My experiences in the United States of America

There are a few things that I wanted to tick off my things to do list while in US. One of these was to drive a car. I have been postponing this for sometime for some reason or the other though I have been driving in India for close to 15 years. I did not have to undergo the road test while applying for my NJ driver's license as I had prior driving experience. Therefore, still did not get my hands on a car at that time. Winter was coming to an end and we decided during the President's day weekend, we should probably try skiing or snowboarding. Most of the places where this was available were away from the city  and could not be reached by public transport. We zeroed in on Camelback resort in Pennsylvania. It was around 85 miles away from where we lived. Though I was tentative, we went ahead and hired a car. I had opted for a small car (for some reason felt that it would be easier to drive). As luck would have it, the car rental company (Enterprise) which is just next door to w...

Today, I swam at the swimming pool at Xchange (place where we live at in New Jersey). It has been almost 3 years since I last swam. The last time I swam was at Hyatt Place in Hampi, Karnataka. Since it was a long time, I was initially apprehensive but later got into my stride. Still early days and I hope to get much better at it in the coming days. The pool has a number of amenities -  there is the usual pool. There is also a whirlpool ( a miniature pool with hot water where you can just lie down and relax, there is also a sauna and a steam room. Need to check how the steam room is different from the sauna.

For the last few months I have been focusing on running a mile as fast as possible. I have gradually progressed from running a mile at around 15 minutes in Jun 2016 to under 10 mins by December 2016. The last few days have been phenomenal. On Friday, Feb 24,2017, I ran a mile in 9 minutes and 19 seconds (my fastest till that point in time). However, today (Mar 1, 2017), I surprised myself by running under 9 minutes for the first time, 8 minutes 59 seconds to be exact. Let's see where I can go with this in the coming months.