As many of you know, I’m in India. I’ve been traveling since March 14th. I started in London for two days and then India for two weeks (getting home on March 31st). I figure most people enjoy hearing about the travels so that’s what I’ll go with for this post.
London – so I’m about to start a new job within my current company that will take me to jolly old England on a pretty regular basis this year. This particular trip was to meet and greet the team and bond. Guess what? There is an old English pub across the street from the office called The Chapel. We bonded. And Guinness is good. Aside from that I didn’t get to see or do much. But I did get to go for a run in Hyde Park. This is like a Central Park type park that sits in the middle of the city and on sunny days brings out the masses. This particular day was sunny. I heard Russian, German, Italian, Spanish and of course fancy English. I kind of stood out like a sore thumb with my bright yellow running shirt but I am pretty sure they could care less. They hadn’t seen the sun in a month so I could go ahead and wear whatever I like, yeah. (Those fancy English-speaking people end everything with a yeah said on the upswing. I like it, yeah.)
India – I’m not going to belabor the sights and sounds and smells. I’ll just give you a few snip-its. Mumbai is totally different from any city you’ll ever see. It is an extremely chaotic city with a bazillion people. It is sensory overload times ten. I once asked my driver how he does this day in and day out. And his reply? “What?” I think having cars, trucks, buses, cows, dogs, people, rickshaws, bullock carts, goats, cats, kids all weaving in and out from one another in jam-packed streets going as fast as they can in any direction they can with horns a blaring would be what the what is. I sometimes just close my eyes on the way to or from work as I always think we’re going to hit that rickshaw or run over that dog or hit that little kid running through the cars. We never do but it messes with ya I tell ya when you’re not from here.
India – the big splash in the states was the release of the movie “The Hunger Games”. My family has read all of the books in the series. It’s a great story. And I assume it is going to be a great movie. So, I get all fired up that I can kill some time this weekend going to this show here. Unfortunately, I’m told it is in Hindi. Nope. Not gonna do it. (FYI – WordPress, the blogging tool I use, accounts for this too and tells me you can get my blog in other languages as well – WordPress.com is available in বাংলা, हिन्दी, मराठी Marāṭhī, தமிழ் and తెలుగు. So we got that going for us. Which is nice.)
India – I get a kick out of some of the headlines that occasionally make their way to the papers here. Today, there was a Sunday Times of India front page headline that said “Divorce Epidemic Due to Sex-Starved Marriages” . I won’t go into the details it shared but the first paragraph states a Delhi high court has granted a divorce to a man on the grounds of denial of sex by his wife. Now that is funny. I don’t care who you are. And it’s front page news.
Running Update: Hello, Treadmill! (Said in my best Hello, Newman! satirical voice.) The hotel here has played a nasty trick on me. They removed the sea-side bar and they put the gym and the treadmills back in the basement. Someone’s got some splainin’ to do. The gym area is ok but I hate treadmills and I hate basement gyms. But my alternative is to finally get the guts to head out of the hotel gates and run. I choose treadmill.
One thing I will say is their treadmills here are much nicer than ours at Lifetime. They have a big screen right on the treadmill with options for TV, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube or Google. I usually watch TV and ESPN which for here means cricket or English soccer (football). Believe it or not, I’ve not been able to watch one single game of the NCAA basketball tournament. That is tough. I did, however, get to watch the Indonesian Enjoy Jakarta golf tournament. Close but no cigar when compared to the tourney. I think the Final Four is next weekend when I’m back. Unfortunately Wisconsin won’t be in it but I really won’t care who is. I’ll just be glad to see a game.
Only 37 months and 26.2 miles to go…
Boston or Bust! 
Another fun and interesting blog to read. I suppose we’ll have our own “fancy English-speaking” son by next year, yeah.
Always love to hear about your travels! Glad you are being safe and running on the treadmill. I’m finally back to running painfree (so far, so good),so when’s our next race?