This is becoming a trip of many first, not the last of which is loading photos enroute.
While its not the "whoah baby I ain't never done nothing like that before" experience of the now infamous Ike of Ike and Tina Turner fame, it does have its challenges, as practically everything practical that one does, especially in India.
There is the general issue of just having virtually no time on this tour, which thus far is a business trip with days that start at breakfast and end with after dinner drinks with way too much just sitting and eating. The fact that this is a netbook, of couple of years' vintage, quite sufficient for email, but given its relatively slow processing speed, low resolution screen, combined with photos of giga bites of megapixels, slow wireless networks etc. and the fact that all of the items mentioned above, including uploading to the site are basically firsts for me, leads to want to consign all of the above to the new heading of paperweights.
So, below is a weblink, to some of the photos so far, unedited and without captions...surely they will improve, certainly by the time we return in spring time in Toronto?
As always, your comments and feedback add energy to my efforts
http://picasaweb.google.com/andras1944/20091105#
Friday, November 06, 2009
First Impressions
Sitting in a king size bed, in a 5 Star hotel, Juhu Beach, Mumbai, India after traveling for 24 hours and spending the day in business meetings, its almost possible to forget that I am in another world..I know I am jet lagged and sleep deprived, and that it is early days in the adjustment process, but already the contrasts are feeling a bit over whelming.
It was four a.m. local time when we finally made it to bed and breakfast at 10, seemed but s flash away, And since two of the others in our business group wanted to see the main tourist sites, we did so with a car . It was a Sunday and all the locals were out in full force which made the experience more comfortable as there were no busloads of internationals following various coloured flags beseeching their flock to follow them.
It could also have been the fact that due to last year's terrorist attacks, the windows of the Taj are still boarded up, and there is a very heavy security presence in our hotel, the tourists have not returned. While the city looks and feels safe, and according to the business people we met things are back to normal, I still find it un-nerving when our car, entering the hotel grounds is search with bomb detecting equipment and a dog, and each individual's bags goes through an airport like security check.
Leaving the hotel to go to the beach, we sign out and we return through a well fortified door, in medieval like fortress wall, with armed guard, only to again go through the security process. Still, the beach teaming with people and vendors selling food and offering children's amusement was warm and welcoming, reinforcing the sad truth that a handful of terrorist can hold a city racing towards a population of 20 million, hostage. Unfortunately, the same can be said of and experienced, everywhere in the world.
There are the usual indicators that this is a city the is living in the past, present and the future. The obvious evidence of poverty are telling of the past, the glittering stores which could be anywhere in the world the present, and a company like Tata, a gigantic, world wide conglomerate that is truly in the future, delivering cars for the price of an entry level Canadian racing bike.
I am sure it will take a long time to integrate the experience, but a couple reflections are worth repeating. While driving along an area where the walls were overtaken by grafitti artist, whose images are the message, there was one fairly crudely painted slogan that continues to reverberate through my mind: “keep you coins, I want change” which of course can be interpreted on so many levels.
Even the business section here can be thought provoking.. The headline proclaims “Planet positions hostile for rally in equity market”.After an erudite discussion of Moon-Jupiter, Sun-Mars, Venus-Jupiter influences, etc.the columnist, having written the mandatory 800 or so words, a practice that is something no doubt shared by market prognosticators every where, there is the need for a conclusion which in this case is that while “medium term bias remains bearish, we cannot rule out the possibility of range-bound trading, with a day or two of solid gains” Clearly the jargon of business journalists share a common planet since I am very much used to reading at home, at the end of many a thoughtful discussion concluding that markets may go down, fluctuate at current levels, or they may go up.
In a world of uncertainty I am sure that India is and will be colourful, dynamic, exciting and never boring, and I feel blessed by my lucky Stars that I will have five more weeks to experience it all.
It was four a.m. local time when we finally made it to bed and breakfast at 10, seemed but s flash away, And since two of the others in our business group wanted to see the main tourist sites, we did so with a car . It was a Sunday and all the locals were out in full force which made the experience more comfortable as there were no busloads of internationals following various coloured flags beseeching their flock to follow them.
It could also have been the fact that due to last year's terrorist attacks, the windows of the Taj are still boarded up, and there is a very heavy security presence in our hotel, the tourists have not returned. While the city looks and feels safe, and according to the business people we met things are back to normal, I still find it un-nerving when our car, entering the hotel grounds is search with bomb detecting equipment and a dog, and each individual's bags goes through an airport like security check.
Leaving the hotel to go to the beach, we sign out and we return through a well fortified door, in medieval like fortress wall, with armed guard, only to again go through the security process. Still, the beach teaming with people and vendors selling food and offering children's amusement was warm and welcoming, reinforcing the sad truth that a handful of terrorist can hold a city racing towards a population of 20 million, hostage. Unfortunately, the same can be said of and experienced, everywhere in the world.
