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As I write this post, it occurs to me that I can now joke that over the course of this summer, I have traveled across the length, breadth (one & two) and height of America.
Forewarning : This is a long post.
Last weekend was my attempt at Mt. Whitney, the tallest peak in contiguous United States, and Mt. Muir, another 14er that is within a mile of aerial distance from Whitney. The reason I specify contiguous is because the tallest peak is technically, Mt. Mckinley in Alaska. Mt. Whitney is the tallest point in the contiguous 48 states. For some reason, Whitney is given a lot of importance and the peak is Alaska is relatively ignored, but after Sarah Palin, can you really blame anyone ?
Back to the point, we were allotted Sep. 26 and as my last post said, we had a 24 hour window from Saturday morning 12 a.m. to midnight to do our business and get out of the wilderness. There was a slight issue though. The drive from the Bay Area to the trailhead takes 7 hours, and you cannot really go upto 14,000 ft. from the sea level in a day without some acclimatization.
A word on acclimatization here. Anything above 12,000 ft. is high altitude and climbing at such heights in a day from sea level usually leads to mild or severe headaches, commonly called altitude sickness. The only remedy is to sleep for a night at around 8,000 ft. before proceeding higher. This critical sleep helps your body adjust its breathing to surrounding air pressure, and is called acclimatization.
I find this piece of news terribly disturbing :
In the event of a nuclear war with Pakistan, Indian leaders had predicted a bizarre victory, according to former US president Bill Clinton.
“Indian officials spoke of knowing roughly how many nuclear bombs the Pakistanis possessed, from which they calculated that a doomsday nuclear volley would kill 300 [million] to 500 million Indians while annihilating all 120 million Pakistanis. The Indians would thus claim ‘victory’,” Branch has quoted Clinton as saying.
I guess that’s what happens when you vote in candidates who know nothing but elementary math.
It seems that groping is a great leveler, not even sparing high-profile celebrities.
When Bipasha Basu, a true-blue Bengali decided to take part in the on-going Durga Puja festivities with boyfriend John Abraham, the last thing she expected was to be sexually groped by a sick minded stranger. The actress had a horrifying time when she was at The North Bombay Sarvojonin Durga Puja at Santacruz on Saturday evening.
If this can happen so easily to a star, what realistic chances do you give a normal woman of evading molesters on a normal day ?
On the other hand, this is another good reason to ban public festivals. Public festivals tend to be grope-fests, but more than that, people’s religions have no business being on the street.
If you want to celebrate, do it at home. If you want to celebrate in your apartment complex, be rich enough to buy the whole damn thing, then celebrate. If you want to celebrate on the streets, join politics, takes bribes left, right and center, be voted into power, flex some muscles over the corporation, buy a street, and then celebrate.
You get the point.
I came across this interview of the Thackeray cousins by Rajdeep Sardesai, filmed separately of course.
Rajdeep Sardesai queries Uddhav Thackeray in English, Uddhav replies in Hindi.
Rajdeep Sardesai questions Raj Thackeray in Hindi, Raj replies in Marathi.
They sure have the whole concept of language messed up, no ?
But I shouldn’t bother, as long as they speak any language without coercing others. As far as language is concerned, I was debating over the issue of our national language with a friend and I mentioned language should be considered as a means of communication and nothing more. That would get rid of a lot of problems.
Imagine if the Neanderthal man got all worked up about preserving his language and culture, this post would look like “aaaa .. eooe .. uuu .. bbaaa“. Good luck decoding that.
P.S. : The interview in itself though, has nothing to talk about, just typical stuff. But you may check it out.
I don’t necessarily believe in the sayings ‘Customer is king’, because it is incredibly sexist (everybody knows I am a hardcore feminist) and ‘Customer is always right’ (do you know how much of the browser market share is with IE ?), but all of you disliked the new theme. Since you spend more time reading the blog than I do, it is only fair that your preference be taken into account.
So dear readers, here you go.
The hike is over and I am back, with both peaks bagged. Regular blogging will soon resume.
There haven’t been any trip reports or hiking related stuff at the blog after I returned from India and started working. Let’s correct it right away.
There was one trip to Crater Lake (decent place, a few refreshing views of the water, avoid the boat ride but hike down to the water, overall nice place to relax, so you can imagine I didn’t find too extraordinary) and another 14er of the season Mt. Langley (this was harder than I imagined. A group of 7 friends attempted this class 2 14er, 5 of us made it to the top and it was anything but easy.) and the last 2 weekends were spent just resting (sitting at home and not planning anything was tougher than the aforementioned 14er, if you know me).
