Blacksburg's scenic setting among the Applachian mountains, is conducive for outdoorsy activities. Hiking the Appalachian trails is one of my favorite weekend pastimes, as is camping on some of the trail areas. Another outdoorsy past time is biking. Blacksburg has several biking trails, which are really beautiful in fall.

If you find a site well away from the downtown area, Blacksburg is also great for sky-gazing, particularly in the winter. I own a Schmidt-Cassegrain Celestron 8" telescope with a dual axis motor drive, which serves as my main instrument. In 2000-2001, I built a 16" Newtonian reflector, and modified an old Meade DS-16 mount to use 7.5" Byers gears. This was a nice scope and with periodic collimation, it was a great light bucket for deep sky observation. The problem was that it was too big to move around - and didn't really see much use once it was built. It eventually found a good home with a fellow astronomy buff in California.

My reading interests are in the, natural sciences - mainly physics, philisophy, international politics/foreign policy and evolutionary biology. In fiction, I tend towards the classics of which I have a collection of reprints of first editions. For light reading, P.G. Wodehouse remains my favorite. For those of you who haven't heard of him, he was probably the best humorist of the 20th century, and the creator of such characters as Jeeves, Bertram Wooster and Psmith - his much maligned Socialist. Another recent discovery is Terry Pratchett. His humor is similar to Wodehouse - expressive similies - but his range is wider.

I largely listen to Indian classical music, both Hindustani and Carnatic. Ravi Shankar's compostions are my favorite, particularly his series with the London Philharmonic. Other favorites include Asad Ali Khan - Rudra Veena, Shiv kumar Sharma - Santoor, N. Rajam, Kunnaikudi Vaidyanathan - violin, and Zakir Hussein and Alla Rakha on the tabla. Among vocalists, I listen to Bhimsen Joshi, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Balamurali Krishnan and Maharajapuram Santhanam. In light music, I prefer old Hindi songs from the 1950s to the 70's, and classic rock - Doors, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Queen and Led Zeppelin.

My other hobbies include flying and home-brew electronics, particularly microprocessor kits, and discrete solid state amplifiers. I still swear by the fidelity of a high power transistor driving a decent pair of Maggies - I use the larger 20.1s and they sound great. One of these days maybe I'll get around to seeing why the audiophiles keep raving about vacuum tubes :-).