The trail was beautiful today. As expected, lots of people were strolling, jogging or biking on the trail but I encountered little or no traffic on my way up the trail. This allowed me to slow down and enjoy the view rather than looking back every few seconds for yet another biker doing a time-trial on the trail, eager to overtake me. What makes this worse is the fact that bikers just creep up behind you with no warning whatsoever. Some do have the courtesy to announce, “On your left” but that applies to just a few of them.

I also saw one kayaker.

After reaching NE 116 St, I decided to head back to a nice spot I saw near NE 90th St to finish my book. It is a level spot with rocks where you can sit and read, enjoying the view of the river. But by the time I returned to the spot, it had been overrun with a bunch of ducks doing their own thing and a gaggle of geese swimming with their young. Realizing the futility of my reading exercise (no pun intended), I just sat down and took pictures.

Soon I was joined by parents and their excited kids (humans, if this was not clear already). Some of them had even got food to feed the ducks! Apparently, this place was a regular duck/geese hangout place that I did not know about. Pretty soon the place was full of excited ducks going quack-quack while indulging in their feeding frenzy.

Now for the finish. All that lay between me and my safe return home was climbing back the (now a steep climb) 520 trail. I bravely mounted my bike and started home but realized that I am not in a shape to climb the steep onramp from Leary Way. I finally gave up on the final few feet of the on-ramp (and walked the bike for that stretch). I guess I still have to practise hill climbing on the bike.

Till next time.

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Hi CS6262 star students,

If you're receiving this mail, you should be proud of your accomplishments
in CS6262, as one of the top 10 students in the class.

I very much enjoyed having you in class, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed
the class, too.  We hope you found the material fun and inspiring.  See you
around, and happy hacking.   

-Nick

This was the sight that greeted me when I woke up today. Even though I am not a great fan of cold weather, there is something about this snow scene that made me look up and watch and capture the moments on camera.

There is something about sitting in a warm room peering out of the window, seeing white specks of snow covering the earth in a white blanket. One gets a feeling of calmness when snow falls on the earth; when it rains it looks like nature is in a hurry to get everything drenched and is unleashing torrents to do it as soon as possible. Snow falling gently on the ground seems to reveal a tender side of nature, the sight of snow blanketing the earth gives a warm and tender feeling of being covered by a blanket.

Of course, if it were a snow-storm, maybe I would have felt differently!

Couldn’t think of a title that rhymed better!

It has just been a day since I landed here. The weather was pleasant even though it has been raining throughout the week. So I went Downtown with my Uncle and Aunt to see the place. My cousin brother, his wife and two kids are also here. Saw the library, Town Hall and the Confederation Mall at Downtown. Didn’t take many pictures as was not sure regarding the policy that prevails here regarding taking pictures in public. I think I will grow more adventurous with time and get more photos!

Due to non-availability of Internet at my place, this (and forthcoming) posts might take some time to make it to my blog so bear with me

So my journey to Charlottetown begins at Atlanta airport in a somewhat unusual way; with a night-out at the Atlanta airport. Why? Because my flight departs at 7 am and I can’t find anyone willing to wake up at 4 am to drop me off at the airport. So after dropping some of my worldly belongings at my friends place for safekeeping, off I go to the MARTA station at 12 am. Now walking to the North Avenue MARTA station at midnight is enough to give anyone goose bumps. With vagrants hanging around at all the street corners on the way to the train station, it is hard to be calm and composed while walking to the station with 2 suitcases and a backpack. Anyway when my friend walked me to the station and left me there, I tried hard to remember the route back to his house, in case I needed to, you know, rush back. Luckily for me I found a cop (with a revolver) keeping a watch at the train station which gave me confidence. So after waiting for the train for 20 minutes (MARTA doesn’t seem to adhere to schedules during night, for some good reason, I presume), I finally stepped into a more-than-half-empty train carriage for the airport. Nothing interesting (thankfully!) happened on the way and I reached there well in time at around 1 am.

Now, all counters for Delta are closed at night, except for one, where all people seem to crowd. I didn’t have any success at the self-checkin counters (which apparently work for domestic flights only) so decided to stand in a line for checkin which was (suspiciously) at a counter called ‘Ticketing’. Well, since I had nothing better to do anyway for the next 5 hours so standing in the line with 20-odd people seemed like a pretty decent thing to do. After an hour of waiting, when I tried to checkin, I got a response that checkin for checkin luggage would start at 4 am. Oh well, standing in line had provided me with a nice way to keep busy (and not fall asleep) so the wait for the next hour wasn’t that boring. And anyway, my mom called me every few minutes so which provided me with a neat distraction.

The rest of the journey was pretty uneventful except for a seemingly-random check by the TSA and another in Canada by their Border Protection Police. Two checks by two different countries in a single day doesn’t seem all that improbable anymore now. So am there and waiting for access to a working Internet connection to post this entry…

This post is inspired by the laziness displayed by Rohit in updating his blog, the blog has dropped to PR 0 and if things continue this way, it doesnt look too good.

Ahoy there !

So the next time you curse your service provider for yet another SMS to download a ringtone, remember that they could be actually gathering more data than it meets the eye!