60 day challenge: If you can, you must!

Over the last two months a lot has happened but in the midst of all the other things that kept me busy, Jan and Feb saw me do something very difficult.

My 20th attempt at the 60 day hot yoga challenge at Bikram Yoga San Jose.

It does not matter how many times one does this before. Every challenge is “a challenge”.

This year, I was really looking forward to a conference in Arizona towards the end of Feb / Early march and some business travel. So I did do a bunch of doubles early on to finish the challenge a week ahead of the 60 days. My finishing class was jointly celebrated with my teacher Sarah. (but we were not the first to finish this year. one guy had us beat by a week as he was also traveling).

When the challenge was done, realized that this years Challenge party was going to be right on the day the challenge ended. Missed the party for th first time because of a prior commitment to volunteer all day at South India Fine Arts for two back to back concerts. One cannot be in two places at once, at least not with my level of yogic practice.

Wrote my note of thanks and had San read it at the party. Really proud of my girl as she also finished her 3rd challenge two days later. There is no pic of me collecting a T-shirt this time. Here is my celebratory photo with Michele who still has the same glow around her since the day we met, while I age gracefully over 20 challenges?!

San talking for both of us at the challenge party!

Life is funny. So glad to have finished the challenge a week early. Flew back home after a biz trip right after finishing the challenge and was having a post dinner snack of ribbon pakodas. There was a stone in my mouth which I thought was from the pakoda packet. Turns out that an ancient filling from 1993 had come off with a quarter of my pre-molar. To top things off the gum on my front tooth detached and got infected. Had to go on antibiotics and visit the dentist repeatedly till they could fix it albeit temporarily.

They say “physically, mentally, spiritually”.. it should be changed to “medically, dentally, mentally and spiritually”! Dental is definitely unrelated to rest of the body. Guess that is why dentistry is not covered in the “medical plans”!

Had to pull out of the conference last minute and deal with lots of pain. Still recovering over the last two weeks. The added lesson is that if we get a chance to finish things off, you should do that. Never know what life throws at you!

A heartfelt thanks to my BYSJ family for everything!

Del Valle Regional Park

It has been a busy 10 days. A quarter of my pre-molar broke off. An attempted filling by a backup dentist saw me eat the filling within a few hours of it being done.

Then a gum infection that has threatened the existence of two teeth, pain, pus, antibiotics, repeated visits to the dentist and staring at gum surgery in the near future.

In spite of all this and pulling out of a conference that I really looked forward to going since November, the last 10 days had their moments. Did manage to finish a 60 day challenge just before all this happened. There was a lot of music in my life, thanks to SIFA and Paadarivom Padipparivom. To add a highlight to this, yesterday the hiking group pulled me into an almost 9 mile hike.

Had a bad cold the previous night but was giving a lot of support from the group and they said “you have hiked with us in worse condition. So this is not an acceptable excuse!”.

We left Cupertino at 2 and reached Livermore a little after 3 PM. Started hiking right away. We finished and came back down by 7PM. We did have a 15 minute Chai, Cookie and Vazhapoo Vadai break at the top.

It was nice and sunny and the sun was beating down on us. There is no tree cover for this hike.

Thoroughly enjoyed it. Initially it was a struggle for me with the stuffy nose, but once it cleared off, enjoyed the East Shore trail.

Here are the pictures..

and here is a highlights video reel..

We will most likely to on another trail in this same park next winter..

A sunset to remember

We hiked Mission peak yesterday. We don’t have a count anymore for how many times we go to Mission peak or to PG&E and black mountain these days.

The hike was to start at 7AM but because outside temperatures dropped to almost freezing, it was postponed to 1:30PM start.

Given I did not get the memo from wife early enough, had done back to back hot yoga double on Friday evening to make up for missing Saturday.. When I found out the hike was in the afternoon, went back to yoga at 8AM in the morning.. why waste the opportunity?

After 3 classes in 18 hours, was still hydrating (do a decent job of it) when we did the hike. Took an extra 20 minutes given it was still very cold and windy but managed to do the usual “one step at a time” routine when things got tough. There was a huge crowd at the top and we did not wait to get pictures at the pole but as we came down, nature put on quite a show for us. The sunset and colors were just gorgeous!

Photos here..

A video highlight..

Came back with really tired legs, but all good now. Have done yoga again this morning and that helped.

Most Mission peaks are the usual affair.. this one was made special thanks to the sunset!