The grand Grand Canyon and Vegas trip

People: Vipul, Dsouza, Patil, Shanbhag, Korade, Kokate and myself.

Places: Vegas strip, Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam.

When: Nov 24th Morning - Nov 28th Morning

Experience:

- Vegas strip was beautiful. Bellagio and its water fountain show, rides on top of Stratosphere, going on top of the mini Eiffel tower, and pyramid casino were the highlights. Surprising as it may seem to others, I just spent five bucks in the slot machine. No gambling.

- Grand Canyon was maginificient. Layers of rocks spread over a vast and mammoth area in an orderly way makes the canyon look heavenly. There has been a lot of speculation as to why the canyon looks the way it looks now. Most heard of all is the course of the Colorado river. We took a helicopter ride of the canyon on Sunday. And its only then that I realized what I had missed. Viewing the whole canyon from top provoked me to explore the enormity of this seventh natural wonder of the world. I was envisaging myself in those undiscovered corners, away from the routine, unpretentious, just taking it easy. It should be worthy hiking the GC from south to north rim.

- Hoover dam is supposedly one of the greatest engineering examples America have produced. Needless to say it is not as attractive as Vegas and GC. I did not find anything extraordinary in the dam except that it was BIG.

My favorite moments in chronological order:

- Chilling at the pub in a casino (dont remember the name). We all had a good time.
- Hanging out in the country bar in Williams. I love those kind of rustic bars. And to have your best buddies with you in such an ambience feels great.
- The helicopter ride of GC. A truly awesome experience that urges you to believe in the beauty of nature.

Eagles.

This weekend was hectic again. Went to Sacramento on Saturday for the Eagles concert. I never knew they did some heavy rocking too. Really enjoyed the show. The ones I loved the most - Desperado, Love will keep us alive, and Tequila Sunrise. We also visited Old Sacramento before the concert. It reminded me of Helen,Georgia; though they are quite different in their own way. Old Sacramento has a hippie culture. There you can get a lot of Indian stuff - things you cannot find even in the desi hubs Sunnyvale and Fremont. We even barged into a shop that had some peppy indian classical music going on. We asked the owner about the singer and he gave us the whole history of Kiran Ahluwalia. Nice small city.
Sunday was for delicacies. Had a lot of chaat - from pani puri to dahi papdi chat and what not. Though our intentions of driving to Fremont was just having chaat, lage haathon we watched "Shaadi NO 1". Another third grade movie in my list of watched movies. Took a day off on Monday. Was home almost the whole day.
Looking forward to my trip to Vegas and GC with my buddies. I am sure it would be another memorable trip.

Bachelors Party

One more dinner in SFO. But this time it was at the company's expense. Had some nice food and wine in Andalus. We then decided to give Vikas a bachelors party. So we went to Cats Club and had great fun. Unlike the previous clubs I had been to in SFO, this one had a much better crowd. After that we went to some OTHER kind of club. Vikas enjoyed a lot and that was the whole point. We came back at around 3:30 and believe me. It was a pain going to office today. Did not do much work. Even slept at the office couch for hours. I dont think I will ever go to the city on Thursday again.

Gary Kasparov

It aint a wax figure from Madame Tussauds. Gary Kasparov, the Chess GURU himself, visited our company today. It was a surprise for our team and many others. The whole team went upstairs to catch a glimpse. He looks a lot different in real life. Kal managed to speak to him and bring him downstairs for a brief photo session. Very unfortunate for those who missed it. He is a very down-to-earth guy without a pinch of attitude. A game of chess with him would have made the encounter even better.

