Day 7:San Francisco

haight and ashbury, here we come

decided quite late on what to do in reno. previous day had 9 inches of fresh snow deposit in the mountains and today was t brightest day. perfect weather to ski. to our misfortune. headed to lake placid to ski after lugging heavy uncomfortbale ski gear. i was too warm for my own good. got to the slopes only by 2pm and was on the bunny slopes for the shorter better half, before it closed at 4pm.

aching and pained, pissed being ripped off, cos of our own fault, headed down the mountains towards the pacific. crossing sacramento took the same time as getting to it, reality check, we were in california. hated the traffic, our first jam in the entire road trip. next thing i know, we are crossing the bay bridge into san francisco. meandered around embarcadero and fisherman's wharf till everything closed and journey to the south bay.

miles: 260
fuel stops: 1
hours on the road: 4
states: Nevada, California

interesting day: 3722 miles from start to finish. just shy off 6000 kms. $366 spent on gas. $50 on hotel (thanks to hhonors points). a lot on food and a lot on skiing.
the best part, my car was as good as it ever was and it crossed 129000 miles when we turned it into the parking lot.

14 states, seven days, lots of friends in between, the spirit of the roadtrip.

cant say more than that it was wonderful to have done it.

Day 6: Reno

almost there

walk out of the hotel and see a glorious snow capped mountain right next door and turn around another mountain and another. provo was beautiful. had to check out the route from last night. and volla, found a scenic route through the canyon road which eventually led us to salt lake city. so there t caravan goes, through t smallest road on the map till day six. average speed of fifteen mph. awesome country, more snow peaks, more time without a car passing by. and when we were just a couple miles off from the highway connect, only white, no more black. snow not cleared only for couple of miles? head back and to salt lake. salt lake is really a salt lake, same stench and crud. wonder how it got to be that way.

crossed couple of passes more and entered nevada. and a ghost town shown on the map just a few miles off the highway. had to check it out. now we beat ourselves in the smallest road travelled. certainly the smallest i ever did in this country. the entrance to the road had a board marking the city and the board had gun shots. a cross with spooky looking cloth hangers. we were playing the guessing game on if it was symbolic or if it was symbolic. and a mile into the road, middle of nowhere, i cant stress on the nowhere better, on a small expanse of open land and right next to a railway track, a suv with a rv back and a single guy with a cb radio. dared to ask him which was to the town cobre. his reply, your standing on it. had to crack up for that reply.

headed back to the more travelled road and into the land of legal prostitution. was amazed to see the billboards "get a room for $24". i paid more than that for the hotel in reno. with conscience and adventure in the right order, grabbed a medium pizza and marched into the sunset, literally. spent night at the "biggest little town in the world". got an upgrade to a suite at hilton. sweet suite. my personal best so far. dinner at a microbrew.

good day...

miles: 600
fuel stops: 3
hours on the road: 11
states: Utah, Nevada.

Day 5: Salt Lake City ahem Provo

map does no justice

highest point of the journey in all respects. took the scenic route, route 40 was just open to traffic after a bad snow day. passed many passes, highest being just shy off 12000 feet. suprising fact, my car was running as good as ever. the one thing which we did not need till then and did not know that dint work was the wiper. not the car viper, my car's windshield wiper. so there you go pouring water from t bottle
over the windshield while driving, excellente. so ran out of water soon. but before that did take a good 45 minute short trek at the highest point in our journey and we did get really breathless, both for the beauty of the place and for low oxygen.

spent a *lot* of time in the mountains, how about five hours!! on the way into the valley, spotted a bridge in the middle of the white landscape, with a board marked colorado. another stop, trekked down the bridge, stood and walked across the frozen river colorado. incredible feeling. also saw pugmarks of deers, elks and a big mark of a big heavy animal, certainly not an antelope. our speculation the Black Bear of Colorado. did not want to chance an encounter with either that one or the cop. but had to meet one of them, so we choose the cop. a good one too, who gave a souvenir. still needs to figured out, how much i gotto pay him for it.

start of a real arduous journey through two lane roads, mountain passes with lots of deers and an unbelievably strong headlight from my car (had to stop and make sure, it was on, after turning it on). road to provo through the canyon was incredible, unforunate part was that it was already dark.

utah was not a desert state, as originally thought...

miles: 513
fuel stops: 3
hours on the road: 12 (with 5 in the mountains)
states: Colorado, Utah.

