This time, in talking to my dad, I found out that my grandfather was hired as a grave digger in 1918/19. He was probably around 16/17 at that time, and my dad remembers stories about how they would have a funeral procession (Goa is very catholic) to bury someone who had died, come back to the village church and find another body ready for burial.

I’m glad H5N1 was not as brutal in its virulence.

I was afraid it wouldn’t work, because they had stopped doing stuff like that. But then the guy must have realised I would be too much trouble to shake down for a bribe and let me go.

Maybe next time I’ll carry my film SLR and watch their heads explode. Which might be fun, and on the other hand they might try to ding me for the lens and I wouldn’t want that.

The jet lag seemed a lot worse on this trip. I couldn’t stay awake on Thursday or Friday after lunch. And it was raining too heavily so I didn’t get to go out or do anything outside. My nephews (one of whom is in pre-school; the other in 2nd grade) and sister were sick with colds and given how much I was sneezed around and upon, I think I’m currently incubating a super-virus. Feni seems to help a little.

Sunday, I went for mass in the village church. It’s been all snazzed up, with a new paint job, gold paint on the altars, faux marble wall panels depicting events from the bible and bird guards on the rafters. Goa’s a rich state (second-highest per-capita income in India: Rs 28,000 [around $600], compared to Rs 11,000 for India as a whole. Uttar Pradesh is the lowest at Rs 5,500 [around $120]) and it shows. But I missed the sparrows that used to chirp and flit around during services. It was also heartwarming to hear church-goers break out into spontaneous two and three-part harmonies on the hymns.

The homily was interesting. The priest started out with a general fable about a zen monk and his disciple. The one about how your possessions end up owning you. And then went on to something else that I forgot, because he finished with rant about a statistic: every week, their office is receiving two applications for marriage annulments and he went on about how the parish (second largest in Goa, about 10,000 people) has been doing so much to prepare couples for marriage, organizing a compulsory two day marriage preparation course and despite that, people were wanting annulments, so here he was entreating the parish to pray (yes, that’s right, pray) for the couples to be strong in the face of their troubles.

Grrr. Seem to me things will get a lot worse before they start to get better.

1. 1984 – opposed the airbag law.
2. 1989 – called vapor traps on gas tanks a safety hazard.
3. 1990 – lobbied against the Clean Air Act.
4. 1994 – opposed a move by smogbound eastern states to promote low-polluting cars.
5. 1997 – opposed new smog limitations.
6. 1998 – lobbied against a 7 cent gas tax for land preservation.
7. 2009 – lobbied against the new CAFE standards.

Here’s another critique.

I was looking at options to CSAA and came across Better World Club.

A big benefit I can see with BWC is that they have a bicycle assistance program!

Is anyone using Better World Club? What do you think?

While prepping them for cooking I started wondering about words that exist in other languages but don’t have an analog in English. Zun is one and in Konkani means a fruit or vegetable whose seeds are viable (while the fruit may not be ripe). If you pick a zun fruit/vegetable, allow it to dry and then plant it, it will germinate.

Zun is also used when referring to people. If the person is older, it means senile and for a kid, it’s usually used in the negative sense, as in you’re not yet zun, grasshopper, wait a few years.

That got me wondering: is there a word in English that means something similar? I guess I could use mature, since zun seems to be the equivalent of puberty in fruits, but that’s not quite it. And while we do call vegetables tender, it does not convey the same meaning.

Aah, languages!

Ok, it’s only b&w for now (and it seems I was late to the party), but this is an exciting development.

It was very sweet. Should have lots more next year.

The San Francisco Bike Coaltion conducts classes from How to ride a bike for beginners, to two part urban cycling workshops for people who want to be more confident riding around in the city. Part one of the workshop covers subjects from picking a bicycle, to fitting a helmet, to rights and responsibilities on how to ride legally in traffic. Part two includes a brief refresher, a written test (covering Traffic Skills 101 curriculum from the League of American Bicyclists) and a demonstration and practice of what I call emergency skills like the quick stop, instant turn and weave. These skills seem easy to do when lectured about, but like any other motor skill, require time and practice to acquire.

