Winter Bike Commute

One of my long overdue goal is to commute in winter at least a couple of times a week. The bike commute from Capitol hill to Redmond is about 18 miles and takes me anywhere from 50 minutes to 1:30 hours.

The hard things in Seattle winter are rain, cold temperature and the short day light. I’m summarizing below the list of things i need to do in order to be ready for this hefty goal (other than getting motivated :)).

The ride

I’m planning to finish building the the touring bike I started to build with Chris earlier this season. I would require a good frame for the same. I’m planning on putting cyclo-cross tires on them, fenders and of-course use the panniers from Seattle to SF ride.

The lights

This is tough and expensive category. I need light to-see and to-be seen.

Experienced cyclists recommend the Niterider as a backlight and MagicShine as a helmet lite.

For blinkers REI sells the planet bike blaze (1W), and the planet bike super-lasher.

Clothing

I guess i would need to buy -

• Facemask
• Incandescent Jacket
• Thermal Gloves (Gauntlets?)
• Thermal bike wear – Performance bike wear?
• Rain pants – (I have them already?)

Shoes

Waterproof shoes is a hard thing. I’m planning to use booties over my current bike shoes. Some folks recommend the Shimano MT60’s.

Anything I missed?  Please leave suggestions in the comments. I’m specifically looking to buy multipurpose gear and equipment. I already have too much of it from my climbing and snow-boarding.

Costa Rica!

Myself and Chris, just planned to do an extempore trip to Costa Rica. Riding our bikes earlier this summer one of the deep and meaningful conversation we had was that we need to make a list of things to do if we had infinite time and money,  and then try to accomplish it! Costa Rica has been on my list since 2004, every year I had a to-do about going to Costa Rica, so this year may be it will be a reality!

Well this is really extempore, but situations in life & work dictate a lot of my scheduling (*things which i don’t have control on*). Vaidehi is going to India earlier in Dec & needs time to prepare, Maris is travelling to colder continents for blessings from Uncle Sam (Calgary); so the Mexico team is out :(. I convinced Chris (& then he convinced me) relying on the fact that all we need to take off are few working days.  Anyways, enough of the why part but life, resources, buddies and of course the onset of Seattle winter has given me the opportunity to explore Costa Rica in seven days!

So what are we going to do?

I was browsing through Lonely planet, WikiTravel and Couch surfing. Here is the current thinking.

Day	Place to sleep	Activities to do	Transport
Tues Nov 24	San Jose, Costa Rica (Hostel Pangue)	Enoy Dallas transit for four hours, and may be go out in San Jose.	Pangue pickup
Wed Nov 25	Arenal (Arenal Backpackers Resort)	Wed: La Fortuna Hot Springs, Volcano Tour (3:30-9:30) Thur: Water fall	71 miles Transit:12:30, 2:30pm Transit time: 4.5 hours
Thurs Nov 26	Monteverde (MonteVerde Backpackers)?	Thurs: Night tour	110m on map Jumbo Jeep $25 Transit:2:30pm Transit time: 3.0 hr
Fri Nov 27	Hiking (MonteVerde Backpackers)	Canopy tour Cloud Forest (7:30, 10:30, 1, $45)
Sat Nov 28	Playa Tamarindo (Tamarindo Backackers)	Rafting (possibly with Astha and group)??, Beach, surfing	Tamarindo is 100m from Monteverde   Public transit: 8am, 12pm Transit time: 4 hrs
Sun Nov 29	Playa Negra	surfing, Trip to Jaco	Most likely we should ditch Jaco and take a trip back to San Jose. Public transit: Transit time:
Mon Nov 30	San Jose	More San Jose ..?
Tues Dec 1	-	Trips in San Jose and catch 11:30am flight :).

 

Things to bring?

• DEET
• Internet Device (Phone or Laptop?)
• Backpack, rain gear, sleeping bag.

Cycling to SF – Ride Report!

This post is long over due! Back in June myself and Chris Tremonte decided to bike to San Francisco, fortunately I was able to make it.

Here is a brief video summarizing our trip and the feeling we had just on reaching San Francisco:

From July 23 – Aug 1 we made it to San Francisco along the Pacific coast visiting amazing parks and meeting fun people! Chris has a detailed report on each day, however I’ll try to summarize my days in short here.

