Bicycle diaries

A bunch of us biked from Fisherman's Wharf, across the Golden Gate bridge, into Sausalito last weekend...

Embarcadero St.... on the way to the bike rental shop.

The ride started at Fisherman's wharf... then continued across Crissy field to Fort Point. This picture shows a view of Alcatraz island.

It was cold and foggy at the Golden Gate bridge... the white background behind me and Sophie in this pic is actually the fog!

Golden Gate bridge from the northern end...

Sophie had a fall on the golden gate....so Sid had to be a gentleman and drag two bikes on steeper slopes. The rest of us provided moral support by taking pictures of his gallant effort :)

The bike ride ended a few minutes after this awesome vista point... all of us were pretty exhausted by then... so we had a BIG lunch in Sausalito and took the ferry back to SF.

The trail map!

It was my first bike trip in 8 years... and totally worth every minute! Next time, we might take the ferry to Sausalito, ride our bikes to Tiburon, and take the ferry back to SF. That's another 8 miles of awesome fun!

To google

Yeah, that's right! 'google' is officially a verb according to the 2006 edition of the Merriam- Webster dictionary.

There are a few other fun additions this year -
mouse potato - a person who spends a great deal of time using a computer
drama queen - a person given to often excessively emotional performances or reactions ( umm.... what about drama kings? )
polyamory - the state or practice of having more than one open romantic relationship at a time ( They actually have a brand new euphemistic term for this?? In the good old days, we called it cheating! )

Here is a sneak peek at the rest.

The meaning of success

I came across two interesting explanations of what success means to different people today.

The first was in a Knowledge@Wharton interview with the authors of a new book coming out in September called 'Success Built to Last'. The book is co-authored by Jerry Porras ('Built to Last') and focuses on individual success stories as opposed to successful companies. Here's what they had to say -

The question you asked earlier was about how these people think about success. The answer is that they don't. People don't start out to be successful -- they start out to be very good at what matters to them. And when timing and circumstances come together, then they end up with success.
One of the issues we are very clear about is that success needs to be redefined. This is because if you read the definition of success in the dictionary, it sounds like it was written for sociopaths. If you go to Oxford or Webster -- whether you take a dictionary from either side of the Atlantic -- they define success in the same way, as the accumulation of influence, power, wealth and accolades. We see a lot of people chasing that kind of success. What's remarkable is that a few people whom we talked to have achieved that kind of success, but it was never their goal.

I'd say what appears to be constant is that the principles don't change over time. What defines these people's lives is their commitment to doing something that is meaningful to them. If they're pursuing a cause of public service, certainly they are living a life of service, but they are also clear that this life serves them. So it's not an either/or situation. They never talk about it as a sacrifice, and so that principle of having an anchor to what is meaningful to them never changes.
And another thing we noticed in our research is that when you talk to these people, after a while you feel something is missing from the conversation. Mark and I have explored this, and we realized that what is missing is that they never blame anybody for their circumstances or their mishaps.

They never hold themselves to be victims of anything.

Hmmmmm..........

Just as I was pondering over their words, I got my weekly Art of Living email with the following pearls of wisdom -

The criteria for success: you are free, you live in the present moment, you are useful to the people around you, and you feel love for all humanity.

Pretty simplistic, eh?