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..

Mt. Diablo from the south gate

We hiked to the summit of Mt. Diablo for the first time 5 years ago for Valentine’s day!

The next trip to the place was not for the summit but the waterfalls around the mountain via Mitchell Canyon trailhead. Given my fall during that trip and everyone associating me and Mt. Diablo with that drama, was always wary of going back again.

This weekend San’s friends decided to go hiking there and we joined in. Left Cupertino at 5:25AM and started hiking at 7AM from the south gate. It was a short hike from the school parking lot area to the south gate trail head.

We came back at 1:40 in the afternoon. Had a 20 minute stop at the top for snacks and another 20 minute stop earlier near the rock city restroom area while going up.

Had a lot of fun talking music mostly with San’s teacher. The highlight for me was listening to her sing in the confines of the tower at 4000 feet.. Her voice soared and made it feel like 40000 feet. A truly gifted and skilled singer. She just launched into song after all that hiking. Link to that insta here..

Here are some pictures.. the other funny part was meeting two guys who joined the extended group as “prep” for Everest base camp. They said they were going as part of a college group in March.. My first thought was which college from India will have guys crazy enough to do this in March.. on a hunch I asked and sure enough they are my juniors. They were freshmen when we were seniors. For the record (this is for the benefit of my buddies), I did say “murga ban saale” as soon as they mentioned it. I have matured over the ages.

Thanks to being in the middle of a 60 day challenge, when I sweat, it is profuse. End up changing shirts through the hike ! The views were not as gorgeous as last time because of the fog rolling in. Even on our way back it was still foggy. Still enjoyed this hike thoroughly.

Here is a short video..

Now that Diablophobia is cured, will most likely hike this again..