Day 1, Day 2, Day 3 (Seattle, WA to Florence, Oregon): On Chris’ Day 1 I was still debating if I should go on this bike ride, I had a relatively swollen ankle and my doctor was not very happy about me doing a long bike trip. I don't know what it was, may be it was Chris’ look when he first saw me injured. He showed up the previous Tuesday at work with his newly crafted bike and panniers to show me all the goodies and telling me how he is ready to ride, but instead I showed him my foot, which at the time was in a cast! Anyways! I decided to go for the ride and meet Chris in Florence, Oregon , the plan was I’ll ride for a bit and see how I feel. We started to head down south on Chris’ DAy 3, it took us day to get drive to Florence. Myself and Maris were wondering how Chris got there in three days on  his bike! The dude is fast and tenacious, well speaks for his pro-triathlete status.

Day 4 (Florence,Oregon to Sunset Bay – Charleston, Oregon):

 

I was testing my abilities to ride or not to ride! After a 11am start I had three flats. I had the third flat around 2pm when Maris came to see me, I was almost about to go back with her – damn flats ( & surprisingly not the ankle) had worn me out :(. Anyways this time Chris fixed the flat (I guess expertly). Him & Maris’ convinced me to stay on the ride! After 63 miles of feeling rather good, we reached our day 4 camp in Sunset Bay – Chris wanted to continue riding but i convinced him to call it a short day (one of the many times when I slowed him down :) ). We were just in time at the camp to enjoy the campfire & company of fellow riders!

Day 5 (Sunset Bay to Harris Beach – Brookings, OR): This was my first long day. My knee started bothering me a little but mostly I felt good. As I was riding through this day I felt as if I was almost meditating and I thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful Oregon coast. One of the reasons I took this trip was just to relax, and as the days to come and numerous hill climbs would tell, I did get my fair share of relaxation :).

Day 6 (Harris Beach to Elk Prairie – Orick, CA): This day I decided to focus each day for the remainder of the ride to focus on one of my loved ones and think about how I can improve my relationship with them and also add value to their life. Of course all the details won’t be on a public blog but I rather felt very good about doing this. However I still have a lot of follow ups to finish from these dedicated days of thinking. Hopefully I won’t need another vacation to get to them ;). We befriended an Australian, Andrew,  at Sunset Bay he rode with us for the next few days and we had quite few interesting incidents and experiences..

 

On Day 6 I was almost convinced that we would finish the ride and this was almost in stark contrast to the previous day, we did 106 miles that day and I was thinking man I might need to quit tomorrow and take the bus home. With another solid day backing day 5  I was convinced that I can thrive, although I kept telling Chris and Andrew that I might have to walk the hills :).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 7 (Elk Prairie to Burlington Campground): This was one of the most eventful days of our ride! We rode more than 100 miles and got to the Burlington Campground at 7pm and then rode to the nearest village (of course of 150 people & 6miles down the road) and celebrated Chris’ birthday. A fellow biker, Sofie, who was at this Campground also joined us for the celebrations!

Day 8 (Burlington Campground to Mackerricher Sate Park – Cleone, CA): I was starting to enjoy this lifestyle of biking from place to another and meeting new people, and just coming in to the whole new fraternity. I loved the long downhill after of course a six mile uphill through the Redwoods -

Day 9 (MacKerricher to Stillware Cove Campground – Ocean Cove, CA):  Our ride-mate took a break here but before he left we enjoyed a long and thorough breakfast. In general breakfast were a big think i looked forward to every day. Most days we tried to ride a good 20 miles before stopping for breakfast and when we did, man the food felt out of the world!!

Day 10 (Stillwater Cove to San Francisco, CA): This was out another 100 mile day we got to San Francisco a whole day in advance than our schedule! One of the goals of our trip was also to help spread the message of HealthDataRights and HealthVault, our discussion with folks in Jenner got along these lines and they were impressed by two young folks trying to better the state of US HealthCare!

Day 11 (San Francisco, San Jose): We idled the day in San Francisco enjoying company of friends and family. In fact. I was in time for Rakshabhandan!

 

My sister had organized a surprise party welcoming us to California and successfully paddling across the coast (well she complained to my mom about me doing such stupid and crazy things ;) ).