Vertical Limit

Went to Mount Tamalpais on Saturday. We drove upto the peak and then started our trek from there. We just chose our own path since the Visitors Center was closed. So we started to go down and down and down. Even after an hour we just kept going downhill. It was already 3 pm and we started regretting our decision to choose a random and long trail. Around 3:30 pm we reached the fire roads. I had a picture of the map in my digicam and since the downhill was so steep we were curious as to how many feet we were from the peak. We found out that we dipped down by 1100 ft. We were scared since we had to make it to the top within 2 hours or it would be dark. No torch, no sleeping bags, the breeze cold enuf. We all knew that we were gonna have a tough climb. We kept on going on the fire roads when we discovered that the other trail we passed a few minutes back is a quick route to the top. So we went back some distance and started that 'Wheeler trail'. This trail was short but very steep. We managed a good 400 ft in this roundabout half mile trail. Toughest of all trails I have done so far. Took four breaks to get past it. We were back on the fire roads again and kept walking for another hour or so to reach the peak. We were tired but satisfied.
As usual had dinner in SFO and then went to Venkats house. Watched a Mexican movie. Gonna watch this years Ashes highlights that I got from him. Later.

Day off

Today our team has a day off. Our manager thinks we have worked too hard to earn it. True for my case :p. Had great fun yesterday. Dinner in Great India, SFO. Me, Venkat and Anand just kept on laughing from the moment we left in Anand's car for SFO. Pulling each other's legs, and even worse were the PJ's. I realized that I never had this kind of fun for long. You don't get the same type of friends everywhere, do you? But finally some of this type. I think Kuldeep just lost it at the end seeing us laughing like hyenas. He tried to pay off the check to save more embarrassment. HAHAHAHA. Weekends plans. Friday nite its going to be badminton, Saturday - Mount Tamalpais and Sunday - Cricket.

Sharpen your axe.

This is a story I read somewhere.

'John,a woodcuttter,worked for a company for 5 years but never got a raise.The company hired Bill and within a year he got a raise.This caused resentment in John and he went to his boss to talk about it.The boss said,"You are still cutting the same number of trees you were cutting 5 years ago.We are a result-oriented company and we would be happy to give you a raise if your productivity goes up."John went back,started hitting harder and putting in longer hours but he still wasn't able to cut more trees.He went back to his boss and told him his dilemma.The boss told John to talk to Bill."Maybe there is something Bill knows that you and I don't."John asked Bill how he managed to cut more trees.Bill answered,"After every tree I cut,I take a break for 2 minutes and sharpen my axe.When was the last time you sharpened your axe?"This question hit home like a bullet and John got his answer.'

When did you sharpen you axe?

Tired...

This weekend was tiring. Saturday we went to Point Reyes, around 20 miles north of SFO. Our motive was to have a pleasant trek amidst the shade of the forest trees and a scenic ocean view. It was supposed to be a 8 mile round trip trail. The first half was cool and nice as we expected. We reached a nook and chilled there for around an hour enjoying the sun and ocean. I dont know what hit me but I suddenly came up with an idea that we should not take the same trail going back. So we took a while to figure out a new trail that would be plausible. We took off after some discussions. After about 20 mins in this new trail we hit a point where everything was uphill. 5..10...20..40.for almost 45 mins it was just UPHILL. and then when we reached another intersection, we found out that we were either 6-7 more miles to touch the trail we started from, or we had a short cut through some real thick forests to touch that trail. We were so exhausted, that we just went for the shorter one even though it was very dense. It was about a mile and a half and this time we were hoping that the starting point should be just a mile from the intersection that we would reach. But to our surprise it was 3.5 more miles to go. We were so exhausted and it was almost dark. We couldnt even increase our pace. We just strolled and managed to get past the trail. Was a relief.
After that we then had dinner in SFO. Prawns masala dosa. How does that sound? I thought it would be as tasty as the ones in Dosa Diner in Bombay, but it wasnt even close. We then went to Kuldeep's place. Watched two pre-recorded stand up comedys. George Carlin and some British Iranian guy. Today was even more tiring. Cricket in the morning and then drove to Fremont to watch 'Garam Masala'. Even watched the India vs SL match till late night. So am thinking of having one of those passive weekends again next week.