The Great American Cross-Country Trip - Tag 3

Day 3 (Tuesday, 01/26/2010):

• 7:00 AM - The Holiday Inn Express sure costs a tad more than Quality Inn. Reasons - It is in CA and two, the breakfast does have range. We have a good night's rest and a hearty breakfast but the long drive has made us sore, just one leg that is. In this country one uses only their right leg coz most of the cars have an automatic shift. So, no clutch pedal to worry about. We know its monstrous but we decide to reach home today. A good day early! Wifey reasons that I may not go to the office on the Wednesday as it would give me time to recuperate and I had earlier informed by bosses that I would report to work only on the Thursday.
  
• 9:00ish AM - As I search through my notes, I notice that being a dimwit that I am, I have accidentally deleted the portion having today's record. So there will be approximate timings and no remarks on the fuel trends. We pose for a few snaps and quickly start off to escape the unpleasant stench that I will now associate with Bakersfield for the rest of my life.
• 10:30ish AM - I notice signs indicating that a California Welcome Center is a couple of exits away. My touristy instinct kicks in and I take the bait. We realize that there is an agricultural conference of sorts going on there but that does not deter us from posing away.
  
• 2:00ish PM - I am already beginning to hate California from the bottom of my heart. I have never seen such dense and rapidly moving traffic. It serves to keep one alert and watch the road. On second thoughts, I suppose that is what one should be doing. My wife suggests that she pilot the ride and I readily acquiesce. Not before a heavy Arby's lunch though.
• 3:30ish PM - As I sit in the passenger seat, I pull back the sun roof and gaze idly around. My wife complains that I have these spikes of energy - in the mornings, I shout my lungs out but as the day progresses, I keep to myself and acknowledge her questions with a nod and/or a guttural sound. She is also thankful that most of the trip has gone by without us having a tiff. I summon my energy and remark that we've been lucky not to get ticketed by the cops too. She's mad at me and says I should not jinx the trip.
  
• 5:30ish PM - I think I spoke too soon. We have a small tiff. At the end I'm miffed and she pleased for having shown me my place :). As she gloats, we see some flashing lights behind us. Uh, oh. My wife's usually quite sharp at noticing cop-cars and she did notice one 5 miles earlier. It is the same cop. He pulls us over. The charge? One of our headlights is not working in the dipper position. He tickets us and assures us that it would not blemish my wife's driving record if we got the thing working. My wife bonks me over the head and takes the next exit to a Walmart where the nice mechanic fixes it by adjusting some wires.
• 6:30ish PM - We are all fixed, caffeinated, fueled and ready to depart. Wifey suggests that I take over for some time before it becomes real dark. At night, I do not see and drive. I work the bat mechanics. Sonar sound is my secret.
  
• 7:30ish PM - Aah, Oregon, did I miss you or what? With all those huge douglas-fir trees and the fog and the general rainy environ. I cannot see all of this but I sure smell it in the air.
• 8:30ish PM - I have spent the last hour driving with my tongue sticking out. It, folks, is a sign of extreme concentration on my part. Wife makes me pull over because of the dense fog and takes over.
  
• 11:30ish PM - We are dog-tired. The effect of the energy drinks has worn off. Wife pulls over and suggests that we take cat-nap. I am better at controlling sleep so I take over the wheel.
  
• 12:30ish AM - I have sleep-driven at 80 mph and somehow managed to reach Salem. We need fuel, both for the car and the body. Arco fills the car for cheap and Taco Bell it is for us. Some Mexican fare later, we fight against our senses as we undertake the last leg of our journey. It is just 50 miles but feels like 500.
  
• 2:00 AM - A car jolt wakes me up. It is the first time I had slept besides the driver. As veterans would tell you, this is an extremely dangerous thing to do. Sleep, like flu, is downright contagious. By the way, WE ARE HOME!!!
  

Terrain talk - Today was the worst day we had both in terms of the length of the drive and also the terrain. California is way too commercialized to marvel at. By the time we drove through Mt. Shasta and entered Oregon, it was too dark to appreciate. The only good thing was that we reached home unscathed.

We have driven for 17 hrs (including rest-stops) and covered approximately 870 miles today. Here's to a life together with wifey in this country. Home is where the heart is....

Ciao!

