Article 18

April, 2005 (Before Rushmore Trip)

Three day training on Reliability was fun. It was in a hotel and for lunch, I had to considerably edit the lunch menu to convert a chicken sandwich but without chicken, fish or any meat. :-) For dinner one evening, we went to PF Changs. I wanted to try martini, but I had no clue which flavor to try, so I asked the waiter. He in, Hum Dil de chucke sanam scene (In Italy) started admiring so much some specific flavor, so I just picked that. But I did not really like it, because of the cream and coffee flavor added to it. The food in PF Changs was good.

Whenever I needed a break, I would stop at Sai Mart to chat with Nagendra, and he as always had interesting stories to say from his previous adventures. I would listen to his experiences so attentively and with enthusiasm.

One of the days, a colleague, Paul and I went to meet a supplier at Boulder, Colorado. We left as early as 5:45 AM and had Garden omelet, hash browns and orange juice for breakfast at a truck stop near Denver. It was a 2 hour drive from home. I was pretty impressed by the facility they had, for Metal injection molding, almost automated with very few people seen in the work area. It was pretty neat.

Next we went to another supplier nearby and had lunch with them. There were discussions on outsourcing to Bangalore and layoff’s in Detroit; also Japanese cars taking over US market. I took it as a information rather than being uncomfortable. :-)

Paul is very interested about India. He loves Indian food and even prepares them. We usually discuss about the cultural differences. I explained to him some of our supercritical beliefs and possible scientific explanations to them. N, Seb and I went to 135 Exit. It was a cultural shock but was fun.

On 10th of April, it was called alert for a blizzard. We had off from work obviously and Peggy called us specifically not to go out on that day. J and I bothered the least of all this and took it lightly. We thought Americans are too scared always and we must be fine. But when I got up that morning and opened the window, I saw a mountain of snow covering it. The entire locality was white and one could see no other colour. It was one of the most beautiful sights.

View from my bedroom window

Well as if this wasn’t enough, we realized that we were running short of groceries. So we had to make a quick trip to Albertsons for some basic stuff. J and I took out on bed of snow. Everything went fine; we reached the shop, bought stuff and got back, as we were taking the turn to approach the main road the tires got stuck in the heap of snow and just kept spinning. J tried pushing, but it didn’t help. Luckily a guy stopped to help us out. We got on to the main road and slowly made our way back to the apartment. At the point where we had to turn to get into the apartments, we got stuck again. Few people stopped to help but nothing worked, finally a guy came and towed the car. We thanked him, returned home and swore never to take such warnings lightly ever. :-)

Next day, the snow cleared by 12:30, so we were driving to office and saw a guy struggling to get his car out of the parking lot. Like three musketeers, we parked our car and walked towards him to offer a hand. After struggling for few minutes, we simply had to get back embarrassed unable to move it by even an inch.

On 15th, Seb and I went to Denver in the evening. I had to g o to a temple for Ugadi. It was a north Indian temple, I did not like the atmosphere much but it was something, in this far away land. We then drove to Airport. Another colleague S arrived; one of his bags got missed out and was to arrive to our home only next day. We had dinner at Woodlands hotel in Denver and returned.

I now had company during walks. S loved to walk too, so I was happy. One evening the colours were vibrant and the pikes peak looked brilliant from the cotton wood creek park, right opposite our apartments. I just love Pikes peak more and more.

Cotton Wood Creek Park....Pikes peak on the backdrop.

We had a team lunch at an Italian restaurant called Biaggi’s and I disliked the food I had. It was hardly eatable for me. I think it was some type of eggplant lasagna or something.

Rest of the weekends, I was all excited in planning our next big trip – Mt Rushmore.

Article 17

April 2nd & 5th 2005.

Our friend BJ, came over to Colorado springs from Indianapolis for a training. To celebrate, we drove to Royal Gorge on 2nd.Its the world’s tallest suspension bridge. We drove on a tram, an inclined train all the way down. It was fun. The old man driving the toy train had stories that he has spotted a pregnant deer and if we were lucky then we could spot some on the way. We laughed at his story.

We returned back to Colorado Springs and directly drove to Saimart. N, the owner is a good friend of mine and he has opened a chats counter; the first day is free trail to all Indians. We enjoyed some samosa and chats.

On 5th, J & I decided to take S and BJ to this place that we had discovered recently on our way to Arches national park – Glenwood canyons. Again the drive was amazing as the road winded between those gorgeous canyons. We did some small hiking, jogged around the canyon and observed two men fish.

Article 16

March 26th 2005, Saturday.

It was not a much planned trip. By that I mean, we had not thought about this trip weeks before. On Thursday, I started planning on some place to visit during our 3 day holiday. Friday was a holiday on occasion of Good Friday. Browsing through the net on attractions in the neighboring state of Utah, I found these gorgeous canyons. The nearest was Arches national park in Moab city, Utah.

