HCL cruising through Iowa corn fields!

Sharing few pictures from the RAGBRAI bike event, which we participated last week. We (my colleague Prabu and myself) biked for 2 days. Well, I biked for 1 day and Prabu biked for 2 days! I was not feeling well on the 2nd day, so dropped out last minute!

1st day: We biked for about 50 miles
2nd day: Prabu biked another 70 miles (kudos Prabu)

Definitely, HCL presence is felt in this event. About 7-8 people recognized HCL and stopped by to talk with us. I am sure many more people might have seen HCL participated in this event and tacitly recognized. Approx. 10K bikers participated in this event. People from all over the country came to participate in this event. Another cool thing happened was - we met with a 4th generation farmer his name was Steve Martin, yes! (the wild and funny Steve Martin, if you know Steve Martin then you know what I am talking about)/ apparently, he owns 350 acres of farm land /he invited Prabu on an weekend tour to demonstrate how he does high-end farming/Prabu plans to take few HCLites to his farm soon/what a way to connect with local community!

Started my practice for RAGBRAI cycle event today

Started my practice for RAGBRAI (http://ragbrai.com/) today. Biked 20 miles. Here is the bike route I covered today. Plan to practice at least 4-5 times before the event on 27th July.

Practice Day-1 (July 16):


View Larger Map

Practice Day-2 (July 20):
Today biked 22 miles. Used the new Alton pkwy from Foothill Ranch to Lake Forest.


View Larger Map

Read this article: Future 2.0 (eye-popping vision of life 2100) by Futurologist Micho Kaku

On my way from Cedar Rapids to Orange county in June 2012, read this fantastic article on "The Future 2.0" so thought of sharing few quick points from the article with you all. Definitely would recommend to google on it and read the full article, its very interesting!

1. In-your-face internet (internet on the contact lense)

2. Shopaholics, rejoice (you can simulate 3D shops @ your home and buy things @home)

3. Robo Doc (24x7 doc @home) for ur assistance

4. Cars will drive by themselves (might have see Google car/ its already a reality)

5. Human body shop (except brain, we can buy any other body parts from shop)/ it will be a reality in just abt 20 yrs frm now/no one will die due to organ failure! Well, Spidy-4 (The Amazing Spider-Man)shows how to generate body part

5. Age 30...and holding: our grand kids can just stay @age 30/ by controlling the aging process!!!

7. Telepathy will be a reality/ u just think abt reserving a restaurant and restaurant will be reserved (IBM is working this)

8. Bye-bye computer: in the future, computer power will be everywhere an nowhere, like electricity and running water/the word computer will disappear frm the english language. There will be a time/ when computer chips will cost a penny/ u can talk to things and talk back!

Mind blowing! Right?

Basic principle remains the same everywhere

I should admit, road cycling is pretty new to me (here, I am not considering the bike rides which I did in my teen-life).

As I wrote in one of my earlier blogs, I bike regularly in the Santiago Canyon. Mostly I pass through few mountains during my rides. The gradients in couple of mountains are really steep. Initially, when I was going through these steep grades, I used to look at the whole length of the steep grade and used to get nervous of the difficult ride ahead, I have to paddle through! After few rides in those steep grades, I thought to change my approach in looking at the entire steep route.

Instead of looking for the tough challenging entire slope ahead of me; I started concentrate on just paddling and looking not more than few yards ahead of me and this strategy worked very well for me in climbing the steep road smoothly.

“Divide and conquer” – this principle is the same in every aspect of life. Like in our work life, if we have a long difficult program in hand then we look at immediate or near-term milestones and achieving those (keeping in mind the end result – schedule, cost and quality) and it allows us to manage difficult project efficiently and help us stay focus in our program.

So, there is surprise to see the similarity between applicability of basic principles in our daily life and work life.

During 27th and 28th July 15, 2012, I am going to participate in the RAGBRAI (http://ragbrai.com/) bike event in Cedar Rapids IA and the total distance I will be covering would be little over 100 miles. So, I have to keep in mind (and apply) this simple principle during this long ride!