The Great American Cross-Country Trip - Día 2

Day 2 (Monday, 01/25/2010):

• 7:10 AM - Free food knows no age, sex or sect. We make way for the breakfast buffet to partake of the excellent spread. A couple of toasts, a bowl of cereal and a fruit juice later, we are all ready to take on Arizona. It is a bright sunny day as we plan to head west along I-40W and then take a detour north to visit the Grand Canyon.
• 7:45 AM - Wait, what?! Excessive snowfall has closed down the routes leading to the gorge. We kinda knew this but chose to keep it in the back of our minds with a faint glimmer that the darn weather would aid us. The weather does but the road condition advisories on the radio exhort us to either drive a 4 wheel drive or take snow chains. Since we have neither, we shrug off the disappointment and decide to reach Flagstaff, AZ. Wifey suggests we take a detour from Flagstaff 27 miles south to a place called Sedona. A google image search on the place pretty much makes up my mind.
  
• 10:30 AM - You may remember that Gallup is all snow. I've spent the last 30 minutes scraping off the ice off the windshield trying to get our ride ready. Now with it satisfactorily clean, we are off to Flagstaff!
  
• 11:00 AM - YAY! Arizona it is!! Called the Grand Canyon state, it has a star emitting rays as its symbol. We stop at the AZ welcome center to take snaps of the state symbol and some neat reddish rock-cave formations. It also says that the area is infested with poisonous snakes and creatures. Right at the welcome center!
  
• 12:45 PM - Wives are a different breed in themselves. Mine is so fascinated by the (Red) Indian native heritage on display (on the freeway billboards) that she urges me to make a stop at a creepy place atop a hill selling some sedimentary volcanic rock. If you've ever seen a horror-house, this has to be it. A lonely dilapidated place, it has eerie-looking crudely erected/seated mannequins. There is an abandoned school-bus, a creeper-riddled vintage convertible and some ostriches. OSTRICHES! On Sale or as a menu item or as a ride! We take snaps and leave, pronto.
• 3:00 PM - Aided by a 75 mile speed limit, we reach Flagstaff. Disappointment strikes again as signs on the freeway inform us that the road to Sedona is closed. Wifey says that it is the third time she has tried and and been denied an entry into Sedona. Maybe some shaman thinks she has not merited a visit. We top the tank at a whopping $2.89/gallon with some Shell gas. I'm hating this day.
  
• 3:30 PM - We lunch at a place called Village Inn thinking that we are immersing ourselves in the nativity. It isn't until later that we realize that it is a darn chain of restaurants! Bah, globalization.
• 5:30 PM - We stop at a place similar to Gallup called Kingman in AZ. This is just a gas stop though. Our ride gets some Love (gas) at $2.59/gallon. We have decided to push ourselves and drive to Bakersfield, CA. Wifey takes over the wheel.
  
• 5:30 PM - We have driven for an hour to enter California. Again, it's not a mistake. It's the time-zone magic at work granting us an extra hour. I sync up the car clock and our watches. At the CA border we are mandated to pass through a checkpost where a burly officer asks us if we have any vegetation in our car. We're puzzled but later realize that he meant marijuana - CA's largest cash crop. They plan to make it legal sometime soon. It would help us know when its time to move to CA :).
  
• 10:30 - My wife is a maniac! She has driven for 6 hours non-stop to arrive at Holiday Inn Express at Bakersfield. I am besides myself with my old friend, hunger, gnawing at me tummy. We gorge at Denny's. It serves breakfast 24/7. What foodies!
  
• 12:30 - Some mind-numbing TV shows later, its time to snooze.
  

Terrain talk - Arizona is a dream. One starts to dismiss gorges and beautiful hills as a commonality after one has visited this place. The roads are long and winding but never tiring. We did cheat by doing 90 mph for most of the day. Bakersfield has an unbearable stench in the air. The hotel receptionist chips in that this is because of the sulphite factories and the farm animal industries that abound the area.

We have driven for 13 hrs (including rest-stops) and covered approximately 700 miles today.