I have done a many multiday mountaineering trips, overnight organized cycling trips but this 10 day bike tour was totally different. It was very relaxing at the same time challenging. This bike tour changed my perspective of few things in life, made me think harder and introduced me to a whole new way of enjoying a trip!! Hopefully in near future I will get a chance to tour more places – may be italy, may be Chile or hey may be you can suggest…I have created a forum for the same…or use the comments …

Festival Of Forgiveness - Michammi Dukdam

Today is the "Shyamapana festival". Shyamapana is a festival of forgiveness; its popular among folks of Jain faith. This day is a culmination of a weeklong fest of repentance called "Paryushan". To quote an article :

“For 357 days of the year we carry out our responsibilities to our business, our family and our career. We live a very busy, worldly life. In the process, we accumulate a lot of mental and emotional clutter. We gather unnecessary baggage of pride, fear, animosity, greed, ego and delusions in our thoughts and feelings. So Paryushan is the time to clear that clutter and make a bonfire to burn that junk, that rubbish which is corrupting our minds, our lives and our relationships. The Jains have designed the special eight days of Paryushan as a time of reflection, purification and renewal.”

So over the last year if I have hurt your feelings in any way or form, please forgive me -"Michammi Dukdam".

cheers,
Vaibhav
--------------
~~My Jain Influences~~
--------------
Support my bike ride to San Francisco
Support my Mt. Rainier Climb

My Jain Influences

I grew up in a Jain family and my mother did a lot of hard work for us siblings to understand the ideals of Jainism. To date I’m really impressed by Jain philosophy and a large part of what I’m is influenced by it. I particularly would call out:

• Ahimsa – which mean non-violence. I guess I wont have to explaining the importance of this but would like to call out Ahimsa just doesn't mean to not hurt other human beings but actually encompasses all living things.
• Anekanthvad – there are more than one possible explanations, particularly in religious terms. This principle pre-empts all Jains from getting in to arguments about whose God is better, I wish this tolerance principle was core of other philosophies.

The most important Mantra of Jains is Navakar Mantra.

Jainism Resources

• Discussion List: jainlist@yahoogroups.com
• Seattle Area Jains: jainsocietyseattle@yahoogroups.com
• English Pratrikraman and Other Literature resources: http://www.jaina.org/educationcommittee/education_material/$$$PathashalaBooks/
• Most Comprehensive Directory Of Jain Resources: http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/jainhlinks.html

UPDATE (8/24/2009): Yesterday, myself and Maris did the Smavatsari Pratrikraman together. This ritual last about 2.5 hours and in addition both of us were fasting for the whole day (24 hours). The interesting revelation for me during this was when I was explaining the Pratrikraman in English as I was doing it. I used the above English version to paraphrase the meaning of some Paaths to Maris. However I did make a lot of mistakes. If any of you have good English versions of Pratrikraman I would be interested and also do share your experiences in explaining it to folks new to Jainism in the comments below.

Namo Nanasa.

Mt. Rainier Climb – Trip Report

On Sunday July 19, 2009 (update: silly date mistakes) around 9:00am, my team summited Mt. Rainier via the Emmons Glacier route. In my previous post I took a moment to describe and elaborate on the cause I would like to support as part of this climb. The full photo album of this trip is shared here.

 

 Our Team on the Summit – 14,440 ft!

Maris and Myself at 14,440 ft!

The Team

This climb was part of Olympia Mountaineers club climbs and was led by Colin. Originally we planned on having four rope teams but a few people cancelled on the climb last minute so we had three rope teams of three people each. I wasn’t signed up to be a rope lead but John and Bonnie were gracious enough to let me lead a rope. We planned to hike to the high camp on day 1, do a summit bid starting midnight and come back to high camp and rest for remaining of day 2 and then walk out to cars on day 3.

The Route

The Emmons route compared to the more popular DC route is a little longer and little more technical. I have done the DC route before and I felt that Emmons route showed a little more of the true mountain – lots of crevasses and wind!

Details

Day 1

We started at about 10am from the White river parking lot which is about 4500ft to get to our high camp (Camp Schurman) at about 9500 ft.

I got to lead a rope on this climb, I have been mountaineering for only a few years now and this was my first glacier rope lead. Here is an interesting picture on the first day as we were heading to the Camp Schurman high camp, seems like I’m leading my team to a crevasse – but hey there was a snow bridge there.

