In Pursuit of Wisdom

Our preparation can now be declared as complete for hiking Half Dome of Yosemite this Weekend. Below is the image of Half Dome that kept me day dreaming about this time for last 2 months. It has been a relatively long wait before the day is so close now. My first hiking experience tells how I came into this whole thing 2 months back. During this time, except a short break last month in Ramadan, I have been hiking every weekend in different trails of bay area, mainly in Mission Peak. It turned out that hiking is not as tough as I used to think initially. However, make no mistake, it's tough enough to test all your endurance. I have lost 4 pounds of weight during these preparation which is even a lot considering I am under-weight and there was no fat at all to loose. Interestingly, my 2 other partners lost a huge amount at the same time. Nitol lost almost 12 pounds while Shahriar lost around 30 pounds (well, even after loosing that much he is slightly over 200 pounds now!). ...

I never thought earlier in my life that I would consider walking in a hiking trail one day. In fact I thought it eats up so much time that it will take a cut from my book reading or net surfing time significantly with not enough value/compensation in return. Moreover, because I have seldom participated in any kind of physical activities or outdoor games (Chess is an indoor game by the way) in my life, I never thought myself to be physically fit enough even to try out hiking long trails. And I was so wrong! You will find a bunch of pictures during our hike through the Mission Peak Trail here - http://picasaweb.google.com/ashikuzzaman/MissionPeakHikingAt26thJule2009# I just finished hiking Mission Peak last weekend with my friends in Fremont! It was a 5.6 miles updown trail with 2200 feet elevation. Mission Peak looks to be a moderately tough trail and a well known one among the Norther n Californians. There are 4 different trails to go to the peak of it (i.e. Mission Peak). The earlier...