Next thing I know is that I held the driving directions and maps to the place printed out from mapquest.com

Destination: Arches national park, Moab, Utah.
Distance: 413.14 miles
Estimated time: 6 hours, 54 minutes.

At 5:47 Am on Saturday, J and I began our journey to Utah. The roads were very bad as it was snowing heavily here in Colorado Springs. This was the case in most of the places, east of Colorado. One small mistake on the icy roads would lead to great danger. Traveling most of the first 100 miles on 125 and E470 was not much fun as we had already been there many times.

We stopped at around 8:00 Am in Idaho springs for our breakfast; crossenwitch at burger king. We had been to this place once before with our boss S when he had visited Colorado springs the previous year. But that time it was only a mere drive. But now it was rather an exploration; an enthusiasm to drive and see new places.

The roads were blocked for another half an hour, cars were flooding in.. Probably everyone was going to ski resorts. Keystone, Breckenridge, and Aspen, all the famous ski resorts are on the same route. The road was jam-packed and obviously the driving speed was much much lesser than the speed limit.

The next stretch was too good; amazing views; the road swiveled between the mountains, and began to unwind the most amazing views I had ever seen. The sky reaching mountains, or rather canyons, half or full covered with snow, rocks showing its skin here and there. That was a gorgeous drive.

On one side was the Colorado River flowing. The mountains, the trees, the snow and the river all blended very well together. The view was totally breath taking.

We could not help but stop at the Glenwood Canyon Park. We could not drive any further until we drank a little bit of this view. We took some pictures, walked down to the river. The water was damn cold.

Tall trees on one side of the river, near a railway track that ran beside the river and leaf less red-stemmed plants on other. I recall the scenes from one of my favorite film, “A River runs through it” which had exactly similar location. But most of that was filmed in Montana, believed to be even more beautiful place.

I walked alone down till the river and stood there for sometime looking at everything as though I was downloading every bit of the sight in the hard disk of my mind, captured as a memory. There was light snow fall too during the same time which added to the places beauty. What a great sight it was. I looked up at the sky and saw thousands and thousands of snow crystals falling down at me. It was the most spectacular moment I had experienced in my journeys so far.

I watched 2 people fishing; an old man sat on a rock with his fishing wire deep in the water. A young man came and chatted with him, he too had a fishing wire.

They caught a fish and I saw them cut the wire from its mouth. The fish fell down. I assumed that the old man had caught a fish and this young dude, while cutting the wire, had dropped the fish. I felt sorry for the old man.

Then the young man began to fish. I asked him if he had caught any fish so far. He said “no” then he attached a small insect or something to end of his fishing string and let it in the water. A big fish fell into his trap. I saw him pull it out. The fish fluttered and struggled with the wire still in its mouth. “Big fish” I said and the young man agreed. He took it, cut the string and then held it in his hand. For some time the fish struggled then it lay there silently, motionless. I felt a little bad to see it die like that, but then the man slowly made the fish drink some water from the river and let it go. The fish which for sometime had pretended to be dead happily swam away. I shared a smile with the man. “Big fish” he said and continued by attaching another insect to the string.

We took off again. We came across some strange sights again. One side of the road had mountains covered with snow and the mountains on other side had not a single drop of snow on them. It was truly an amazing view. One would never want to leave such a beautiful place, I thought.

We stopped at Grand Junction sometime around noon and had our lunch. Utah started off with a plain land but as we drove further we started seeing big canyons at a distance.

The map had suggested that we take, 202 exit to UT-128 road but we saw that exit 204 led to the UT-128 road. We assumed that even 202 exit would lead to same road and if not would travel back as it was only 2 miles. But for our bad luck there was no 202 exit at all so I drove all the way to 193 exit and returned back. We took 204 exit and started driving on UT 128. On the road we saw a board that said –“No services for another 47 miles”. We had to drive till Moab and our tank was almost empty. 47 miles to go without gas was impossible so we thought we would return and find some gas station. Since the place was frequently visited by dust storms, there were no gas station or any service provided till long distances.

We also noticed that we could take another road, UT 191 from exit 180 which would also lead us to the Arch. So again we drove all the way back to exit 190. It was already 1:30 Pm and we had not reached our destination. We stopped at visitor center and asked how far next gas station was. The lady there said that it was just 2 miles away on 187 exit. So we drove there and filled gas and then took the road UT 191 to the park. We reached the park at around 2:45pm.

Time taken: 9 hours (Bad road, wrong miles data on mapquest, some confusion at exit 202 and some stops.)

We bought the tickets and drove into the park. The place was good with some amazing views. The entire place was covered with large rocks & canyons. We stood there in midst of brick colored rocks. We drove around the park and stopped at various major points. We had small hike to the balancing rock, landscape arch, pine tree arch and many others. It was truly an amazing sight.

