Aasmaan se giri, jameen pe utre

Everyone would hate a fall. Be it a fall into pot-hole, fall of stock market, fall on ground. But I really enjoyed fall from the sky. Free fall from 13000 feet to 4000 feet and then on parachut, was lifetime experience.

I had waited for long to try sky diving. We went on May-31-2006 to sky dive. The climate was good at afternoon when we reached there. But when our turn came climate showed real colors. It became cloudy. Funskydive team tried 2-3times to decide if we could sky dive. We had to come back home without diving on that day. One of my friend, Vaibhav goel, did jump on that day. Rajneesh and I were determined to sky dive and made booking for next week.

Next time we went there in morning. Our turn was supposed to come in afternoon. Climate was good there and it was not hot. It was fun to lay down on grass and just talk different things. A day out - thats what I titled my day. It was windy that day and our pilot was not ready to take flight. We had to again come back on that day.

We reached there again on July-08-2006. This time everyone at skydive school knew us. We had become kind of notorious there that we bring bad weather with us. But this was the D-day for skydiving. Rajneesh and myself were all geared up. Sky looked clear and climate soothing enough. The ride by the airplane was bumpy. I had not imagined such small plave accomodating 6-8 people. But there we were at 13000 feet. One fellow person jumped off the plane with any warnings or preparition. That was scary. Next it was my turn to jump off the plane. I tried to hold it and get used the climate. But I was shocked to see myself turning around in air. My first reaction on jumping off the plane was try and grab something. Good they had instructed us to grab the safety belt we were wearing. When we stabalised it was smooth fall. Air speed was so high that I had to apply pressure to move my hands. I was scared to open my mouth, least all air would fill into it :-). Then suddenly there was this jerk. It was jerk of parachut opening. I did try to manuever the parachut a bit.

And finally we made a perfect landing.

Watch my video oniline at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7835245857458316681

My Nissan Altima

Its me still putting smiling face even after going bankrupt :-)
Here is my new 2002 Nissan Altima. Fully automatic with lovely interiors.


The backlights look lovely. Isn't it nice car to follow :).

Conwall rafting - April'06

Pyaar ki kashti mein, lehron ki masti mein,
Pawan ke shor shor mein, chale hum zor zor mein..

Huff Huff...Puh Puh..this was our state; tired,and exhausted; after 3 hours of rafting. 22-April-2006, Saturday, was decided to be spent in water doing rafting. All planning was done, cars booked, excitement packaged, energy preserved and enthusiam bottled.

After many months I had seen 6:30 am on Saturday. Normally Saturday morning happens at noon ;-). After having quick breakfast I was all set to pickup my friends and start the trip to west cornwall. Pontiac Vibe was rented for the trip. This was March 2006 car which had run only for 1500 miles. Was it fun to drive the car? O yeah! I was driving 90 mph easily on it. So following the route CT-4 we reached clarke outdoors in 1.5 hrs.

http://clarkeoutdoors.com/rafting.htm

After reaching clarke outdoors we got ourselves dressed up in rain jacket, life jacket and gloves.

Rafting was first time experience for all of us.

There were many who did not know swimming. But hey swimming is not at all necessary for rafting. Even a swimmer cannot swim in rough water :-). So we were given quick KT by Bill, our coach. For non-software programmer KT = Knowledge tranfer...oh yes we IT guys mix work and personal life. So here we are are learning strategies from the guru.

As in work life, we are set to dive into the new task with basic idea. In teams of three we were all set to race among ourselves on water.

Shiv, Deepak, Vinod and I were in one boat. We learnt the art of rowing, turning left and right quickly. We started rowing quickly to race ahead of all. But Magesh, Chandru and Suresh were fast enough to be defeated. First 1.5 miles was smooth and we mistook rafting to be simple task. We had the first experience of slight rough water and enjoyed it thoroughly. When raft twisted left and right in wild water we were screaming with excitement. There were many people standing in cold water and fishing. After this came the tough path. There were many rocks just submerged in water in the path. Our raft got stuck in rocks. At runtime strategies were made and implemented to get into flowing water again. Shiv and I had to get into water and clear the raft of rocks many times.



Now lets talk about climax of rafting. We were told by instructor that we will see an island on right side in 3/4th of path. After 2 to 2.5 hrs we were desperately looking for island. We had to motivate each other to row more. Finally we saw the island. After gathering last drops of energy we rowed to reach the destination. We had lost all the energy and were feeling cold. Vinod was shouting to us "bas ho gaya yaaro, see thats the end point, come on row fast". And yes we finally reached the destination and ran into the van. The heater in van was feeling real good.

Finally we drove back, had a good dinner in udipi resturant. Hot water bath at home and sound sleep was all we needed.