Aloha! Finally I've begun my big 100th post! Woohoooo! 5 years and the 100th post.. not the best record, but who cares! It's been a fun journey so far!
Just got done with "Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara" and the "making of the movie" videos and I've got the perfect inspiration to blog about one of the best road trips I've ever had by far. I've been wanting to blog about it for the longest time, but was too lazy to move my a** and actually put it down here. But finally the moment has arrived!!
Road trips are super fun always. You get to see a lot of places in one shot. You're more relaxed. Plans can be changed. It's more flexible. And one of my favs- I can carry whatever I want to.. a whole bottle of shampoo, soap, food.. nobody to stop and check the amount of liquids I carry. Last year my big move from the east coast to the west coast of the USA was by road. Obviously I did not travel alone..had two very wonderful people for company. We covered 16 states in 9 days during the Thanksgiving holidays. It was well timed and well planned and a really nice thing was that the guys just had to take off for 3 days from work, to do the 9 day trip.
I'm gonna quickly try and recollect and jot it all down here. For the most part we bunked over at friend's places instead of staying in hotels.. and thats what made it so special! My mosttt sincere thanks to every single person in whose house we stayed and had a great time all through the trip! It meant a huge deal to all three of us!
Nov 19, 2010 (Friday): It was my last day in the lab. I was supposed to wind up everything and hand all of the stuff over to the prof by noon. The plan was that Rahul and I were supposed to drive down from New Jersey (NJ) to North Carolina (NC) - 8 hours away from each other. Apu was flying in to NC early next morning from Seattle in the night's red eye flight. We were supposed to sleep over at Apu's friend's in NC and pick him up from the airport. But I got off to a reallyy late start.. by the time I got done inventorying and handing stuff over to the prof it was past 5 PM. I picked up Rahul from his place and he helped me clear out and get done with the rest of the packing and moving from my apartment in Harrison, NJ, where having lived for 5 years I'd accumulated the world's junk! All cleared and thrown away/packed and dumped in every visible space of the car, we started driving, feeling supremely dead already. It was around 8:30 PM and we couldn't imagine having to drive 8 hours without any rest. We headed straight to Saravana Bhawan thinking we could mull things over awesome food! I suggested that we sleep for a bit in Virginia instead of driving straight to North Carolina like zombies. So I quickly called every single friend of mine in VA to find out we could crash at their place for a few hours. A bunch of them were unreachable. Finally my friend from George Mason Univ, Santhosh picked up and simply asked us to come over no matter how late it was. Oh God what relief that was! With great difficulty, Rahul and I drove down till VA in turns and gate crashed into Santhosh's place. It was past 1:30 AM when we reached VA.
Nov 20, 2010 - Sat: We were up and ready to hit the road by 4 AM so that we could pick Apu up at 8. The timely power nap made us feel alive at the least! Before we left, we realized that there was simply no room in the car AT ALL and so just outside Santhosh's place, we trashed some of my things.. some vessels and kadais and loose bags with things clumsily packed the previous day in all the exhaustion. We thought we'll try and find a post office on the way and ship things out to Kala's. We drove through the country side from VA to NC listening to tamil gaana/kuthu songs to keep us awake. By the time we reached Greensboro, NC it was around noon.. I have no clue what took us that long to get there..(its only a 4 hour drive) I think it was because we were trying to dispose of my things along the way to make room in the car!! Just before the Saturday noon closing time, we sprinted into a USPS and begged them to allow us to ship some boxes and finally made more space in the small Toyota Yaris! We finally reached the airport and just handed over the car to Apu. I went behind and crashed for what seemed like eternity and the most blissful sleep ever! :P Apu drove from NC to Atlanta, a nice 6 hour drive on I-85S. For saturday night, we were staying over at Ramya's place. We went to Ramya's and she, Archana, Ashwin and us went for dinner at a restaurant. We had one of THE BEST Bitsian Lachcha sessions EVER!! Twas a laugh riot as usual!! :D We hung out until pretty late in the night at the restaurant and went to Ramya's and after playing with Laya, we continued the lachcha for a longgg time! Can't remember what we were talking about.. but quite like most lachchas, there isnt much content to it.. you just remember having a greatt time laughing about everything and nothing!!
Nov 21, 2010- Sunday: The next morning after a nice 8 hour rest, we were all enthused and ready to go zooming through the country. Ramya's MIL made supremelllyyyy awesome Pongal and Ghotsu! GODDDDDDDDDD.. I can still remember that feeling we had.. great food, awesome rest and a nicee relaxed trip thru the country ahead of us.. it ain't getting better than that! Our next stop was to be Memphis, TN. We drove through Alabama, listening to "Sweet Home Alabama" like Southerners, keeping track of time when we drove from Eastern Time to Central time, stopped at "Pete's famous hot dog" in Birmingham, AL, and then through Mississippi, "the land of Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, Jazz and blues" and into Memphis, Tennessee.
Every time we entered a state and the state welcomed us, we stopped over to click pics by the welcome board! Apu in the meantime had begun an active photo blog on Facebook with pics from the trip, and since it was Thanksgiving holiday season, the reactions we got were most positive and encouraging and fun!! It set the travel and holiday mood for a lot of our friends, atleast I'd like to think so! In Memphis, we stopped for a bit at Beale street, hopped into a bar, listened to some cool jazz, attempted to click pics in the middle of a really quiet street and got kicked out of the street by cops ("Get outa the street", they bellowed over the mic!), and finallly reached our dear host's house - the newly married Pattas and his wife! Again it was an amazing night of fun, lachcha and laughter!
