Red Rock Canyon - Nevada

On our recent trip to Las Vegas area, we visited Red Rock Canyon on two separate days. The first time we just drove through the 13 miles of scenic loop to stop at various parking lots and take pictures. We entered the park at 3:30 and had 90 minutes to leave the park. The sun was also setting there quite early. 

The second time we went there at 9 AM and did two hikes with mixed results.

Lightroom is installed and functional now on my Macmini but have not figured out quick ways to do HDR there. Continuing to process HDR photos with Photoshop CS5 (see below). Take 3 bracketed shots with one overexposed and one underexposed shot, then merge all three to pick up details in bright and dark areas of the regular photo from the other two. Takes around 4-5 minutes to process the final photo. 

but you get to see the detail in the clouds, the hills and the ground, the way your eyes see it!

You believe in a higher being when you see creation of this scale. Have said it before and will say it again. National parks are the real temples! Anyone can go there and get a glimpse of how miniscule we are in the scheme of things.

Here are a few pictures from the Calico trail. We got lost in this trail because there are no markers and it says "be prepared to get lost unless you have a good sense of direction". So we spent an hour and a half here wandering in the canyons in a zig zag motion. Our landmark was this small pool of water and we kept coming back to it! 

BB suggested the "high road" where we can always see the rock near the parking lot.. but we decided to take the "adventure route" and ended up where we started! We did get to see some awesome rock formations on the zig zag path.

Some photos are linked to a previous post here..

This is what you see when you are in the canyons.. Red Rocks everywhere. Occasionally you see a person with a blue jacket popping up between those crevices.. Otherwise you are easily lost!

Finally we went on the Lost creek Trail. The temperature was below freezing in that trail and again there were not that many markers, but we had another group ahead of us who knew the path. We followed them and were not disappointed. The trail ends in a closed canyon where water falls from the top. It was more of a trickle than a fall. A tree that had chosen that spot to grow (given it was the only place the water fell) had become frozen with icicles.. the falling water forms icicles everywhere. 

The ground was glistening with perfect ice nodules that looked like diamonds. The path to the falls was slippery as the ground had a sheet of hidden ice below it.

We spent a good 30 minutes there taking pictures and made our way back to the hotel for lunch.

It was a good morning spent hiking. If you are in the Vegas area and want to spend a good half day or day hiking through some amazing scenery, strongly recommend the Red Rock Scenic loop. It is one hour away from Vegas and it offers a perfect contrast to the smoke filled casinos!

Talk of getting your lungs back to normal again!

Something tells me that we might visit this place again in a few years...

Hoover Dam and Lake Mead Recreation area

We spent a good 6 hours on our first day of the trip to Las Vegas area at Hoover Dam and the Lake Mead recreation area. Our original plan was to go see Bryce canyon or Grand canyon. A blizzard ruled out those plans. The decision was to see what we could within a two hour radius of our hotel. 

San and me have seen the dam and lake as well as west Grand Canyon on a mini plane tour from Henderson when we were newly married! That was ages ago and we don't even have a way to replay those mini VHS tapes these days!  This was our chance to see the dam, up close and personal.

So we went on the "dam" tour!

This tour takes more than an hour and is twice as expensive as the regular tour but totally worth it. 

Lake Mead is behind this 750 foot tall 600+ foot wide monstrosity! If you see the larger version of the pic by clicking it you will see four shield shaped markings on the concrete.. 

You can see one of them on the center of the picture above. It is actually one of four air vents that balances the air inside the dam so that the concrete cures. Concrete takes years to cure. This one is to cure in 125 years. So they keep monitoring the moisture content and curing rate of the concrete from inside the dam. 

Concrete sets in an exothermic reaction. The designers of the dam used special steel tubes to vent the heat from the setting concrete to cool it down while building the dam. Otherwise there was no way it was built that fast. They had a refridgeration plant cool down the concrete through these tubes while pouring blocks of concrete 5-6 foot tall at one time.. 

You go through these nicely finished tunnels to reach one of the four air vents on the tunnel.

This is the view of the end of the air vent from the inside.

and that is what you see when you look out of the vent. A mighty Colorado river that runs in a very controlled way out of the dam!

After seeing the view from the vent, we also got to see the staircase that runs up and down the dam as an emergency exit in those days. 

We also saw the turbine room. There are these LARGE turbines each weighing more than 600 tons that generate electricity. 

There is also a smaller generator that is on the ground that supplies power to the dam itself. The scale of this building and everything in it is simply mind blowing. 

Once the water comes out of the turbines, it exits down through the gates. You can see that in picture below.

 The dam's mid point is the state border between Nevada and Arizona. So the kids had fun magically moving through two time zones and being in two timezones at the same time.. The older kids understood my idea of trying to a collage showing them in two zones and posed for me, but my execution was flawed.. Should have taken more wider angle shots to merge.. 

