Month long cycling blog..!

One of the nice perks in working for LSI is a one month paid sabbatical leave you get once in 10 years  to go do whatever you want. Some of my colleagues who had taken the leave have tried interesting things like a month long road trip in US. Now it is the turn of another colleague named Brad Grande, who has decided to spend the entire month bicycling 1500 miles along the Alcan Highway in Alaska..! He has been chronicling his adventure (starting from months back when he started preparing for it) at http://bradsalcanadventure.blogspot.com.

Check it out when you get a chance. 

I had done two smaller cycling trips as part of NCC during my ugrad years circa 1985. One trip was from Chidambaram to Bangalore and back. Another one was from Chidambaram to Tirupathi and back. Each one lasted about 7 days with an additional 3 days break in between (in Bangalore & Tirupathi). Naturally I never knew enough in those days to do practice runs during the previous days/weeks, get special bike designed for long distance bicycling, etc. So, we prepared just a basic luggage with change of clothes and toothbrush and started pedaling with a very ordinary cycle. No GPS or any pre-planning for boarding/lodging. When it got dark we will stop in the town/village we were in and eat in the local restaurant/t-shop/home that offered food and slept in schools, rice mills, etc. It was memorable. See if you can locate me in these pictures taken during the Bangalore trip. :-)

Brad's adventure is quite the opposite. He has a bike that costs some $3000. He has a guide and another friend biking with him with well thought out luggage, travel route, GPS, cell phone, laptop, internet access to blog everyday, etc. Pretty cool to see him spend the whole month doing this. I should be eligible for a sabbatical in 2014. Wonder what I should do..?!