Composting at Home

Finally bought a composting equipment, Khamba, designed and manufactured by DailyDump for the needs of a home with 2-4 people. While we were planning to visit the nearest DailyDump dealer, Bimba the Art Hut, we found out that the online Garden supplier, GardenGiga, was selling it in their online shop. GardenGiga is a new venture who is aspiring to be a one-stop place for all your Garden accesories. They are not there yet, but they have plans to connect all kinds of suppliers to the consumers through their portal.

It was delivered home last weekend and we figured out the stuff by going through their manual and DailyDump website. The Khamba has 3 separate terracotta vessels stacked on top. The top two vessels can be interchanged once the top one fills up. The bottom one keeps the semi-compost after it has been cycled through the top and middle vessels.

We have placed the Khamba in our utility area so that we can dump things pretty easily to it and there is good ventilation in the area as well. But the lid seems to be a bit heavy for frequent use and being a terracotta one, it needs some careful handling. I guess some of the other varieties have a small lid in the center of the big one which makes it easy to open and put stuff inside. This is indeed one of the problems of shopping online for things that you are not very familiar with. The online vendors typically are middlement connecting the real vendors and the consumers and they may not have a shop where you can check things out. But it will be very useful for garden supplies that you need regularly to place an order online and get delivered home.

So we have started dumping kitchen waste into it, but we may need some supplies(dried leaves etc.) to get going fully. We are also wondering how the cockroaches around will find the new place where they can get stuff. The vessels don't fit very tightly(may be by design for ventilation) and the cockroaches could get in easily. But then the idea is to compost it naturally - so a bit of cockroaches and flies could help the composting go well!

It does look pretty doable at home with little bit of work and if you have a garden, it should be worth the trouble to get some compost recycling your kitc.

News from the Garden!

Good news and bad news from the Garden - we have ladies' finger(okra) on our plants, but the plants have become pretty weak due to severe leaf miner attack. We were bit late to intervene, but after spraying the neem-oil and detergent solution, things became a bit better, but still not very good state. You can't hurry or slow down the growth of the plants - everything has a natural rythm that you need to get used to. But it hasn't spread across the plants, so we have not removed the plants and they continue to flower and produce more.

Tomatoes have flowered as well though there is a bit of leaf miner attack which we are trying to fend off. Carrots are doing well, but the soil we used appears to be a bit heavy for it to grow well. The green pepper plants are going steady and the lone onion plant seems to be the most healthy of the lot.

But it sure is a great hobby that the whole family(including our 1.5 year old toddler) can enjoy and work as a team unlike other individual hobbies like running and cycling.

Commute by Cycle Update

After starting my short 2+2KM commute by cycle more than 7 months back, I am holding on to it and it has become a regular event unlike my earlier attempts where things just stopped in couple of months. Though it was a 3 day/week affair when it started, it became a regular daily ride before I took a break to give my legs a bit of rest for an injury(ITB) from running for a month and got back again. In fact 2K ride shouldn't have been a problem for the ITB, but nevertheless gave it a break for a month. I am guessing that the problem was due to a bit of over-load of running during the training for the Kavery Trail (half) marathon. So I am going easy on running and wouldn't want to take running so seriously that it impacts other things.

Looks like I have also conquered my Cyclist Inferiority Syndrome(CIS) on the road. The safety perception has improved tremendously by experiencing the ride and my conclusion is that you can claim your space on the road with a bicycle. I am not too worried about the traffic - I am pretty comfortable and dumped my helmet to just feel one among the cycling crowd, which is not bad on my route. I also had some longer(10K) rides during the weekends in traffic, which was not really that difficult and one of them was with a bit of load from shopping. Sometimes my commute tends to get over before it starts - I have couple of other longish routes that I have to try which may give it a better feel.

While cycling may be more riskier than driving a car, it is definitely safer than walking on the road. Most of the people on the road are well behaved on the road though there are always some of them who get too close for comfort - especially the autos and BMTC buses, but then they are also specialists at their jobs, which I can live with. Riding too close to the curb could make the 4-wheelers squeeze in between and so I try to block them off as much as possible by keeping a safe distance from the curb.

The bike has been pretty trouble free, but is not definitely the one for my kind of use. Carrying stuff around is still a problem with this MTB, which seems to be the default variety around. The road bikes may be too much for my kind of riding and a good commute bike is still not available in the market. It is either an MTB or a road bike, nothing in between. The carrier I bought is pretty useless to carry grocery and stuff and may be I need a normal Indian one instead of the expensive one I have. And without proper fenders, even hanging the bags in front of the cycle is a problem because the tires rub against the bags and cause some damage to the bags. The makeshift laptop carrier also didn't work very well because the leg rubs against the bag and you need to have a delicate positioning of the bag to get it right. So I am still on the lookout for some descent setup to carry stuff. The folks who sell great cycles and service are not much of help in this department. Hopefully things will improve on that aspect.

