This blog is to maintain an account of my travel experiences, whether it is business or pleasure.. there are things I wish to remember.. when I'm old and am not sure whether I will travel as much!

Tuesday, May 31, 2005

Night Riders

Continued from 1000 Days and still tripping

The Ajanta wall clock in my apartment struck 7:00, then 8:00 and then 8:15?? No, this time it was my cell phone! It was Rathish, who reminded me that it was time to go pick up the rental car! Then I rushed through my Friday evening chores before hitting Central Expressway en route to Rathish's. We got to the airport fairly quickly and were absolutely delighted with an empty Dollar Rental counter. We gave the huge line of people on the Enterprise queue a meaningfully wicked smile.

The happiness as it turned out, was fairly shortlived! We asked for a car that had a cassette adapter and the lady at the counter was so advanced that she asked us to get out of cassettes and switch to "i-pad", perhaps Apple's next generation upgrade for its white singer! Bummer! That set back our music plans for the trip since we were out of CDs into Mp3s, which the Dollar rental folks must have forgotten about! If that was not enough, as soon as we hit the rental car exit lanes, we were greeted by several cars, all trying to get out through the exit doors. The feeling must have been the same as what the 3rd class passengers in the Titanic must have felt, when their door was opened.

It took us more than an hour to wade through the gridlock before we could hit 101. Rathish told me over the fone, that there was an FM transmitter which could transmit the MP3 player output onto an FM station for a limited range and that could perhaps get us back on track. I was pretty enthused by the technology that I took a detour onto Fry's at Lawrence and walked in through the exit doors under the pretext of "looking for my wife" (the shop was closed!). I was lucky to stumble across the aisle which housed this neat little product! I bought it in a hurry and walked out through the same exit door, without having to give much of an explanation (the security guy was probably looking for his wife this time round!)

The clock struck 1:00, waking me up from my mild nap and we got ready. Rathish and Vidya were on time and we set off in the depth of the night with a half moon to keep us company through our drive. It was a pretty quiet drive, with not much of music to keep us company, since we couldn't quite figure out an empty FM station! So much for that Fry's adventure! But we resolved not to give in very easily! Rathish and I split the drive in half and switched during the only fuel stop near Bakersfield. We dropped Vidya off at SDSU before heading to the Eastview pt residence of the Tirumalai's. Just as we were pulling into their driveway, Sowmiya called to enquire where we were, and Rathish decided to give her a surprise and announced that we had just crossed LA. Sowmiya was a touch disappointed and was preparing for another small nap, before she heard the doorbell!

We were greeted warmly by Anu aunty, Sowmiya and Sai. Since we had spaced the drive well, none of us were really sleepy upon arrival. So, we hang out, chalked out what we wanted to do, watched SunTV, had breakfast and got ready to roll out!

Continued in Part 3: A Monumental Experience

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