We spent another hour wandering around the exhibits and the statues of the two angels and drove on to the Lake Mead Recreation area to have lunch. 

It was very scenic spot (stitched shot below)

Will definitely recommend this as a day trip activity for the entire family. If you have really small kids under 3 would not recommend it. The Dam tour can be pretty claustrophobic. 

The parking lot, restrooms, exhibits etc. were world class! Everyone enjoyed it. The kids learned a thing or two about of hydro electric power is generated using stators and rotors and that was really cool. 

We did not know what to expect when we hit the parking lot, but we came out after having a great time!

Another year of yoga

2014 saw me do three (or two depending on who you ask) things

1. Travel a lot for work and figure out ways to cope with that schedule wise

2. Do yoga whenever possible while home and figure out ways to adjust that into the schedule

3. Do the usual things at home when possible (San would give me a D- for that this year.. the kids might give me a B- given they are partial to me)

Travel for work is not a topic for this blog till I start my next gig whenever that might be. The usual things at home do get a blog post or two with a lot less frequency.. that leaves Yoga!

This is an engineer trying to summarize yoga stats. So this post has to have some graphs and charts!

As usual the goal was to try and do Bikram Yoga at least 200 times this calendar year and yet again, I fell short of that goal. Yoga is a process and one gets the benefit as long as one tries in all sincerity. So from that standpoint, will give myself an A+

Can honestly tell myself that I went to the Yoga room at every possible opportunity this year. Given my travel days, the 50% attendance this year is like a 80+ % attendance. It was better than last year.. (just realized that the graph for last year was overwritten by mistake).

For those math geeks, the reason for the double lines is that on some days I did two classes and that messes up the graph.. 

This year it was 181 classes since Jan 5th.  Last year it was 194.. Next year.. again the goal is to go 200 times.. It may be time to find hotels close to Bikram Yoga studios in my travel locations. 

Now for the weight tracking..

Started off flat. After the India trip the weight that was added on seems to have stayed permanently! Either that or the weighing machine had some midway calibration issue when we came back from India and we replaced the battery. It is now holding steady at 149+/-1 lbs when last year it was 143+/-1 lbs for the most part. 

Going to keep collecting this data. Someday someone who decides to do research in Bikram Yoga and weight stability might use this data! 

This year, there was one special "posture clinic" class that I got to attend in October. When I walked into the studio that say and saw that there were only five people who had shown up for that special 2 hour class with the head teacher at BYSJ, was expecting to have the class cancelled. Michelle showed up inspite of her busy schedule organizing the California Yoga Championship and spent more than the alloted 2 hours teaching the five of us little things to remember that improved our postures. 

Something she said that day stuck with me. She said "look at yourself in the mirror. You might not like everything you see there. Some of you look conflicted all the time. It is time to let go of things that you don't like and improve on the things you like when you stare at yourself!"

Today I went for the last class of 2014. Looked at myself in the mirror and saw two people. There is a nice do-gooder spiritual guy on the one side fighting a vice presidential asshole on the other. One of them has to go or a better compromise has to be reached. 

There is also the guy who is happy to just be in the room giving his 110% who has to reconcile with the guy who is perpetually unhappy with falling down, losing the breath or have a symetry mismatch.

Sharing two pictures taken by Jr. this year. (It is good to take pictures of yourself every now and then to see little details)

This is my favorite pose. It takes me all my will power to do this pose knowing that within a few seconds we are all going to be flat on the floor. Can only raise by body clear off my right toe. On the left toe, it is not perceptible. 

The other pose that has frustrated me this year is the Camel pose. Have fallen forward and almost hit the ground more than 10 times this year. Something has to be fixed somewhere. 

Jr. snapped three photos of me doing Camel pose from three different angles. This is a collage of those three shots. The symmetry is off. Something that you cannot realize while doing the pose because you think you are doing it right when reality is far off..

The good thing is that there is no deadline to get any of this to perfection as it is a moving target. It is a "process" and "eventually" this body will find the right balance. 

My FIL asked me last week "Sundar, you are going on all these hikes. Has the yoga helped make things easier? Are you feeling younger?"

My sincere answer was "I am growing older and my body is dealing with that. Yoga is maintaining a status quo! It is not helping me get younger.. but it is helping me not feel older. It is relative!"

Not saying this will work for everyone or this is easy. It has worked and continues to work for me. Maybe it is a good match for my personality and somehow improving on the same routine day after day is something that I can accept as a challenge while others cannot. Maybe the SPC charting guy in me with a manufacturing quality mindset is a perfect match for Bikram Yoga. It is possible.. 

but work, it did! 

Thankful that there is a Yoga studio within 10 minutes from home which stays true to the original Bikram Yoga where a guy like me can still get continued encouragement from teachers and fellow students!

Here's to 2015 and the continuation of the "process"!

Wishing all of you a wonderful 2015. May the next year bring you all that you desire that you know in your heart is actually good for you!