Lastly we climbed a 480 feet mountain to see the delicate arch; it was a 1.5 miles hike up a hill. I did not want to miss this arch, as it is the most famous one. It took us about an hour to climb all the way to the top of the hill. But the sight was all worth it, truly amazing.

We took some pictures and then returned back to our car. On the way back we saw a native Indian art drawn on some rock. At exactly 7:05pm we left the place and drove back.

A funny thing happened as I was driving. A guy in red mustang was competing with me. He would drive fast and I would follow him. My strategy was to follow him as he was driving fast. At some point he slowed down a little and so I over took him. He accelerated and over took me again. He then pressed on the break a few times so that his brake lights would flicker. I assumed it to be his sign to indicate victory!

Then he sped off. For sometime, I could see his car; he kept switching from right lane to left and every time he did that the yellow indicator flickered, which made me notice him from any distance. So I too for fun began to chase the car. I overtook him again. But later I slowed down and allowed him to go. It was a fun drive, competing with that red mustang.

It was snowing badly and J was strained driving in snow. I drove rest of the way. It was snowing most of the way. We reached Colorado Springs at 2:00 am.

Near Dublin- Academy intersection the traffic light turned yellow. So I sped to make It through the signal. Suddenly J shouted, “Cop”, but I was not in the position to stop so I took off. Luckily the cop did not pay any attention to us.

Time taken on return journey: 7 hours.

Article 15

March

Most of March went by in work and relaxing weekends. We watched several movies on DVD. It’s hard to judge which Hindi movie is good, so we get every new Hindi movie from the Indian stores. We watched several crappy films released during that time. I loved Crossenwitch served in Burger King. I would drive there on Sunday morning and pack them for the three of us. We even tried the gym for a week until we got bored very easily and of course there were my walks. I went for a walk in cotton wood creek park or just around the apartment. I loved to see the atmosphere in the cold winter.

One weekend there was a very interesting case of Ashley Smith and Brain Nichols on news. The later had killed a judge and escaped from the court. He was convicted of raping his girlfriend. He then goes and kills a customs officer and runs away with his gun and car. At 5:00 am or something Ashley is returning home after shopping and is held hostage by Brian, in her own house. Something interesting happens. Ashley and Brain talk. They discuss their life and the past. Ashley reads out a spiritual book which changes Brain. She walks out of the house and calls 911. I enjoyed the entire episode and was very thrilled to see what had happened. The FBI surrendering the house and capturing Brain was live on all news channels.

On the long weekend of Good Friday, Seb left to Oklahoma, to see his uncle. I quickly planned a trip to Arches national park; a trip only for a day. Jon got the car serviced and ready for the trip. We were in the driving spree.

Article 14

Febraury 19th 2005, Saturday.

We relaxed at V’s Place; met his roommates. We all got ready and though the plan was to leave Rolla by 10:30am we got really late and left the place only by 1:00pm. V’s friend S also joined us.

We reached Saint Louis at around 2:00 pm. We directly went to the Indian restaurant called peacock. I assume it is a Pakistani Restaurant as it had the board, Indian and Pakistani cuisine. The food was okay.

We then stopped at the Indian store as Vand S had to buy some stuff. Our next stop was the famous gateway arch. The drive there was a little confusing; Saint Louis is a very congested city. Lot of interstate crosses each other and hence it’s very difficult to expect to be in the same road after a while. We got lost once and instead on going towards the arch we got into a road that goes to Chicago. Then we drove back to the arch.

We did not park in the parking lot. V asked us to park near the Missouri river where the parking is absolutely free. Well but not everything would turn out lucky for us that day. We did not get the ticket for the tram to go up the arch. All the ticket for the day was sold out. Disappointed we compromised with just seeing museum. We decided to return next morning, on the way to Chicago.

We then dropped Jon at his cousin’s place and drove back to Rolla.We went back home and were very tired. S prepared curd rice for us and after having dinner we went to bed. Next morning we got up at 5:30 am and left Rolla by 6:30 am.

We reached Saint Louis by around 8:45 am. Had some Dosa’s in Jon’s cousin’s place and left by I think around 9:30. We went to the arch again and still had no luck since the next tram was supposed to be at 12:30. Without giving much thought we drove to Chicago.

W e reached Chicago at around 3:00 pm. We drove to navy pier. The weather in Chicago was very bad. The entire place was covered with mist. Most of the rides in the pier were closed. So we just walked around. Went to a 3D ride and watched some artists sing and dance for kids.

We then drove to Aurora to Jon’s Aunt’s house. It was about an hour’s drive. We reached there at may be around 8:30 pm. Aunty had brought Malia kofta and dal just for me and chicken dishes for the other two. After dinner, Jon’s Cousin J showed us a movie called “Saw” it is a crazy but very interesting film.

