A pic I took in Union Square… just playing around with the darkness and surrounding lights. I like how crystal clear the statue is.

Zubin and Cyrus

Peek-a-boo Cyrus!

Incase you haven’t figure it out yet, clicking on the pics, will enlarge them for you.

So have you ever wondered why you see V’s in the place of U’s? It’s cause back in the days, it was too hard to make the round bottom of the U when chiseling in rock. The V was the closest to the U, so that was the replacement. Now-a-days, its just for visual appeal of that old style.

Gustad goes up, Gustad comes down… Gustad went ice climbing

Wow, what an awesome sport… Ice Climbing! It’s a grea thing when waterfalls freeze over. Crampons (spikes) on feet, sharp pointy ice axes in hand… whack whack! Your feet ate now holding onto the ice with only 2 points per foot… whack whack! Your knuckles hit the hard as steel ice, it’s 9 degrees out now as shards shoot out at your face, you pull your self up higher. Whack whack! You’re holding the ice axes too hard, lactose acid builds up in your forearms, muscles too fatigued, it burns, can barely hold on. Pull my self up higher… whack whack!... whack whack… my left arm is too week by now, its takes 2-4 times as many attempts to get a good hold with my axe. Whack whack, a dinner plate size, 4 inch thick chuck of ice pops out, narrowly missing my head. I yell “ICE!!!!” everybody below ducks. Whack whack! Don’t slip now Gustad, your 75 feet off the ground.

14 went up, 5 came down

Status: Alive
Summit status: not obtained
Physical condition: numerous scratches, bruised left shin, left and right shin skin abrasion, crushed pinky, stretched groin muscle, exhausted and most major muscle groups highly fatigued
Miles hiked: 6.8
Highest wind speed: high 50’s mph

Ok, so the title isn’t 100% true… 14 went up and all 14 came down, but all at different intervals.

On Saturday the 14th, January 2006, 14 of us arrived at the climbing school in North Conway, New Hampshire at 7:00am prepared to climb Mount Washington at 6,288 feet. There was a steady rain, and the temperature at the base elevation was about 39 (unusualy high). We arrived to some bad news, of 6 or so guides, 5 of them recommended that we do not climb the mountain under these conditions. Their main concern was high probability hypothermia caused by the wet rain. 5 people and my self felt adamant to still climb. So we divided into two groups, those who were going to climb, and those who were going to take their luck at ice climbing. After plenty of discussions back and forth, all 14 of us decided to go forward in attempt to reach the summit. 8 women and 6 men.

Eventually we made our way to the trail head at 2,000 feet. That day I quickly learned that there is no thing as waterproof. Gore-tex, and/or anything, will not keep you dry in constant raining conditions. We headed out with our plastic alpine boots on feet and ice axe in hand. We stuffed all of our extra layers of clothing in a plastic bag inside of our backpacks. At least 2 liters of water, plenty of energy rich food, and crampons (ice spikes for boots).

Despite the 40 degree temperature, all we started out with was a thin thermal body layer with a thin “waterproof” shell on top. It’s amazing how much heat your body will generate when partaking in plenty of physical activity. Within 45 minutes of hiking, I was pretty wet on the inside from my own sweat. It was around this time things began getting very icy and we had to put our crampons on for the rest of the hike. The snow at this point was about 3-4 feet deep. As long as you stay in the center of the trail, you don’t sink much, but the second you step a bit to the side, your one foot will sink to the bottom. That’s how a strained my groin muscle. My left foot was above the snow, and steady with the crampon’s spikes holding me in. As I stepped with the right foot, it sunk about 3 feet, and with the incline, it pulled my leg back. OUCH! I kept moving though… the one major thing that kept me going this whole trip was to not hold anybody back (and not to mention competition).

1.5 hours into the trip, the reain was as steady as ever and we were soaked through and through. Any time we would stop, is when we would begin to get cold… fingers, toes, body... they all got cold when we stopped moving and creating that extra heat. Of course the water didn’t help much. The temperature by now was probably around 36. I thought it would be a good idea to finally put gloves on. I started out with my backup pair… just simple fleece with a leather palm. I knew if I used my very good double layered “waterproof” pair, they would get wet on the inside anyway (and have a bad chance of dying out by tomorrow when the temperatures were going to go artic).

Soon the terrain was getting very challenging. At certain stretches the terrain was so steep and tough that we had two options, use a free rope to assist in climbing, or use the free rope in addition to using a short rope. Short roping is when you tie your self to 1-3 people so that if one falls the rope stops them short (hoping the other person has a good hold on the rock/ice), so they don’t injure themselves in the long fall. About half of us including me used the free rope. The rest short roped.