There are the usual indicators that this is a city the is living in the past, present and the future. The obvious evidence of poverty are telling of the past, the glittering stores which could be anywhere in the world the present, and a company like Tata, a gigantic, world wide conglomerate that is truly in the future, delivering cars for the price of an entry level Canadian racing bike.
I am sure it will take a long time to integrate the experience, but a couple reflections are worth repeating. While driving along an area where the walls were overtaken by grafitti artist, whose images are the message, there was one fairly crudely painted slogan that continues to reverberate through my mind: “keep you coins, I want change” which of course can be interpreted on so many levels.
Even the business section here can be thought provoking.. The headline proclaims “Planet positions hostile for rally in equity market”.After an erudite discussion of Moon-Jupiter, Sun-Mars, Venus-Jupiter influences, etc.the columnist, having written the mandatory 800 or so words, a practice that is something no doubt shared by market prognosticators every where, there is the need for a conclusion which in this case is that while “medium term bias remains bearish, we cannot rule out the possibility of range-bound trading, with a day or two of solid gains” Clearly the jargon of business journalists share a common planet since I am very much used to reading at home, at the end of many a thoughtful discussion concluding that markets may go down, fluctuate at current levels, or they may go up.
In a world of uncertainty I am sure that India is and will be colourful, dynamic, exciting and never boring, and I feel blessed by my lucky Stars that I will have five more weeks to experience it all.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Getting ready to go
A journey of 1000 miles is said to begin with a single step; in my case this used to be so, but no more. This anticipated bicycle trip of several thousand kilometers began with the concept to ride for a month in India after my wife Alison finishes a brief gig leading a trade mission in India, then on to Australia to visit family and then to Laos, Cambodia and Thailand to see ancient civilizations and to experience how people still live off the land, and to return early March to Toronto, by which time spring should have at least started to sprung.
The usual challenges of picking a route, where to go, what to see and the like fell into place quite quickly. Having travelled extensively in South East Asia before, what to take in terms of clothes, necessary gear to support the bikes and our bodies was also pretty routine. But then somehow the list of electronic gadgets, which I have never taken before, exploded.
How I became an electronic gadget warrior is through a chain of complex causation or was it a not so sudden lost of good judgment? First was the idea to buy a new digital camera, which of course being the latest DSLR(the Lumix GH1 with the 14-140mm lens), although light by DSLR standards, still weighs as much as a months' equivalent of clothing, the unit of measurement that I use when traveling by bicycle. Worse, it comes with a manual, the size of a small book, which not only is as obscure as discerning the true meaning of the Bible, transliterated from Chinese, but adds not inconsiderable weight to the load; ditto for Alison’s new pocket size camera with the "heart" of a small packetbook and the "brains" of the mini computer (the Fuji F70EXR with 10 times zoom and the ability to take two contrasting photos and superimpose one on the other to get high contrast, to name but one of its features). Both of course also chew up gigabites of memory hence the need for more memory cards.
Second, contemplating the absence of four months also led to the consideration of a new gizmo called the MagicJack, a VOIP gadget that is the size of a large matchbox, which when plugged into the UBS port of a computer and into which one plugs in an ordinary telephone, allows unlimited, free calls to any telephone in North America.
As well, since Alison is leading a group of businesspeople married to their Blackberries it became imperative that she also have a cell phone of sufficient sophistication to keep in touch. The Nokia E61 is a Blackberry lookalike with a full querty keyboard.
As illustrated on the attached photo, this is how, in addition to the mandatory guidebooks on traveling on a shoe string, we will now also be carrying the single indispensable piece of technology known as the netbook. Weighing but 2.7 lbs with a full sized keyboard, hopefully will not only live up to its title as “Toughbook” but will also allow us to make telephone calls using the MagicJack and the tiny blue telephone, weighing but an ounze, which amazingly is fully functioning, as well as to download some of the photos we will take enroute and to share them with you and various bits of research stored in its memory.
The usual challenges of picking a route, where to go, what to see and the like fell into place quite quickly. Having travelled extensively in South East Asia before, what to take in terms of clothes, necessary gear to support the bikes and our bodies was also pretty routine. But then somehow the list of electronic gadgets, which I have never taken before, exploded.
How I became an electronic gadget warrior is through a chain of complex causation or was it a not so sudden lost of good judgment? First was the idea to buy a new digital camera, which of course being the latest DSLR(the Lumix GH1 with the 14-140mm lens), although light by DSLR standards, still weighs as much as a months' equivalent of clothing, the unit of measurement that I use when traveling by bicycle. Worse, it comes with a manual, the size of a small book, which not only is as obscure as discerning the true meaning of the Bible, transliterated from Chinese, but adds not inconsiderable weight to the load; ditto for Alison’s new pocket size camera with the "heart" of a small packetbook and the "brains" of the mini computer (the Fuji F70EXR with 10 times zoom and the ability to take two contrasting photos and superimpose one on the other to get high contrast, to name but one of its features). Both of course also chew up gigabites of memory hence the need for more memory cards.