Day 4: Denver

road looks straight and was real straight

one of the longest routes based on the original plan. started off early to make sure we see the sun go down on the rockys. sun is the celestial object and rocky is the mountain range. no pun intended.

discovered a friend in lincoln, nebraska. so had to visit for breakfast. what luck, delicious poori. could not start without wasting two hours, no qualms. nebraska is probably the most boring state to drive through. visibility of 3 miles either way, beautiful day. meanwhile, mid-west was getting bad weather.

took the "scenic route" through cheyenne, wyoming, which took the most time to drive in the entire trip. thanks to the time zone change, saved an hour and reached boulder while there was still sunlight.

the scenic route did start, we were looking forward to the evening and the next day. spent the evening in boulder downtown, highly recommend visiting it, another microbrew and we could feel the altitude. ate home cooked food again, at a friends place. i dont believe our luck, only one meal at a restaurant in four days, but thankfully it ran out that night.

miles: 569
fuel stops: 2
hours on the road: 8
states: Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado

Day 3: Omaha

click to open sesame

snowy start at chicago. headed straight south to peoria, to meet an uncle and a visit to the temple. believe it. crossed t two biggest rivers of the states, between which the only thing I remember is the "worlds largest truck stop. ohio 80". rest of it all was farmlands and farmlands and farmlands. no wonder those folks think *only* about cows and football.

got to omaha, and did not expect anything, which is always good. as it turned out as a pleasant suprise. i thought i should read, so we went to the library, and we did read not books, but got good beer from a kansas microbrewery

merry christmas...

miles: 560
fuel stops: 2
hours on the road: 8
states: Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska.

Day 2: Chicago

click to enlarge (the map, sicko)

which state of mind?

started the day with real crispy masala dose, it was a gorgeous day to start the journey. more the reason to waste more time at home. so started late, and got to cleveland, in couple of hours had a quick look at the town and gawked at the houses built right on the lake eerie. it sure was eerie. wonder how difficult it is to live there during the winter. talk about the lake effect.

what started out as a easy drive to chicago, turned out to be a real long trip. enroute decided to meet an old friend, so a relatively short detour to Ann Harbor and drove through a little bit of sleet and rain through Kalamazoo and to Chicago. Unlike expected, ended up meeting more friends in Milwaukee for dinner, the first paid meal of the trip.

Only complaint, Chicago, for the second time was a touch-n-go trip. Could have driven less than that...

miles: 750
fuel stops: 3
hours on the road: 10 or 11
states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Day 1: Pittsburgh

click to enlarge
Rubber hits the road. Late start, apprehension on the week to come.
Car filled to the brim in the boot and the rear seat.
SLR loaded, seven reels of 35mm film.
Delicious home cooked food enough to last two days and a heavy stomach. What a start...

headed off west on 78, past allentown, pa.
realized that we passed t "Welcome to Pennsylvania" board only after crossing it. This would become a ritual that would be part of our trip for the rest of our journey.

reached Pittsburgh really fast, wondering that we should have started after a little siesta.

wine and wonderful meal again at night. day could not have been better.

miles: 350
fuel stops: 2
hours on the road: 6
states: New Jersey, Pennsylvania

Day 0: Cross-Country

so my colleague asked, what do you doing for the holidays, I said, nothing much, just driving. We have a ten day shutdown from 23rd Dec through 3rd Jan and most of it, we intend to do that.
Its a meager 3200 mile (5150 km) journey, just shy of driving from one point on the moon and all the way around it, or cover the length of the Indian sub-continent, twice!!

So what are we really doing, driving from the east coast to the west coast, in the best of the weather the region can offer.

So my car (98 Altima GLE) is at the mechanic right now, getting some wind beneath its wings, literally.

It intends to get some rest in these places

- Pittsburgh, PA
- Chicago, IL
- Omaha, NE
- Denver, CO
- Salt Lake City, UT
- Reno, NV
and eventually in San Jose, CA

Or alteast thats the plan .... watch what happens

no commercial value

YouTube.com does a pretty good job of handling heavy media, wonder what kind of an infrastructure they have. So called Flickr of video, lets see what this turns out to be. Fortunately, I got no video to share myself. so relax...

Meanwhile, here are some really funny commercials which I found on YouTube.


Compilation video of some really funny commercials


Nice protectional ad!


Daughter and mother's emotional convseration.


Funny old lady taking a jab at a dude. The funnier part is the team who sponsors the ad.


My all time favorite ad, had forgotten where I saw it first, thankfully these folks have it.


Dont mess with a geek!


Lick-a Lack-a

my phone will no longer be a self defense weapon

i still carry a brick (nokia 3650) around, because, it has (sorry had, when I bought it) a cool features in a relatively "small" footprint on my wallet and in my pants!! no pun intended.

there might be a glimmer of hope of people like us, Siemens is now making an ultra-thin electronic display so cheap you can put it on toilet paper!! hopefully this can be extended to my phone making the display smaller and lighter.

till then, i will still feel heavy at heart..

yahoo mail alias

I am not sure why Yahoo is not publicising this the way they should. But you can create an alias to your yahoo mail account. So right now if you have an id which is peterpan11, you can make it peter.pan@yahoo.com and mails will be still delivered to your old account. and you can operate both.

sounds pretty cool, if you want to add your alias, login to yahoo, goto Mail options > Mail Addresses. At the bottom, there is a small link to the page where you can create your alias.