The Tour of Nilgiris 2009 : Dates, Route, Its on!

Tour Of Nilgiris | Experience Nature On a Bicycle! | Dates/Route

Dates for TFN 09
Dec 15th : Reporting at Bangalore. Pre-tour briefing
Dec 16th : Bangalore - Mysore
Dec 17th : Mysore - Hassan
Dec 18th : Hassan - Mercara
Dec 19th : Mercara - Irupu
Dec 20th : Irupu - Break Day
Dec 21st : Irupu - Sultanbathery
Dec 22nd : Sultanbathery - Ooty
Dec 23rd : Ooty - Mysore - Bangalore - (Mysore to Bangalore by bus)

The route's got it all - flat outs, series of climbs, a major unrelenting ascent, history along the way, the most beautiful parts of the South, coffee, tea....

The Increasing Autombile Wastelines

Inventing Green « We’ve Got 35 Times More Horsepower in Our Cars Than in Our Power Plants talks about the power generation capacity available through automobiles vs all the rest of them! Interesting way to look at this.

I'm sure that a couple of hundred years from now, folks will both lament and wonder at the stupidity and short sightedness of a few of our generations. Consider a few facts:

• Cars carry mostly their own weight around. Most of their energy is used up in just moving the mass of metal, rubber and glass and plastics that they are!
  
• Cars are getting more and more powerful - and at least in the cities (where most run) going slower and slower!
  
• On board electrical capacity can usually power a host of appliances these days - including mini refrigerators and huge entertainment systems. Mostly goes unused!
• Cars "sit around" for 90%+ of the time, yet a lot of us have one each.

The debate often reduces to personal safety, personal convenience etc. Case in point from the comments in the above article - "I certainly would not want to take my wife & 3 kids camping in a “Tato Nano”, much less worry about what parts of me will still be around for the paramedics to save after an accident." This is a very inward out, narrow way of looking at the problem from its current state alone. The fact is that as a transportation system, its pretty flawed from an efficiency (and even safety) point of view. These arguments often ignore that completely alternative transport systems are possible which consume less on an average, provide more safety overall and are just - well - saner.

But then purging was part of "modern" medical science at some point of time, wasn't it...

Eco-friendly Ganesha DIY

This is what we did at home last year (courtesy Shubha's efforts). The plan is to do this as an apartment complex level activity this year. Cheap, eco-friendly and gets the kids involved!

Coorg-i

Green. Beautiful. Dreams. Life? Finally. Phew.

Where the hell was I, and where were you ?

First, just watch this one:



Crime/scandal on TV is a spectator sport. even Twitter is not too different. A breakup is about as interesting as a rice scam or corruption in a highway deal or irregularities at a Petrol Pump.

We catch it on all channels, we discuss it with indignation, clench our teeth, feel frustrated, and the next week brings a different story. If it happens to be another scam, rinse and repeat. If its Mdme Sawant or the like, add a few jibes, titillation and perhaps satire to it.

Whats amazing is, despite this mass of mere spectators, we have a relentless stream of whistleblowers! Jai Hind to those few, and to their spirit. I dunno about the spirit of Mumbai and all that, but these few individuals needed much more from us, the TRP/pageview drivers.

Update:

The "unnees, unnees, unnees, unnees ....... " was haunting me - so did a little bit on the web. Here's a blog post with the lyrics and the history behind them. I had completely missed, and not known about Navleen Kumar. Its a funny mix of feelings you get on hearing this song.

Save the Planet ? Nah, just your own skin...

[ George Carlin was one heck of a stand-up guy and I discovered him on youtube only moments ago. ]

So you want to save the planet ? Well, the Earth doesn't really need saving, we do...

I soo agree with the sentiments he's articulated so entertainingly. We're the pesks, we're the problem, and the earth will probably just shrug us off. We're quite conceited in our assumptions of both our ability to engineer forces around us, and our impact on the planet.

Its probably just us we'll end up obliterating, and that is all we can help avoid, at least for some time.

Bangalore Innovates

Great to see Bangalore lead. And I'd love to trike! It can actually be a good family shopping vehicle for a 2-3km trip.

New-s ?

Ok, I got my 15 minutes of fame, or whatever, but seriously, that pic is from over a year ago, around the time we were leaving IIM. Probably the quote too!