I would say that 70% of the time spent ascending the mountain I was in the upper echelon of the team, and not falling behind. Eventually we reached the alpine line… where its to high up for trees to grow. On short shrubs from that point on. This is when people in our group were getting very fatigued, cold and couldn’t continue on. 3-4 Decided to turn around and head back down. The wind was at a steady 10-15mph at this point with higher gusts. The rest of us continued on, which is when things started getting interesting.

With a bit more hiking, the trees gone, and the specific geography of our location the wind became VERY fierce. The ground was somewhat flat and mostly flat ice and/or rock (way to windy for snow to stay here). At this time the temperature was right around freezing. We started getting steady winds of about 30mph. With the mixture of freezing and wet rain falling at that wind speed, you could have any skin exposed directly to the wind. It stung pretty hard. The wind also slowed us down. It made it very hard to walk in a straight line (our alpine climbing ice axes had telescoping a pole from the bottom to be used as walking aid… they were absolutely necessary at this point). Soon the wind was averaging 40mph with long gusts of 50+!!! These wind speeds made it almost impossible to move. It was truly amazing. I have never experienced weather this fierce. Standing within 1 foot of my buddies we would have to yell just to hear each other. Moving forward was hard and slow. We must have lost 45-60 minutes of hiking time because of the slow rate of which we were moving. Gust after gust, people would trip and fall. The wind was coming from the south at our left. Just to move my left foot forward, I had to strain to push it forward and not let the wind push it directly into my right foot (very dangerous with the crampons on our feet).

Eventually the winds died down and we found a large boulder to find some minimum protection from. This is where we ‘lost’ the rest of our crew. Tired, cold, drained and unable to go any higher, they turned around to head back to the bottom. That left 5 of us with two guides to continue on. 2very experienced guides who do this stuff all the time, 3 guys and 1 girl who are experienced hikers, and me… some guy who hasn’t done a significant hike for 5 years. Yet here we are doing technical alpine mountaineering. It was around this time when I began to get very weary and feared that I should have chosen to go back.

The wind died down to a not so fierce 10-15mph, rocks began to disappear as the snow got deeper and deeper. Where the snow was not packed, I was able to stick my 4 foot pole into the snow without hitting the bottom. This was when I began to fall behind and the fog became very thick. The visibility at this point was about 100-200 feet. As I was getting slow, I allowed everybody to pass me. I asked the last person if there was a guide behind me, she said she thinks so. Before I knew it they were 50 feet ahead of me. I could only make out the shape of people due to the fog at this point. Every step I attempted to make was very painful. I was moving very slowly. Everybody else was too, but it was just that much harder for me. Fearing that they were going to keep going on, I began to be thankful that my backpack had a whistle built into a strap. At an elevation of 5,700 they stopped at a large rock formation (they stopped for me!! or so I thought). When I eventually reached them, there was only one guide… thankfully the other was about 200 feet behind me (I guess they do know what they are doing). They stopped to tell us it was highly advisable that we do not continue on (this was the 3rd time they told us by the way). It was 1:30, which was late to be at 5,700 feet. They estimated that with the bad weather ahead and what it has already done to us, it would take us at least an hour to finish the final 588 feet. That would not have left us enough time to get down the mountain during day light. A consensus was made and we turned around to head back down.

So that’s that… the mountain defeated me!! I will be attempting it again in March or April. Don’t get fooled by those dates though, it can very easily be 10 degrees and much less during those months. Whish me luck!!

Oh, as to not bore you and to save my fingers from typing more… long story short… I went ice climbing the next day. That was amazing too.

Jamshed R. Mody

My grandpa Jamshed R. Mody was born on October 16, 1915. My sister and I made this video / slide show to celebrate his 90th birthday a few months ago. It follows his journeys from bicycling across the world, to meeting President Franklin D. Roosevelt to serving dinner to the Beetles at his famous restaurant to spending time with his loving family.
Slide Show

Wow, I am never doing my own laundry again. I just discovered the luxury of having your own laundry done for you and folded too!! I guess I forgot how nice that was when I was a kid. Maybe I’ll go one more step lazier and start getting it delivered :-p

Just being jolly

4 Patties burger

I probably would have felt bad if I put this in my food blog, so I’m putting it here. That’s a custom ‘have it your way’ 4 patty burger from Burger King. That’s a 1 pound burger. I went into Burger King with the plan of getting the King Kong burger, which is 3 patties, but I upgraded.