I heard what they had started.

It was a proud movement for me to hear about their venture – “Olympic Gold Quest“. They are really trying hard to get as many gold as they can in The Olympics for India. At the end of their talk I felt like doing a lot of sports. The whole audience was moved by their talks. Everyone stood up and many of them made some contributions to their organization.

That evening I got to hear R.D. Burman’s original band members playing on the stage.

This was one of the best Indian band performance I have seen. They played all old hindi songs. People went crazy for all the songs.

Finally on the last day I heard the king of Retail industry speak. It was none other than Kishore Biyani himself.

He is such a down to earth person and such a passionate Indian. He makes business sound so simple.

Overall the event is a HUGE moral boost. Seeing so many entrepreneurs doing so many different things makes me want to do more projects. Lot of people saw the look and feel of our product TrackEveryCoin and they loved the concept. I would be blogging about the new product in the next few days in our company blog.

If I walk up to anyone and say that I love street running in Bangalore, people must think I’m crazy! But the fact is that by changing your strategy you can also love running on the streets.

I asked myself how come I love running on the streets and others don’t. I figured I was doing a few things differently.

• Running in residential areas:

Avoid main road when you can. If you are running random and don’t care to do a loop  it is best to run on small roads. Here is an example of my run around Padmanabhanagar. You  can see on google maps that there is only a few spots I hit the main roads (roads shown in yellow). I run mostly in the residential areas and small roads (roads shown in white). You can go from one area to the other by doing this, once in a while you might hit a main road, but find the next cross road as soon as possible.

What I love about running in the residential areas/small roads is that there are quite a number of trees around you. And all the houses look so different. Every house in Bangalore has its own charm in the way it is built. Some are colorful, some are built big, some are small and cozy. I keep myself entertained looking at all this.

• When you hit the main road stay to your right:

I feel this is very important to see a head on traffic than traffic behind you for two reasons, 1. You hear less honks. People in India honk so that the other person knows they are coming. 2. It is safer to see head on traffic so that you can move around looking at the vehicles.

But yes… most important thing is to find the next small road and get into it!

• Music helps

Music has always made me stay in my own world while running. I listen to a lot of podcasts / audio books while running. This can make you run a couple of extra miles.

These are the top three things that I do that makes a difference. I’m sure the other runners will have more points, do comment your experiences so that this helps other runners. Let us make street running a culture in Bangalore!