 

We got to Camp Schurman at about 4:00pm and were told by the ranger that no camping spots are available on the rock. For next couple of hours we were digging snow platforms, and finally had our tents set up around 6:30pm.

Day 2

We woke up around midnight to start our climb up on Emmons Glacier. By the time we started (around 1am) there were already a quite a few partied ahead of us. I glitter of head lamps covered the mountain.

We had been informed by the ranger that the route was pretty straight forward expect for one tricky section which has a crevasse on side and a drop off on the other. Here is a picture of that section, while I was coming down it.

 

At this section – which was about at 11,800ft we spent about an hour and half waiting for other teams to pass, as most of them were putting an anchor before crossing. We were quite a bit concerned because with this lag we were running a quite a bit late, as it was already 5am! and we had about 2500+ ft to go and less than 5 hour before we absolutely need to turn back.

Fortunately, after crossing on top of this serac our three rope teams (Colin's, Josh’s and Mine) moved reasonably fast and we were at the summit about 9:15 pm. Here is picture of our climb leader Colin leading -

It was very windy on the summit. We paid our homage and dedications quickly and started on the way down at about 10am.

As they say the trip up is the easy part and other half on way down causes most mountaineering accidents! Well we did fairly well on the way down, we got to our high camp at about 2pm! However Mr. V, was a little slower and punched through a crevasse. It was only to be realized later than this punching through Crevasse will cause we some ankle trouble and an ER visit!

After getting to the camp we decided to take a quick nap and food break, pack out tent and be walking down by 4pm. This was slight change in the plan because the original climb plan was to stay as high camp on day 2 and then get back on cars on the next day. However the day 1 night was so windy and stormy at the high camp that no one could sleep. In fact, we were grateful than our 3-season vestibule less tent held in that kind of wind! So in the pursuit of some sleep we left the camp on day 2 itself!

The rest of the way down, as actually eventful! Mr. V successfully managed to get his a slight cut in chin while glissading the inter-glaciers. However, skipping the uncomfortable cut the glissade were fun!!!

So by the time we got to the Glacier basin and started hiking out on the trail, my injured ankle had surfaced itself and grown in to an unbearable pain! With a 60lb pack it was increasingly becoming uncomfortable to walk out. I let Colin (our climb leader) know that and subsequently graciously Bonnie and John stayed with myself and Maris to only re-surface at the trail head in 4 hours, around 9pm! Thanks to Maris for carrying our tent for the test of way and thanks to Colin, John, and Bonnie for keeping us company! We did enjoy the awesome meadows and the views though!

 

When we re-grouped around 9pm at the parking lot we decided to go for a late dinner in Enumclaw! We feasted in Mazatlan Mexican restaurant and every sip of my Dos Equi helped me relieve the ankle pain. After getting to Capitol hill, I made a late night ER visit and had my ankle checked and chin sealed.

The good news is that nothing is broken (as yet) but there is quite a bit of swelling hiding any other issues. Now the bad news - I don’t know if I will be able to go on our planned Seattle to San Francisco bicycling tour starting this Saturday :(.

Thanks to Colin, John, Bonnie, Josh, Ted, Chris, Andrew for letting me be part of this climb and thanks to lovely Ms. Maris was getting me on this climb! Colin did a great job leading the climb, it was my pleasure to be in such an awesome company!

Mt. Rainier Climb – The Cause

I thought I would take a moment and elaborate on my personal and professional causes which I would like to evangelize as part of my climb.

Personal

Earlier I got email from Aparajita suggesting like Alok’s Rainier Climb, I should fundraise for Asha. I like Asha’s cause and zero-overhead approach, so please donate for Asha to support my climb. Asha has supported a project in my hometown in India – the Mayaboli school for hearing impaired. For those who know me and would like to personally donate for this cause I would be really happy to receive donations for the same. This is the same school for which I fundraised in my last Rainier climb. Please note unlike the general Asha the donations for Mayaboli are not 509(c)3 and hence not tax deductible.

Mayaboli School For Hearing Impaired

Team Cause
I also want to promote my team HealthVault and have this climb help spread the word about need to improve the state of health care, particularly the need for individual citizens to assert right to Health Data.

Endorse HealthDataRights

To share to your success stories and learn more about what other folks are doing to make themselves an active participant in the Health eco-system – do take a look at http://www.iamenabled.com (please note – this is Microsoft sponsored venture).

Share your stories, join the movement