The Great American Cross-Country Trip - Day 1

Day 1 (Sunday, 01/24/2010):

• 9:10 AM - A lovely day with the Texan sun shining bright and we are off. We have an excellent Garmin GPS to guide us and good ol' atlas as a backup. We have also stocked ourselves on fuel, food and water. Gee, that almost sounds as if I depart for the wilderness! My wife's experience and better eyesight make us decide that I take the wheel for the first half of the day and she, the remainder.
• 11:10 AM - We stop at Jolly, TX on 287N, eat some munchies and get some gas. Hehe..Fill up gas that is. A nice cheap Valero pump offering it at $2.55/gallon. The speed limit is a cool 70!
  
• 2:28 PM - We stop at Amarillo, TX on 287N. Its amazing how even just driving and/or navigating can make one hungry! Since we are not exactly gourmets, McDonalds it is - a juicy chicken club sandwich for me and my more health conscious wife prefers a southwestern chicken salad. We arm ourselves with some energy drink-y stuff to ward off the post-lunch stupor, fill some Pilot gas at a joyful $2.44/gallon and off we are. Oh, and wifey takes over.
• 6:30 PM - My wife has driven for 5 hours non-stop!! How? I take this note at Albuquerque, New Mexico on I-40W and we have driven west across TX and into NM. We have switched time-zones and gained an hour - that's how! Oh and why is NM a breeze? A speed limit of 75! The incessant driving has taken a toll on us though. We are grumpy and hungry and decaffeinated. We fill up complainingly at a Valero pump offering fuel at $2.57/gallon and perk ourselves up with some much needed caffeine. We also decide to gorge on some nice Chinese food. People, I should tell ya that Urbanspoon is gooooood and the Kung-Pao chicken that it recommends doesn't disappoint either! With our spirits pepped up, we decide to drive a couple of hours more before we rest for the night.
• 9:45 PM - Ah, the beauty of an iPhone. We look up the map, vote Gallup as the place where we want to dock, call up Quality Inn and book a room there - all in a span of 5 minutes! We choose Gallup, NM as the night stop because it is the boldest city that appears on the NM border on Google maps. Why Quality Inn? We want a clean safe place that serves breakfast and does not tell on our pockets. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of having a AAA membership - we get a cool 12.5% discount on the hotel price . Now for some sweet sweet rest...

Terrain talk - Texas with its vast stretches of flat barren land, sparse shrubbery and straight roads easily lulls you into somnolence, if aided by a fullish tummy that is. We have a strong sun during the morning half. It eases off during the post-lunch drive and temperatures decide to lean towards the frigid as we pass through NM. NM is flat, rugged and interspersed with small flat hills. Gallup has decided to swathe itself in blankets of snow.

I also notice that in this country, we act differently. Back home, I never recount being excited at the prospect of spotting trains or cows or horses and scrambling for the camera to take pictures. We have driven for 13 hrs, 35 mins (including rest-stops) and covered approximately 780 miles today.

The Great American Cross-Country Trip

Undertaken by my wife and I, the 2300 mile trip was some experience! Although constricted by time and a view limited to the freeways, we did not fail to soak in the various sights and sounds on offer. A real stroke of fortune had effected this trip - the fact that my wife got a job where I work (Portland, OR)!

I flew down to Dallas-Fort Worth and binged the Friday night away at Swapy's place. The Saturday was an emotional roller-coaster of sorts. It started off with us USPS-ing some boxes off to Portland. Our Toyota Camry could carry only so much, you see :). Come Saturday noon and we were snoozing off preparing ourselves to gorge on a farewell-potluck that some friends had arranged for wifey. The potluck started late at 7:00 PM and it had its share of lovely food and booze. What stood out though was the bitter-sweet mix of feelings - my wife glad that she was going to join me, yet sad that she had to leave the place which had made her, her. We bade a sad farewell to all friends and spent the night at Amol's place. We had decided to leave early morning but the post-shenanigan chatter ensured that we slept late.

I will now make an effort to change the tense and switch to a captain's log of the trip. I will split the darn log across different posts to ensure readability and interest.

Overall Plan -

• We have decided that we will drive north-west to New Mexico, west through Arizona and north through California to reach Portland.
  
• We have ruled out driving north from Arizona through Utah and Idaho and then west to reach Portland because a Utah-born colleague warned me of the icy roads that we would encounter during this time of the year.
• We have decided to drive 4 days and reach Portland by the Wednesday (01/27/2010) evening.

I'd urge the reader to fasten their seat belts unless they get a kick out of splurging on tickets that the cops are more than glad to dole out...

