Trip Stats:
Mamleshwar - Karsog - Mamleshwar (summary)
Progress: 33 km
Time: 2:15 hr.
Avg. Speed: 14.6 km/hr
(altitude chart)

Those are scissors in this man's hand which he was using to cut his lawn - blade by blade.


The harvest had come in and around Karsog women were carrying wheat to be processed.

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2003-05-26 - Chindi (Day 41)

The theme of today's journal is wasted time, not because the day started out with my packing to go on to Manali and then watching dark clouds build and thunder to start in just the time it took me to pack and eat breakfast resulting in my staying put in Chindi. No, even staying put, I was able to fill this day with steps to completion of several goals - but the theme stems from the following paragraph that I read today:

"The average adult watches 7 hours per day of TV, 49 hours per week, 225 hours per month, or 2,700 hours per year. By the age of 65, the average American has spent 3,000 entire days watching TV. That's 14 waking years watching television!"

The reason this comes up now is on my ride yesterday I saw one of the craziest things I'd ever seen - or so I thought at the time - a man cutting the grass of a good sized lawn with scissors Yup, blade by blade. Don't believe me? I didn't think anyone would, so when I passed him on my trip into Karsog village, I was kicking myself for not stopping and getting a picture. I went through the village, made the phone call I needed to make back to Taiwan, went on until there was no road, turned around and started back, stopped and had a snack and continued riding out of the village - again passing the man who from the looks of things hadn't made much progress on the lawn - BUT was still at it! Cutting each blade of grass by hand. I stopped this time and got the picture and spent much of the ride back to the hotel turning this situation over in my head.

To me, cutting one's lawn with scissors borders on insanity. If that is the only way to cut it, then forget it, let the thing grown into an "English Garden" but don't waste one's time cutting a blade of grass one by one! Then another thought occurred to me, he is out in the fresh air, as I was passing a neighbor was sitting near him chatting, and when I stopped for the picture the man raised his head and gave me a large, very contented smile.

Coming across that quote on the average American and television today I had to question who was better off? That couch potato or the man with scissors on his lawn. All in all, its a close race, but I eventually had to give the guy with the scissors the nod, that was probably a better use of one's time - as horrible as that seems.

I had intended this journal to mention some of the things I've seen on this trip which just haven't made sense to me - the incredible number of people I've seen just sitting on the hill or beside the road doing absolutely nothing as I passed on the bike. There have been so many people just "sitting around" that it ranks as one of the most surprising things I've found on this trip. The second thing I've repeatedly seen was people breaking rocks by the side of the road. For use as pot hole filler or cement, I've seen gang after gang of people with hammers big and small, women and men by the side of the road breaking big rocks into smaller ones. This also to me, just such an incredible waste of a human life and mind to spend it on such low value effort that could be done with a mindless machine. This valuation of a human life as cheaper then a machine to crush rocks fills me with a deep sadness.

That was what I intended to write about - until in today's reading I came upon the quote above and the thought of 13 years of my life being wasted before I retire watching "Jerry Springer", "Three's Company" and other such palp made me rethink it - perhaps the average American's valuation of his own life is even less then those out breaking rocks - they at least are exercising, getting fresh air, talking with friends and "doing" something. Its a hell of a waste I agree - but is it worse then what most of the people where I come from do to themselves?

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