But overall, worth the effort and if you are interested in riding, get on the road and get a feel - it isn't that bad as people percieve it to be. And the best way to make it a regular event is to commute using the cycle.

Kavery Trail Marathon - a tough trail indeed

My second KTM half marathon was a tough and energy sapping one despite a 32 minutes improvement over last year - but I would have preferred a slower easy run that I could enjoy than a better time on the clock any day!

Despite running at KTM last year, I did the mistake of training for a time goal - around 2h30m instead of taking it easy. An easy 2:45 or beyond would have been the right goal for this event. A late start, humid location and a trail at that calls for a slow and steady run. Instead I went on 7min/KM paced run till 15K to realize that I had no energy left and the knees started to collapse. And in the meantime forgot to enjoy the surroundings which was the greenest of the green with water flowing around the canals from the KRS dam in full flow. I also rushed through the water stops without spending quality time refueling the body except for the last two when I was already in trouble.

Walked the last 3KMs and barely managed to finish at around 2:45 and was not able to stand on the feet for a while with the ITBs moaning loudly. Half an hour improvement from last year on the timings, thanks to a hard training routine with Runners High, but a poor one from an "enjoying the runs" perspective - which is a far better goal to go after. May be you need to train for a 30K to run a 21K at KTM to really enjoy the run.

The race was well organized as usual by Runners For Life(RFL) despite the increase in number of people. It could well be one of the greenest races in the country and if they can replace the electrolyte drink with a tender coconut drink from the surroundings, that could make it a 100% green race! The T-shirt was a good one as well, but may not qualify for a "green" one with a synthetic dri-fit fabric. May be they need to look for the bamboo t-shirts next time:)

We drove down to Mysore for the event and spend the night at Ginger - it wasn't as self serviceable as advertised though - but pretty descent place otherwise. And thanks to my friend Sachin who could drive us up and down without any problems and finished his first half marathon around 2h50m! Another friend and college mate, Sundaresh, finished well ahead of us in his first half marathon without too much of training and preparation. His nephew, Pradeep finished in 2:15 in his first half marathon. Another friend, Ramesh, finished 3rd in the full marathon despite running way below his best time(3:07) at 3:50.

Next stop is at Bangalore Ultra in November and may be I need to take it easy instead of any time target!

Kavery Trail Marathon 2009

The next running event around Bangalore is the Kavery Trail Marathon(KTM) 2009, to be held in Srirangapatna along one of the canals' of Krishna Raja Sagar(KRS) in Mysore. It is near the river Kavery and might have been part of Kavery before KRS was built(BTW, Dams are yet another unnatural thing).

I am training for the event with Runners High, the only pro-training organization in Bangalore for all kinds of runners. Though they don't subscribe to the Galloway philosophy of running, they are not against it either. So I am sticking to the run-walk-run method as usual. The training plan that is being followed doesn't make you run the distance unfortunately - you have to wait for the race day on how your body would respond the race distance, which is a bit uncomfortable for me especially with a weak knee that seems to collapse at 16-17KM. So I am strengthening my knees and stretching the ITB and hoping to do a 2h30 half marathon though a 2h45m might be a realistic target. I am planning to shift to a pure Galloway training for the next run, Ultra-25K, with 3 days of running a week and slow long runs longer than the race distance during the weekend.

After last years' Ultra where I did 25K, I haven't run such distances since last January, which was a mistake and the knees became a bit rusty after that. So I will try to keep the 25K long runs going and potentially target a full marathon something in 2010. The sweet spot seems to be the knee at the moment, which would hold up hopefully for longer distances. I am a bit reluctant to get on to a strengthening program for the knees specifically, may be I need to get the knees used to the distance slowly. I would rather add more distance rather than train for better timings like I did this year. Also running should not come in the way of the daily routines(cycling to work, gardening, baby sitting) - so I need to slow down a bit and take it easy and get back to enjoying the runs instead of training for a target.

Onam

Onam is celebrated in Kerala when the rivers are full and grass is green and the rains have receded - when things are looking green in all aspects! But being a Non-Resident-Mallu for a while, I don't really celebrate Onam outside of Kerala because it doesn't make sense - because the environment where you celebrate is a big part of the celebrations! Surely, I am an odd man out in that thinking!

But then the original intent behind many of the things we do was long forgotten and in fact becomes a ritual or superstition! So Onam is just another occasion to chill out and celebrate for those who claim to have their roots in Kerala!

So Happy Onam to all !