Nov 22, 2010 - Monday: The next day while the boys were getting ready, Pattas and I headed out to the amazing temple in Memphis, TN. It was around 10-15 miles from his house. I was nervous about my small little car making it all the way thru the country with all of my luggage and wanted to pray for its well being! I was amazed at how big the temple in Memphis was.. one of the biggest in the country I think! We came out of the temple, when my dear prof called, asking for all of my data! He said he wanted it immediately and could not wait for 4 days until we reached CA. So the 3 of us headed from Pattas's to a best buy near by. I spent the next coupla hours transferring data from my laptop (which thankfully I had with me) onto an external hard drive that I bought there.. and then again in the middle of nowhere, we were hunting for a post office to ship the external hard drive to the prof. We lost a few hours in the process and we had a long 8 drive to Dallas, Texas planned for the day. We finally hit the road by late afternoon, passed through Arkansas, clicked pics, while I was a little grumpy all along, until we finally reached Uma's place in Dallas by around 10 in the night.
Nov 23, 2010 - Tuesday: Uma and Arun (and Swathi) were waiting for us with superbbb food. (Seriously wherever we went during the road trip, we were welcomed with amazinggg food. We thanked God every step of the way for the amazing friends we had!) We had our fill, put lachcha, slept, woke up, played with Swathi for a little bit and then headed to downtown Dallas the next morning. We saw the spot where John F Kennedy was assassinated, clicked pics (needless to say!), put some lachcha with some historian there who was very eager to give us his interpretation of the assassination and finally hit the road by noon. We were headed to Albuquerque, New Mexico and we decided to drvie through the historic Rt 66. Quite unfortunately we covered most of Rt 66 through the night, but we stopped outside the Big Texan, which is known to serve the country's worst burgers and is famous for it and you get free 72 oz steak if you can eat it in 1 hour. We also stopped at the famous cadillac ranch just a few mins before sunset, thanked our stars we made it before sun down and clicked pics. While Rahul and Apu drove through the dark, I was dozing off and on behind, not being very enthused to drive in the dark through the wild country side. With a cowboy hat perched over our heads, we finally reached Albuquerque late in the night. We were actually quite surprised to see how big the city was, with its dazzling lights while you drive down through the desolate highway.
Nov 24, 2010 - Wednesday: We stayed in a Comfort Inn at Alb. On Wednesday morning, my family friend Roshan joined us and he was our local guide in the city. We drove through Old Town, took a small hike in Rio Grande Nature State Park, drove upto the Sandia Mountains and back. We also took the Yaris for a brief check up at a mechanic since the boys were getting the feeling that the car was beginning to whine with all the load and the work we were putting it through! Once the mechanic passed the car as being fit to undertake the rest of the journey, we went to a nice restaurant and had New Mexican cuisine! From there, we headed on to Chandler, Arizona to meet Kutty and stay over at her place. Again we reached sometime in the night.. and her parents and she had cooked fabbb food for us! The same super fun routine of food, lachcha and rest followed! :)
Nov 25, 2010 - Thanksgiving Thursday: The next day Geethu (whom I was seeing after almost 5 years), her hubby and Chak came to Kutty's place and again we had a supppperrr fun Bitsian lachcha session. Had a fabbb time there and when it was tiem to leave, Kutty's mom packed lemon rice and curd rice and Vadam for us for our trip to Las Vegas. We set off from Chandler after noon, and it was just a 4 hour drive to Las Vegas, which I decided to drive on my own, to compensate for the mega sleeping sessions that I was having in the back seat of the car from TX to NM to AZ. We reached Vegas and stayed over at Ballys, by which time Apu had wisely "checked in" and called out to all bitsians in the area. We ended up having dinner with a whole bunch of bitsians hanging out at Vegas for the thanksgiving hols, many of whom we were seeing after 8 years. Again a super fun mega lachcha session it was, catching up with everybody. It felt like we'd just randomly walked into Sky on a Saturday evening and were sitting on the Amoeba!! :D Super nostalgic.
Nov 26, 2010 - Black Friday - The next morning we drove to Hoover Dam, close to Las Vegas. We were simply awed by the architectural marvel there. The views from the Callaghan-Tillman bridge were superb and we stood by the state line dividing AZ and NV and clicked tonnes of pics again! That night while I just crashed at the hotel, the boys headed out to the casinos and had their bit of fun.
Nov 27, 2010 - Saturday - Before we left Las Vegas on Saturday morning, Nari and Pooja joined us as they celebrated their first wedding anniversary. We had a short lachcha session with them and headed out on our last leg of the trip - the drive from Las Vegas to San Jose, CA. Its supposed to be 9 hour drive, but I think it took us longer than 11-12 hours bcos of the horrendous traffic. Apu and Rahul took turns to weed through the traffic and I was sitting behind with the luggage, until we finally reached home at San Jose.
All in all it was one of the best trips of our lives. Driving from one coast to the other in any country is an amazingggg experience, and in a country like US, which is specially very road trip friendly (you have restrooms and restaurants and safe gas stations all through the way), it definitely is an experience of a life time. If you are somebody that likes to travel and likes road trips, just jump into the car and do it!! Its soo totally worth it. The next time you make a job and need to move from one state to the other, go by road. Its the best way to see a lot of different places and you get the acutal feel of this country!
Before I wind up this reallyy long post, which has brought back a lot of memories for me, seriously and sincerely.. many many thanks to every single friend who hosted us, offered us amazzzzzzzzzzzinggg food and rest and made the trip sooo special. If we had stayed in hotels all of the 9 nights that we were travelling it wouldn't have been fun at all. The experience was sooo great because every night we were meeting different people.. catching up with them and putting completely different lachchas with everyone and sharing a laugh for altogether a different reason!
Totally makes life worth it when you make trips like these. Soo looking forward to the West coast - north to south road trip next week!! :)
