California - Episode Four

Mundane work after vacation is impossible to navigate through, especially when they've accumulated over a couple of weeks. I'm trying to find a BIOS from a stupid AMD Athalon that someone managed to mangle, but the task is more difficult than it seems up-front. I've put that on back burner for a while, and will revel in memories of the trip for a while.

So when I last left off, we were in Las Vegas, Nevada. Walking down the tempting streets of the Sin City, where everything seems to be fair-game. The only catch is that one needs to have enough money.

The energetic, lustrous city shimmering with excitement on the night is still trying to shake off last night's burn out, in the morning. The gentle rays of sun wash down on the streets as if to cleanse it, only to become covered with the same-old, same-old when the night falls on. I wake up really early. My back kind of aches from sleeping on the floor. I try to get every one out of bed, but their eyes are still drowsy with sleep. So I freshen up and think of banging down Golay and Ahmed's room. They're still in bed, and Golay complains - "Hey, I should call you Mom! you're the only one after mom trying to babysit us!". Hah! I think to myself, we will not get out of this town in time if I don't rush you guys. So I let them get up in their own time and go down to the lobby to try to get some fresh coffee.

I expected the lobby to be deserted, but it;s busy as a beehive full of angry bees. People coming into the hotel, people checking out, people ready to go to breakfast, lunch, people ready for some more sight-seeing and gambling. And there are a couple of more stragglers on the bar. - "Was it a long night or an early morning?" I muse to myself, loudly. It's easier to get a bottle of beer early in the morning than a cup of coffee, in Las Vegas. So I just smoke a cigarette and head back upstairs to nag everyone to get ready so that we can grab some breakfast.

Checking out is pretty easy, you just drop in a form in conveniently placed letter-boxes and you're done. They even sent me the bill at the address that I requested. Isn't efficiency a charm? We go to the in-house restaurant. The food is good and reasonably priced. I look at the menu - Menus are examination questions, the waitress is the examiner and the questions she fires - uh.... is what I say going to be the right answer? So I opt for something simple, I kind-of know that we're going to miss lunch, so I order the big breakfast. I eat eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes on top of that Preety's pancakes and Golay's Belgian waffles, and some.

So we set out. We decide to go see the Hoover Dam, well we're in the area already and it'd be a shame to miss it. But we drop off Sudhirji and Missus first. They've already seen the place earlier. I tease Pragya about having lunch in her relatives place, and she takes me too seriously. At times, I get taken too seriously, even when I joke. But, sigh! Gols if you read this I get the point when you say why you hate inviting strangers to dinner or going to a strangers place for dinner. So lesson well learnt, the hard way, but learnt nevertheless.

Golay has Basanti in his arms, the classic RK banner style :D and she gently guides us to our destination, after missing a couple of exits and doing U-turns on highways we eventually get in the right direction. The road to Hoover Dam is jam packed. It takes us over an hour to travel about 20 miles.

I remember Van Damm climbing the walls of the dam in some movie (I think he had to be cooled in ice after any activity, but I forget the name of the movie. Van Dam climbing the waals of a Dam, sounds like a cheesy poem. I apparently had forgotten the James Bond movie, but no matter.

We find a parking spot. Maneuvering the Durango is tricky, especially in tight spots. But we somehow manage. Hoover Dam is impressive. The dam was built in the thirties. We still had Rana Shasan and as a nation did not know what electricity was, the Indians were still under the yoke of British Empire and they were building Dams here that would stand the test of time. Man, every time I see something like that, I just get reminded how far we still have to go. The whole city of Las Vegas came into existence because of the Dam, and the Dam got built for the city. I suppose it's a form of a symbiotic relation.

The four towers that you can see in the picture are the intake towers. Water enters here and is fet into two penstocks and there are arrays of turbines and generators on the other side of the dam that produce electricity. I do not know the details of the wattage and power output or even the number of turbines or whatever, you can look that up here, if interested.

The other side is a sheer cliff face. Featureless, and one gets a sense of vertigo. "Only last week a guy jumped over after murdering his girl friend", we overhear. So this seems to be a popular suicide spot too, not much unlike Rani Pokhari.

Notice how small the cars parked on the side of the powerhouse look. Gives a sense of depth. The guy who jumped probably died even before hitting the concrete below. Sordid business, death! Messy too.

We take some photographs, find a bathroom and empty our bladders and it's already 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon. We've to get to Monterrey tonight, so we decide to head back, pick up Sudhirji and Missus and head out of town. But then again, the same traffic jam. We get back to town, have dinner at the place where we were supposed to pick up Sudhirji and head out of town. We say our last goodbye to Las Vegas. The light die away into the night. Only the headlights of passing cars shine by. Basanti lying in Golays arms guides us. But we still manage to travel 20 miles the wrong way!!! Aakhir manchhey bhaneko glorified bandar nai ho, kahiley nasikne!

The drive to Monterrey is longer than we anticipate. Ahmed takes over the wheels somewhere in between. It starts to rain and we're in a single lane highway (single on-going single on-coming). Trucks splash over water and Ahmed has to hit the wipers in high speed, and it makes an irritating little sound "whoosh, whoosh" as the water is wiped away and the rubber wipes over dry glass.

Everyone is sleepy. I take over the wheel after sometime. I feel Basanti is sleepy too. She seems to be confused. Shows us two directions, looses satellite connection frequently and has to acquire the satellite again and recalculate. Sleep makes people cranky, this is the first time we see a cranky GPS unit. We come to a 4 way and no matter which route we take Basanti says "off route - recalculating". We stop in a closed shopping complex. Golay gets off the car and lifts Basanti to the heavens, as if a few feet of elevation would make it easier for her to communicate to her satellite from where she gets her directions. Everyone else is asleep, Preety, me and Golay are the only ones navigating. We have already gotten two impatient calls from Lurey, who's been waiting us to come. It's 2 o'clock in the morning. Finally, we find a road that Lurey recognizes, and apparently we are in the right direction. So we drive for a while and reach Monterrey, at about three in the morning.