Premshree's (品速力) Personal Weblog

Krunal and I ended up doing a Vegas/SoCal road trip the week leading up to New Year's. Nothing was planned -- the only thing we knew we were doing once he got here from Boston was Vegas. After a couple of days in the city, we started looking for rental cars. Everyone was sold out, and when available, regulation cars were at like 90-100 a day. I called good 'ol Mountain View Avis; they had a car. We head there next day (fuck, it's nuts to commute down south without a car) and Mr. Anil says, "I'll give you a Mustang. Convertible. 29." Gotta love the guy.

So we started off for Vegas. Things were good. I drove more of the California part because in Nevada it had to be Krunal all the way. After having dinner (at some Denny's) we continued down I-15S. Krunal suddenly realizes we're running out of gas! The friggin' indicator was fux0red! Anyway, we couldn't do much so we kept driving for a bit (that bit ended up being more than 15 miles) in hopes of finding a gas station. No luck, so we moved to the right-most lane. The car stops. Wouldn't start. Fuck. Quickly put the parking lights on, and later pushed the car more to the right (the darn thing kept shaking when a truck would go by). Anyway, so we're fucked. Called NHP, but they said they needed a mile marker and it was waaay cold (less than -5° C) for any of us to go figure. Called Avis. Their Vegas location was closed and the woman who answered wouldn't help us any other way. Called again, and now they'd just hang up. (They'd say "hello" exactly twice and then just hang up.) Bastards. We called another Avis location (I think) and explained our situation. She was extremely helpful. She managed to connect us to a towing service, who was supposed to bring us gas. The guy later called us to find out where we exactly were. We managed to give him directions using the GPS (15 miles away from exit 31 or some shit on I-15S; at this point we were about 20 miles from the strip). Anyway, after maybe a couple of hours he came, without fuel -- the gas station that he thought he'd get fuel from was closed. Oh well, so he said he could tow us to the closest gas station which happens to be in the strip. 20 minutes later all we see are lights. We fill up the tank and look for a motel.

Anyway, so that was that. We spent a couple of days in Vegas.

We weren't sure what we wanted to do next, so since Hoover Dam wasn't too far, we headed there.

Traffic was crazy and later I wondered why people even bother coming here. Anyway, next we thought we should head to check out Grand Canyon. Checked maps/GPS and we were on our way. Half way there, we filled up gas in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. It was way late at this time and we were told there's no point going at this time. So then we decided we should head to Santa Monica.

We got to Santa Monica late in the night. Couldn't find a cheap place, so ended up going to Inglewood, close to LAX. Breakfast next day was at the Taco Bell next door -- and I was shocked to see what I saw. The guy told us it's standard-issue LA. We then headed to Venice and later Long Beach. At this point we decided we needed music to be played from the iPhone, so we ended up at some Apple store in Manhattan village to buy the iTrip -- where we learned that the darned thing works only with iPods. Okay. We then headed to Griffith Park in the Hollywood hills to get a view of the LA skyline (not a clear night, sadly.) Later we headed for dinner at some restaurant in Huntington Beach where we were to meet Cathy and Peggy.

We had decided to head out of the area that night, but both of us were extremely tired. So we drove 6 miles to some motel in Beach Blvd. in Anaheim. Later that night Cathy called up saying they wanted to check out SeaWorld in San Diego the next day. That was a good thing, because plans to meet in Vegas had gotten fucked-up. So anyway, they called in the morning saying they were on their way. We left an hour later. So we were in San Diego.

Nice time was had. Later in the night we headed downtown for some coffee for our drive back to San Francisco.

More pictures here.

(I'm glad I ended up writing this. It's been a while since I've written about any of my trips. And that sucks.)

I got lost yesterday while trying to get to my hotel in Santa Clara from the Golden Gate area. I ended up using a cab, Muni bus, Caltrain, a bus again, light rail, then did some walking and ended up somewhere in San Jose. Manged to reach the hotel, eventually.

Next time — I’m driving. Definitely. Traveling in Portland was so easy, but then again distances aren’t huge.

Oh, and stop bothering me with those silly questions. Yes, I have a D70s now. :-) One of the best pictures I’ve taken so far is probably that of Bhavana’s. It was nice meeting you!

I had never met with a motor accident... until yesterday.

Three of us—Praz, Senthil and myself—drove to Yosemite yesterday. It looks like more fun during winter. We enjoyed, however. On our way back, we stopped to have our burgers (which we had bought earlier from Yosemite village). We relaxed for a while before we drove again.

It was some time after we left, and I had fallen asleep. All of a sudden there’s a bang, and I’m woken up: Praz was driving a little fast; when he steered right, he kinda lost control or something, and the car hit the rocks on the right side (I was sitting on the right side, behind). The rear bumper and the right-hand hind lights came off. We were all safe. The right-hand rear wheel axle was screwed. So, well, there was no way we could drive anywhere.

So here we were stuck in a hill, without lights (it was around 20:00), and no mobile signal. We parked the car in a shoulder, and switched on the hazard lights. We walked to the other side of the road, hoping we could get some signal on our cellphones. The signal was feeble—we got cut off every time we tried calling Avis, our car rental company. After walking around to find the best spot, we finally got through, and said what had happened. We were told that a towing truck and another car would be sent.

To kill time, we did many things: sleep, talk random stuff, eat doughnuts, etc. We were expecting the towing truck to arrive at around 00:00. We had a voice mail from the car rental folks. When I called them, we were told that the towing truck had left but the driver couldn’t find any sign of a vehicle. So basically out estimation (that we were 30 miles off this place called Oakdale) was wrong. The towing truck arrived at around 01:30 or so. Turns out we were some 50 miles off Oakdale.

So we got a new car—a Dodge Grand Caravan—and drove back to Sunnyvale. We were back at 09:30 or so.

Nice car it was, the Nissan Altima.

We drove to LA from Sunnyvale with nothing specific to do there in mind. We started Saturday 5:00 and reached LA around 11:00 (as we had expected). When we reached Los Angeles, we spent some time in Santa Monica, and then decided to head to Universal Studios.

These pictures don't do justice to how much fun the place really is — you have to experience it.

We had dinner and headed back to Sunnyvale. We were back Sunday 5:30.

Funny thing is I’ve seen LA, but haven't seen Frisco yet (drove there once and returned, since we couldn’t find parking anywhere). Well, IAC, it was good to see a place with people and life.

Warning on a pack of Marlboro Lights:

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Smoking By Pregnant Women May Result in Fetal Injury, Premature Birth, And Low Birth Rate.

Warning on a pack of Camel Lights:

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide.

There’s no direct warning that smoking is bad. Is this just a California thing?

The cigarette packs in Thailand are very interesting. When I had bought a pack from Bangkok, I so wanted to get rid of the pack that I ended up smoking more than I normally would.