After rehearsing for a while at the Waller St (at Stanyan) practice area, we set off on a 5 mile ride through the city, down Oak st, up Masonic, to Cole and down Fell into Golden Gate Park. Then we cut across on 5th Ave, went down Irving for a block and then down Judah to 14th, back up Irving to 9th and cut through the park again to get back to Waller and Stanyan. We did the route twice, once with the instructor leading, and once with us leading.

That was my first time riding a bicycle in city traffic. It was the weekend, and it was 80 degrees outside. Most of the traffic was very polite and gave us plenty of room. It was nice and unexpected, since I keep hearing stories about how cars ignore bicycles. That wasn’t the case on Sat.

Anyway, the point of this post is: if you ride a bicycle in San Francisco (or are thinking of doing so), you should take that class. It’s free. And it taught me a lot.

I’m not confident enough bike everywhere right away, but I am feeling secure enough that I will go on a few exploratory rides as soon as I kick this cold/flu that I seem to have come down with.

I felt like I was driving through on of those road trip sets: straight roads, no traffic, blue skies, strategically placed prop clouds. And at any moment, I was expecting either a hitch-hiker or a car-chase to start up.

Sadly, the universe disappointed in that respect. But the views? Picture perfect.

Mount Shasta started getting visible along the side, and then I was driving towards this majestic snow-capped mountain.

I drove up to Lake Shasta, had breakfast and then walked along the dam.

I had just finished reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, so it was interesting to see the leaks and repairs in the concrete retaining walls of the dam and easy to imagine the scenarios from the book. Standing up on the causeway was inspiring. We designed and built this. It was also humbling to see that given half a chance, nature would take it back.

That was it. My very first road trip. I had a lot of fun and would definitely do this again, preferably with a driving companion. Anybody interested?

The drive up to the gorge along the Old Columbia Highway was very pretty. I got lost around the town of Troutdale and had to dig out my GPS to get back on track.

I drove up to the visitor center, with stunning (and very familiar) views of the gorge.

I stopped at a few falls and hiked up. The signs were correct in that the distance to the top was 0.3 miles. What the sign neglected to mention was that it was about 600ft up. It was fun speed-walking past people who did not expect that

I watched the sun set over the river and then drove back to Portland.

Portland was fun. I got there late, around 8:00pm after around 11 hours of driving (14 hours after I started). I called my friend and we went and had dinner at McMenamins. Their Cobb Salad with Cajun Spiced Chicken was barely spicy enough to keep my taste buds happy. Their Terminator Ale got me nice and mellow for a walk to Powell’s city of books. Which was amazing. I was tired enough that I buy anything right then: one of the rare occasions where I walked out of a bookstore without buying anything. We then walked down to Voodoo Donuts. It was close to midnight by then, and luckily for us the place was empty and I got to take my time on my selection.

I had the bacon maple donut. It put just enough sugar into my system that I could speedwalk back to where I was staying (on NW 22nd & NW Flanders).

I woke up late on Tuesday and walked down NW 23rd to have brunch at St Honore a cute and very busy bakery. It was a nice day and I got to sit outside in the sun with a book, a quiche and a pot of tea until it was time to join my friends writing group at Fat Straw on the South East side.

I explored a few cafés and more patisseries and not to mention pubs and more pubs.

Ok, I ate a lot and drank a lot. I also walked a lot.

Once after peeking at a map and seeing that Washington Park was only about 4 blocks away from my guesthouse, I decided to walk there to the rose garden. Unfortunately the map did not mention that those 4 blocks were all uphill. Fortunately, I walk in San Francisco so I was used to the hills. It was fun overtaking the group of mid-westerners who had also decided to hike up to the park and were taking a breather at an intersection.

The rose garden unfortunately was bare. It was still winter there, not a single rose to be seen. So I took a picture of the willow tree.

The next day I walked down to the Classical Chinese Gardens.

More pictures and notes to follow…