Second, contemplating the absence of four months also led to the consideration of a new gizmo called the MagicJack, a VOIP gadget that is the size of a large matchbox, which when plugged into the UBS port of a computer and into which one plugs in an ordinary telephone, allows unlimited, free calls to any telephone in North America.
As well, since Alison is leading a group of businesspeople married to their Blackberries it became imperative that she also have a cell phone of sufficient sophistication to keep in touch. The Nokia E61 is a Blackberry lookalike with a full querty keyboard.
As illustrated on the attached photo, this is how, in addition to the mandatory guidebooks on traveling on a shoe string, we will now also be carrying the single indispensable piece of technology known as the netbook. Weighing but 2.7 lbs with a full sized keyboard, hopefully will not only live up to its title as “Toughbook” but will also allow us to make telephone calls using the MagicJack and the tiny blue telephone, weighing but an ounze, which amazingly is fully functioning, as well as to download some of the photos we will take enroute and to share them with you and various bits of research stored in its memory.
Then again, since our travels often take us off the beaten path, where internet services may be rare, and even the availability of electricity intermittent or non-existent, the computer and attachments will still serve as useful dead weights, not quite as ergonomic as the ones I am used to in my gym, but still adding measurably to the effort and hence the exercise value of our journey. No doubt I will become as tough as the name of the netbook implies, and should the battery power outlast my late night desires to read camera manuals which I conveniently download on the computer, then I will no doubt produce photos worthy of National Geographic. Then again, there is on both sophisticated, state-of-the-art cameras, a setting call iA, which for the uninformed means Intelligent Automatic: a modern day oxymoron, that allows any ordinary moron, to take photos not unlike any previous century pinhole camera.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
A fundraiser
To celebrate turning 65 I recently completed a one day, 165 km ride for Zareinu, an organization that helps learning disabled children.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
You are going where to do what?
Off to Sulawesi. Where...to one of the larger islands in Sulawesi.
The plan is to follow the route mapped out by an organized group, covering a distance of about 1,200 kms in 28 day. Below is a link to the tour and their blog for all armchair travelers.
http://www.cycleindonesia.com.au/
http://cycleindonesia.blogspot.com/
more later
The plan is to follow the route mapped out by an organized group, covering a distance of about 1,200 kms in 28 day. Below is a link to the tour and their blog for all armchair travelers.
http://www.cycleindonesia.com.au/
http://cycleindonesia.blogspot.com/
more later
Friday, June 16, 2006
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Bicycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles -- 800 kms.
A rolling bicycle tour, from San Francisco to Los Angeles, are you interested?
Background:
I am an avid cyclist and have toured various parts of the world seeking unique locations for each trip. During the last 10 years or so I have done about 50,000 kms in more than 15 countries. After a serious hip injury in August 2004, the one ride I wanted to repeat was along the Pacific coast from Vancouver to the San Diego and in particular, the stretch south of San Francisco for the simply reason that it is a uniquely spectacular experience.
Someone described this 800 kilometer stretch as one of rugged coasts, quiet beaches, lighthouses, giant redwoods and eucalyptus forests, famous wineries and world-class cities. To that I would add that it is magnificent cycling, with well engineered roads often hugging the coast, some challenging hills with long views, wide bike-lanes for most of the way, and during May and October, when I did my rides, traffic relatively modest and temperatures in the mid-teens and for comfortable riding, albeit, some stretches near San Francisco can be quite foggy.
In May 2006 I organized my first tour from SF to LA and 11 participants thoroughly enjoyed the experience. This will be the second tour and hopefully all of the minor kinks will have been removed for everyone's enjoyment.
The Proposed Tour:
For a group, maximum of 12 to ride 10 days from San Francisco to Los Angeles, from October 21, 2007. (There will be an option to end the tour two days earlier).
Are you interested?
Tour will include 10 nights of accommodations, and 8.5 days of challenging riding, for a total distance of about 800 kms. There is an optional rest day near the famous Hearst Castle near San Simeon or an extra day of riding for those who just want to ride.
We will be staying in national chain motels/hotels or good quality independently owned properties, including the renowned Big Sur Lodge amongst the giant redwoods.
This will be a fully SAG supported tour, using an experienced California based tour operator, with a mechanic, food, water, snacks during the mornings and afternoons of the tour.
It will include an accompanying riding tour guide, route instruction, maps etc.
A 12 passenger shuttle van with bike racks, luggage transfer to hotels.
Pick up at San Francisco airport and drop off at destination airport in Los Angeles.
This will be a custom tour, requiring the participation of at least 6 avid cyclists to have an experience of a life-time.
For further information on itinerary and pricing please contact Andrew at (416) 924-6171 or andrewjacob@rogers.com
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