The USA - Experiences and Such...

I write this post for 2 reasons. One, I'm on the verge of completion of two years in the US and two, I don't want 2009 to go by without a single post! As it is with a new place, some things were learned and some unlearned. Loads of new places visited and at times, nostalgia for home invoked. A whole new host of cuisines tried and loyalty for Indian food re-affirmed. Unless laziness takes over, I plan to create a post of each of the 3 sentences prior to this one. Some happenings:

• I realized that left-wheel (right side) driving is much more tougher than imagined! I had to un-learn the "lawless" driving back home and then learn the new stuff. Now with around 5k miles under my belt though, its a breeze.
• It is a huge unholy nexus that H1-B pimps have built up here. They get paid for the work you do. That being said, it's the same with companies back home. It just hurts more when visible.
  
• I hate Mexican food and luurrrve Thai.
• Cooking and eating is good. Case in point: I lost 18 lbs. Either I'm a lousy cook or the food outside has way too many calories. That being said, I cook pretty palatable now.
  
• Falling into a credit card debt cycle is a cakewalk.
• Living away from wifey sucks. Considering the economy, I was lucky to have a steady job but it was on an average, a 4 hr flight away from where wifey worked.
• An extra pair of glasses is indispensable.
• Natural beauty and ease of access here is nonpareil.
• The question - "Are you going to settle in the USA or return to India?" is pretty tough to answer.

More to elaborate and more to come...

Discipline

Living; there's no point in it if there's no discipline to guide you. This is my first serious posting of any nature.

I relive with dread, the memories, when the teachers in my boarding school led us through physical and mental exercise. I have spent the rest of my non-school life doing everything I can to rebel against the values instilled in me then. I smoke, drink, eat unhealthy, don't exercise, don't read to improve my technological skills. The worst part is I bloody know I'm wrong. I even know what I have to do to change myself. That's not enough though, is it?

I need to get my life back on track. I will not go into the intricate details that I plan to enforce upon myself. You live just once. I'll do a bit of everything but at the same time, care for the vehicle that my soul has been given. Also, while I'm at it, I'll make the journey worthwhile.

A Change for the Better

The subject would seem alien to bachelors. Of course, as always, there are exceptions but I speak for the majority. For the breed of males who show a promise of acting up to their parent's hopes in the earlier years but then gradually spiral into depravity. For those people who are well off in the financial sense (this translates into a tad more than just making ends meet) but have gotten their now-spent wealth through no real hard work of theirs.

After my engineering, I started off my career with Infosys. It may seem all nice and bright in the press but the labor class (read software engineers) know the dark facts. Then again, I digress. The lucky get no work and get paid for other people's efforts. Fortunately, I fell into the lucky class! Not that I minded it but then one gets ensconced in this sense of security. It makes you believe that going forth, life would be as easy. You could spend your entire life there without moving an inch and retire easy on your stock options. That's the reason why they say its so difficult to study once you start earning. You may have heard it before, but I've experienced it. Five years passed. Inherently a convincer of people, I changed companies to lay my hands on a better salary. To summarize the picture was something like this: A tubby guy who earned proportional to his weight and with no ambitions.

Then it happened. Marriage. Resigning from the job and moving to the US. Searching a job and finding one. Till now, I was never "responsible" in that I never sent any substantial amount of money to my parents, never cared to increase my knowledge, never cared to change my technology. I found a job in a different city than the one in which my wife was. I went to the new city, learnt cooking(!), acclimatized myself to the fact that in the US you have to clean your own shit. This was HUGE for me. I mean back in India, I never had to worry about learning how to cook or manage my finances or even walking a short distance for that matter. I am in the process of learning all this. Also I now know how important it is to be thankful to people. To use Sheetal's favorite dialogue, "We live and learn". Earlier, I just lived! :)

As of now, my wife is on the verge of finishing her PhD and she's already gotten a postdoctoral position in Harvard (yep, you heard it right!). As for me, I'm real real proud of what she's achieved. I know what she's been through to get it. She'll be moving to Boston in the last week of August. With my newfound outlook towards life, I have packed enough zeal in me to learn a new technology (Oracle DBA) and find a job in Boston for the same.

I'll let you guys know how things go. Cheers!