Next morning we had our breakfast and left to Shedd aquarium. We spent the entire morning there watching the fishes and dolphin show.

The view from outside of the aquarium was excellent. Chicago downtown is famous for its greatest modern architecture.

We then went to the planetarium; watched a show on constellations. It was really nice.
After that we drove to sears tower, one time tallest building in the world. It is 110 floors tall. The view from top was spectacular. We were lucky that the weather was excellent so the night lighting of the entire Chicago looked pretty.

Then we drove back on the lakeshore drive near the planetarium. The Chicago downtown illuminated completely looked fabulous from here. Took some good pictures and returned home at around 8:00 pm and had dinner, after which we left Chicago on another long drive back home.

We did not do the mistake of driving 5 hours continuously, like earlier. This driving experience thought us a lot. We all drove 2 hours each and it worked really well that way. Most of the drive back home was during nighttime. We drove through Iowa and Nebraska states. Driving across Nebraska was really boring. Plan land on both sides of the road.

We reached Colorado Springs at 3:00 PM.

The trip boosted my confidence in driving long distance, exploring and experiencing the joy of traveling. It was here that a Traveler in me shaped completely. Days to come, I knew was going to be the best of my lifetime.

Article 13

Febraury 18th 2005, Friday.

Lot of preparations were done for the trip; our first long road trip; destination Chicago. Thanks to Peggy for her advice, tips and list that she prepared for us to take along in case of emergency. She also gave her cell phone to us so that we can call for help while in trouble. So the food, the emergency accessories were all ready by Friday. At 5:30pm we left home. We had planned our driving turns. Seb was to drive first.

Drive: Colorado Springs, Colorado to Rolla, Missouri
Start: 6340-Timber bluff Pt, Colorado springs, CO 80918
Destination: 1517 N Bishop Ave, Rolla, MO 65401-2154
Distance: 798.04 miles
Estimated time: 12 hours, 34 minutes.

We took the US-24 road which then becomes I70. We had to drive more than 500 miles in just I70 which passes through Kansas State. The scene along the drive was beautiful. Vast plain land filled with golden brown grass; appeared as though no people ever lived there. There were few small villages on the way; tiny homes and shops. The Shops more looked like our Indian road side dhabas. It was interesting to see Americans live in such remote places too; when one thinks of America, one only recollects tall skyscrapers, villas. Probably these people had farms or something. Questions were many but answers were none. But the deep silence of the place all along the road was hauntingly exciting.

We stopped by a small village to fill some gas and then drove nonstop for a long time. It was already dark. I entertain the group with my funny narration of Hindi film Pardes and Raaz.

There were some interesting incidents on the way. A huge truck was in front of ushe kept switching onn his back lights. We were unable to see the road at all, it seemed as though the truck was driving towards us because of the back lights flowing in our directions. For sometime it was not at all clear to us why this was happening later we realized that it was because we had our high beams onn and that was affecting him.

At 10:30pm we stopped to fill gas and that time I switched to driving. Jon sat next to me and Seb tried to catch some nap.

I drove till 2:45 am. Most of my drive was in Kansas. It had started raining heavily. The water from road followed the tires of the vehicles ahead and splashed all over so it was necessary to keep enough distance between the cars. On our way we met few other Indian colleagues who too where driving to Chicago.

I did speed too, as it was inevitable in the empty interstate.

At Kansas City I got a little confused and took a wrong exit but thanks to the proper signs and I correct immediately. The song that was playing on the deck was- “ Dil ne pukara hein oo jane janna….” From the movie shakti. Whenever Jon and I listen to it now, we remember the drive near Kansas City.

At 2:45 am Jon changed to driving near a gas station.

I slept rest of the drive in back seat. I am not aware of what went on in between till I woke up in the morning at around 6:00 am I guess. We were nearing Rolla. Jon was feeling sleepy; he found it difficult to drive as he had not got a good sleep throughout the trip. The car was drifting and he had to stop at the shoulder to allow Seb to drive.

At 7:15 am (central time, 6:15 in Colorado), as expected we reached Rolla. We called V (our friend) to confirm the proper location. Funny part was we called him from the telephone booth exactly behind his apartment.

Time Taken: 12 hours 15 minutes

Article 12

Febraury

February was a time of exploration. We were all enthusiastic about driving around and exploring the new places.

Seb and I went to Oceans Journey, an aquarium that we had accidently bumped at during some previous visit to Denver. The aquarium experience was good. Even though we saw better one’s later, this remains to be a special one, because it was our discovery when we lost our way to denver during a drive.

Dosa festival at Woodlands, Denver was a good treat as well.

One of the most recalled drive to office was this day. The entire place was covered with ice. Not exactly snow but as though everything was covered with crystals of ice. These pictures can speak for themselves.