Thank you!!

The traveling Narayanan's went on one of their most adventurous and eventful trips in recent memory over the last four days.

We went to Alaska.. saw Glaciers, Grizzly's, natures beauty and wonders at its finest and to just round it off.. we encountered another one of natures anomalies on our return flight from Anchorage to Portland enroute to San Jose.

A guy for reasons we don't know decided to open the exit door while we were still way above the cloud line. We heard a hissing sound and a lady screamed "Someone please help.. someone help now!" and a bunch of passgengers set about securing the door and tacking the guy. 

After a few tense moments the guy was on the ground restrained and we made a speedy landing and watched as the cops took the guy away. He seemed to be calm and collected as he was taken out. 

Why someone would want to do that is beyond me.. why want to take a bunch of others with you if you have a death wish?!

Like a fellow passenger told me after we came out "the good news is that we are all still here!" 

To the alert lady (as most of us were sleeping!), and the folks and crew who held the door and restrained the crazy dude, many THANKS from the bottom of our heart. 

There are heroes all around us! There are 10 heroes for every idiot! At least that is the lesson we are teaching our kids today after this experience. They were both disturbed, as were the adults for the second flight.. they kept watching the exit rows for action. 

This puts a lot of things in perspective!

The rest of the pictures and videos can wait. Time to get some much needed rest...

Kayaking in Monterey bay

A few weeks before we hit Lemony Snicketts in this house, there was a nice trip to Monterey Bay to Kayak in the open ocean for a few hours.

It was during Daddy's dedication to Yoga getting in the way of taking the kids out on weekends.. what with doing double classes on Saturday you see..

So one afternoon the kids go "Daddy, you have to take us somewhere today!" So off we went to Monterey, after being inspired by our friends who took their little one through this adventure just a few weeks prior.

It was 63 F out there and the water was cold, but we had a light breeze going and didn't get too wet and had a ton of fun.

Our tour guide was a student who had immigrated from Russia and she really loved the water and the creatures in the sea.

After giving us a crash course on Kayaking, we went on the water in three teams of two. The little one insisted on doing everything herself and she did an outstanding job! There were times when I was just sitting there letting her kayak me out.. it was fun.

We saw Seals, Sea otters playing..

We got to handle starfish and also learned that nothing sticks well to the top surface of the starfish because it has a bunch of hooks that are active. We put the starfish on our head and it gripped on to our hair (in my case whatever was left of it!)

There was one small mishap! We were advised not to bring a camera on the trip as there was a high probability of getting it wet. Having taken cameras safely through other adventures, parasailing included, I decided to take the camera in a small pocket in my life jacket. The camera survived a safe return to the beach without getting wet.

In my eagerness to tip our guide before leaving, I put the life jacket, which happened to have the camera in the pocket on the life jacket rack and went towards the car. The cleanup crew quickly came, dunked each jacket in a bucket of cold water and put it on another rack to drip dry! I almost cried when I realized what had happened.

Luckily the camera started working again after drying it out at home with a hair dryer over time. It still works but has a white balance issue. Maybe more drying will fix it. For now it has become an art camera!

Next time.. special ziplock bag for camera going on such trips and curbing the enthusiasm for tipping good tour guides.

Would strongly recommend Kayaking on Monterey bay as a family outing.