26 April 2023

The cardinal brought back memories from my old house

I am no golfer. One life has been enough for me to strive for the green and end up in a hole without having to have golf double it up 🙂 That said, as my friends went out on their carts to get the whack-a-white-ball therapy, I strolled around in the beautifully manicured greens. There were lots of beautiful flowers and interesting birds.

This bird brought back memories from the previous house where I would sit in the porch with my DSLR and wait for the cardinals to come in pairs and try to take a good picture before they would spot me moving.

This was taken with my iPhone 11 from about 15 yards away (and then magnified).

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25 April 2023

Delta embarrassed me a bit

As I rambled on from the Skyclub to my gate, I thought I heard my name come up on the PA. Sure enough, the lady at the gate was looking for me. I could not possibly think of one good reason that might have led to the summons. I had not checked in any luggage, I had no connection flight, the aircraft equipment was already there and I could not be upgraded.

When I walked up to the lady, a bit nonplussed, something caught my eye. And then I realized what was happening. To remove any shred of doubt, the Delta lady said – “We are going to embarrass you a little”.

And embarrass me she did.

Turns out I became a 2 Million Mile Flyer with Delta today. I had received the notification this morning from them.

The Delta agents made a public show of giving me the certificate and a Delta backpack. They announced the whole thing on the PA system, made all the waiting passengers clap (twice – since the first one was not good enough for the Delta folks) and took pictures on their phones and mine.

Then they announced my name to board the flight first!!

That was a turn of events I was not prepared for.

Interestingly enough, I made Delta 360 a couple of months back and yet for all the flying miles on Delta, I just reached the half way mark to my American Airlines miles. That is over 4 million miles – most all of it from international flights from Dallas. With Delta, almost all my flights are domestic.

Category: Travelogs | 2 Comments on Delta embarrassed me a bit
24 April 2023

Do turtles tan?

It was not just the three of us enjoying the sun at Twisted Oar. We had company. This turtle basked in the sun as long as we were there. When Jay Jay went near it, it immediately scooted under water. But as soon as we walked away to our table, it came back up to the tug-wire and got back to enjoying the sun – half in and half out of the water making it look like it was half tanned!

Category: Boating | LEAVE A COMMENT
23 April 2023

The Oracle of Pune!

Amit was in town for a family wedding. Thanks to Anand’s efforts, we were able to get together for a couple of hours. Madhav made it too but we missed Karthik.

Back in the mid 2000s, both Amit and I had left Dallas around the same time – he headed to India and I, to Atlanta. His interests in life is more varied than I have seen in anybody. I am fairly sure he is the friend I have that gets the title of “somebody I know with the highest number of followers in Twitter”.

We went over some awesome memories from the past. He and I were next door to each other in office and many a random lunches were spent together talking about stuff. (a safe guess would be complaining about things at work 🙂 ).

Today, there were couple of great debates in geopolitics. Really enjoyed the depths in the arguments from Madhav, Anand and of course, Amit!

Category: Intersection Points | LEAVE A COMMENT
22 April 2023

It must be the crowds

Checking my blog, I was astonished to find that the last time I ran a 5K race was 6 whole years back!! I could have sworn that I ran a couple every year before Covid hit. Turns out that is not true.

So, after 6 years then, I ran a 5K race today. Heart and Sole 5K run (for special learning kids). It was to start from Avalon. Which is a walking distance away for us. I used that to get my warm up run done. Registered on the spot.

The environment was electrifying. Lots of folks – young kids, elderly persons, cute dogs, folks who clearly looked like they run some 20 miles every day and there were those who probably thought they said “Rum” instead of “Run”!

The run itself was very enjoyable. The adrenaline rush of police escorts, people cheering from the side and photographers everywhere was enough to make most runners shave off quite some time from their normal pace. My thrilling moments of passing other runners (especially uphill) were often supplanted by folks with two dogs attached to them breezing past me!

I was fairly surprised that the first mile was at 9:03 pace. That is nearly 2 minutes faster than my normal pace. The second mile slowed down to 9:28. But the third one speeded up to 9:16. The final piece was at 8:16! Total 29:14 mins. My apple watch showed that we covered a little more distance than 5K (3.17mile instead of 3.1) – so I have to wait for them to post the final chip times on their website.

I have no doubt in my mind that the reason for so much better performance compared to my usual pace is because of the excitement of the crowds.

Apr 26 Update: Out of 369 runners, I came at the 65th position. The chip timer showed 29:19.

Category: Running | LEAVE A COMMENT