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!

Weight Problems

A scourge of the Gen X, this problem's here to stay. I've been tubby ever since I could remember. The severity was not a lot during my early teenage but come my 17 and there it was.

Initially, I'd been away from my home for 10 years, studying in a boarding school at Puttaparthi. Back there, physical fitness was emphasized. We were made to get up early, freshen up, say our prayers and then ushered off an adjoining stadium. The fact that I was a tad heavier than the rest of the folks earned me an extra round of jogging. Come to think of it, it didn't hurt all that bad. But back then, I was a tithe of what I am now and carrying my weight around was a lot easier. We played some cricket/football/basketball depending on the availability of stuff and then carried on the rest of the day.

The above mobility did make me flexible though. I know a lot of fat people love to say that they're flexible although they're not! But I can touch my toes with my fingers without bending my knees. All ye flexible, beat that! I digress though. After my time at the school I came home to a loving mum who couldn't wait to dish out what she could conjure up in the kitchen. I slowly but steadily put on weight and became a healthy 75 by the time I started my graduation. Back in India, there was no real pressure as regards dating. The ones who got the girls were effeminate and we were studs! :) The point? I did not have enough drive in me to slim down. I tried in bits and pieces but the fat know that it's easier said than done!

I did my graduation, got me a nice girl (all due to my talking and empathizing as she claims) who later on went on to become my wife and I did all this without slimming down! I don't say it with a lot of pride though. Getting fit gives you a huge confidence boost; your heart's gratitude to you not counted. I can blame it all I want to on my sedentary job (I'm a member of that breed called software programmers), the weather et al. The fact remains that nothings going to happen unless I wish it, will it and stick by it.

I'll sign out as my 90 kilo frame craves for a snack now. It's this bloody job I tell you!