Easter with Pinaki

Pinaki is visiting The Times from IBM in India. He is alone and I know how even the most resourceful among us can miss companionship when alone away from home. We decided to meet on Sunday and go where ever he wanted. The beach. I loved to go to the beach with my brother Jeff when we were in high school, but that was a long time ago.

It was a beautiful, hot day. I'm sure it was in the high 80's, low 90's, even at the beach. Pinaki saw a volleyball game as we walked to the shore and decided to join the guys. He's very good. Much better than his team mates, in my opinion. Do you see that lunge for the ball in the top left picture? It was fun to watch him hustling out there. The sand was blistering hot, but, you know, he's from India, for heaven's sake. What's a little heat among friends?

Neither of us were dressed to go into the water, but we both rolled up our pant legs and got a taste of the Pacific. Pinaki commented on how cold it is. Bad move. I droned on about the dropoff of the continental shelf, heat retention, on and on and on. But it's true. The water at the beaches on the West Coast is cold, no matter how hot the day is.

We drove north on Pacific Coast Highway. Traffic was horrible. Pinaki needed to get back to the hotel to do some work, so I cut across one of the passes that would take us to the 101. It reminded me of the road to Ooty, very curvy. It was two lanes, so that was an improvement and it didn't have any potholes (not thanks to our mayor, I'm sure) so that was an improvement. We got to see a lot of beautiful big homes along the way. Poor Pinaki heard one too many times about the people from the Tribune who went to Bangalore and asked to see the homes where the rich people live. India has not learned how to do this conspicuous consumption stuff. Oh sure, the maharajas and that ilk had palaces. But these huge houses were much more plentiful on our ride through the mountains. The hills were green, but the houses were not "green."