Now for the grand finale before I hand up my boots for this season (yeah, I wouldn’t trust this claim of mine) and what better than the tallest peak in contiguous United States, Mt. Whitney, which stands at 14,497 ft. and as is obvious, is a 14er.
The group is P, my regular hiking partner, R, a friend from Colorado whom I last met on my roadtrip in Denver, and a relative novice C, who has accompanied me on the White Mountain Peak and Mt. Langley 14ers. (Update : C is out, due to a leg injury)
We decided to try Mt. Whitney sometime last year and started our planning accordingly. Entry on the trail is strictly enforced via permits for which you apply in February. Permits for the whole year are issued through a lucky draw sometime around March. We were allotted Sep. 26.
Inspite of its height, Mt. Whitney is a class 1 hike (no dangerous patches, easy) but the roundtrip is 22 miles long (~35 kms) gaining over 6,000 ft. For some reason, we applied for an overnight permit, so we get a 24 hr window in the wilderness. That rules out backpacking and summiting over 2 days. We have to finish our peaks and get off before the window expires.
Strangely, Mt. Whitney isn’t the peak I am most worried about, it is another 14er on the trail about a mile before Whitney called Mt. Muir which we plan to bag on the way. I usually do not look up snaps, just general directions, but thanks to C, I got hold of this snap :
That little red dot is a hiker, and the blue and red lines are routes you can take to summit. I would have been better off not seeing the snap, as it is giving me butterflies in my stomach. Snaps are always misleading, and I expect this to be easier than it looks, but you never know. Still worse with class 3/4 rock climbing is the need to be perfect. You cannot afford a single mistake. But it’s not as bad as it sounds, just some concentration and a cool head takes you through.
As usual, no trek for me is complete without carrying an injury in, this time it is an ankle sprain from the Mt. Langley hike 3 weeks ago. It receded for a week but reared its beautiful head this week. I usually try my best to avoid visits to a doctor, but this one seems to have different plans. But such it goes.
If things go well, by this time tomorrow, we should have summited both peaks. Insha’allah.
If not, we’ll be running down escaping lightning and showers. Again, insha’allah.
Either way, fun is guaranteed.
P.S. : Expect the theme to be back to the older one on Monday. I heard you, and everyone hates this theme.
Just like violence begets violence, silliness begets silliness I presume.
We hadn’t even finished making fun of Kirsten’s statement (that cricketers need to have more sex to enhance performance), that a Hindu leader in the U.S.A., Mr. Rajan Zed, has already made his position on the sex issue clear :
[.. Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that India’s youth looked up to the cricket players as kind of role models. If the national cricket team indulged in undisciplined casual sex, it was a scary thought to imagine what the rest of the youth of the country would do.
This is the perfect moment for me to say, ‘I told you so !’. The words aren’t exact, but I predicted something similar yesterday :
Expect PILs of the order of, “The Indian team is playing too well, and this is creating a bad influence on our youngsters”.
Okay fine, it’s not the same, but you get the idea.
I don’t know why he assumes the sex would be undisciplined and casual. I am sure Kirsten could make sure (for the sake of us sensitive Indians) that the it is disciplined and non-casual.
Is that fine, Mr. Zed ?
Link via Prem Panicker.
The headline of the day is :
As a cricket fan, I certainly welcome this. I understand that he made this statement in his youthful exuberance and we all know how silly teenagers can be.
There is though a logical, not linguistic, error, and I hope we realize that 110% just doesn’t exist ! It is unfair to single out youngsters like Afridi because even we elders often commit the same mistake.
If I were the coach, I would do a quick normalization to conclude that Afridi, in fact, gives only about 90% to other teams, and 100% to India. And that would really annoy me or any cricket fan. No ?
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In the same vein (since this topic came up yesterday in a conversation), there also seems to be a misconception about alphabet and letters, something I was guilty of for a long time too. In fact, I still have to pause for a millisecond while speaking about alphabet and letters.
The word alphabets does not exist (unless you are referring to multiple sets, but that discussion isn’t required here). Alphabet is a set which contains letters. Ergo, A to Z are letters of the alphabet (set). If you want to be semantically right, you are welcome to take the suggestion.
You know an issue is serious when they let Sagarika Ghose loose on it. Ergo, Mr. P. Chidambaram’s advice to Delhiites, which was in bad taste, is a big issue now.
The topic on yesterday’s Face The Nation was : Chidambaram asks Delhiites to behave: Are Indians rude and ill-mannered?
At the beginning, 88% percent agreed. By the end, 95% agreed. The host was Sagarika Ghose.
You conclude. I am not saying anything, I just present facts.
