Compromiser, rebel or lost ?

There are so many weblogs out there that I feel what's the point of writing as hardly anyone will see what I am writing or thinking about. Then I thought, I get these ideas or sudden things on my mind which I would like to ponder over later on. So, why not just use the blog as a scribble page. May be when I will visit myself after a few months it might give me some better ideas or just nostalgic feelings.

That's why I am digressing from my usual travelogue type writings to just scribbles. I dont have to plan much and it can be completed in a much shorter timeline. So, here it is for today:

To start with a little bit about the background why I came up with this thought. I read about the genographic project and found that they can do a DNA analysis based on your cheek swab to tell you about your ancestral history and as the out of africa theory suggests you can figure out how your ancestors had travelled the globe to reach where you are now. Very interesting. Read more about it here:
www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic

At the same time I am apalled by the effect of global warming, concerned about the conflicts/war among religions, groups and communities across the world.

I came to the conclusion that there are three kinds of people in this world. People who compromise, people who rebel and the people who become lost. I also theorized that the percentage of them are as follows:

Compromiser: 90%
Rebel:5%
Lost: 5%

Everyone will have one of these as their primary traits and the rest could be present but will have recessive effect on their social/personal life.

This is totally heuristics, but again that's why I am scribbling here for, may be I will be able to revise it later.

Yellowstone Trip - Part II

west yellowstone is a small town but have some very good gift stores selling authentic items at reasonable prices. more than 90% of the yellowstone national park is within wyoming, however the states of idaho & montana also share the rest. all the gift stores had something special from each of these states. i had “idaho trout” in the office cafeteria just a few weeks before my trip and felt the call of yellowstone and trout. however, i was not lucky to have trout in idaho. montana is famous for it’s fly-fishing and there were stores selling gears for that through out the town of west yellowstone.
rivers and streams in montana are strangely not very deep and you go into the knee deep or waist deep water to catch the river fishes. read more about it here
http://www.flyfishinghistory.com/

90% of the tourists travel through an eight-shaped road within the park and stop at different spots to take photos and enjoy the beauty of yellowstone. i regularly watch the travel channel and am quite inspired by their motto “be a traveler, not a tourist”. the only thing out of the ordinary that i did in this trip was to drive to beartooth highway. i will talk about that in the coming parts.

day 2
among the must see attractions of yellowstone, “old faithful” geyser ranks number one. currently, it erupts at a 90-minute interval. the predictability of this geyser has given its well-deserved name. people flock that area and check out the next eruption time at a nearby visitor center and gets ready with their camera and camcorder around the big sitting deck created around this geyser.
i read that new zealand and finland is also famous for it’s geysers but yellowstone can boast of the number of geysers it has in such a small area. the first thing of second day was to see Old faithful erupt (eruption lasted for about a minute) and have brunch at old faithful inn. one option of staying within the park is to stay at this lodge.

after lunch, i started driving north and stopped by at the midway-geyser basin & black sand basin areas. one of the most colorful hot springs “grand prismatic spring” is in this area. it is amazing to see a bluish-green & orange smoke coming out of it from a distance. i saw an aerial view of this hot spring in the Internet before my visit. it was simply awesome. i was disappointed by the fact that the park authorities did not create any elevated platform to see this spring and enjoy its aerial view. see this picture :
http://www.skyimagelab.com/granprisspri.html
but still the colors from a close distance was breath-taking and i spent some time in doing some photographic experiment to capture the best angles and colors of this spring. it is unbelievable that the colors of this spring and all others in yellowstone are attributed to “thermophile” bacteria living in them. it is said that if life at all exists in other planets it exists in the form of “extremophile” bacteria. read about them here:
http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/extreme/extremophiles.html

there are so many geysers and hot springs present in this area that if you poke a hole in the ground you can create a geyser which you can name after yourself. i continued driving north towards Norris geyser basin and then towards canyon village. my next destination is grand canyon of the yellowstone. did i tell you why the yellowstone is so named? it is because of the yellow colors of the stones in the grand canyon area. the lower falls of the yellostone river is more than 300 feet high and you can reach up to the brink of this falls through a small hike. it is a nice feeling to be able to see the water falling 300 feet down into the canyon and i was wondering about the people who first saw this beautiful image. they did not capture it in camera but saved it for future generations unlike us !

you can continue driving towards the upper falls or there is a strenuous hike from the lower falls to the upper falls. i preferred the first option. it was kind of pleasant even though it was middle of summer and crowd was just beginning to pour into the park. it was late afternoon by the time i finished seeing the falls and the canyon area. i started driving back towards my hotel but this time southwards making the loop of lower ‘circle” of eight in reverse direction. i had dinner in grant village and by the time i reached the madison junction it started raining with hailstorm and lightning. living in california, i miss the summer rain with lightning, which i was used to in india. after a long time i saw so much lightning. it was continuous and i wish i could capture those “fractal” lines in my camera. the “inventor” of fractal geometry benoit mandelbrot once said that “clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones and lightning does not travel in a straight line”. i guess a car is the safest place to be in a lightning storm and that was the only comfort by which i continued driving towards my hotel. strangely enough by the time i reached the park entrance the lightning almost vanished magically. for the last half an hour it was a feeling of desperateness to reach safely back to the hotel even though i was enjoying the “dangerously beautiful” images created by nature.

after a tiring day, it was nice to be back to the comfort ness of my cabin and started dreaming about the places i saw and did not realize when i felt asleep( without dreaming).
to be continued ...

A Long Weekend in Yellowstone Area

The first thing that comes to my mind as I am trying to write about my first Yellowstone trip is the geyser. People flock to see the old faithful billow smoke and water at regular intervals ignoring other geysers, which erupt without predictable pattern. The effect of the geysers were so deep in my mind that today while coming to office I saw a sprinkler from a distance and momentarily thought that it was a geyser!
It is quite amazing to think that the major portion of the park is a caldera. The geysers and the other geological wonders are nothing but the residuals of the major volcanic eruption that occurred millions of years ago. It is a quite astonishing view to see waters bubbling almost everywhere throughout the area of midway geyser basin to the mammoth hot springs.
Visit the official website of the park at : http://www.nps.gov/yell/
A little bit about my trip logistics if helps someone making a trip to Yellowstone from California.

Day 1:
I took a morning flight from San Jose to Salt Lake City on Saturday, July 1st, 2006. I reached Salt Lake City around 1PM and rented a car from the airport. I took I-15 N to drive via Pocatello and Idaho Falls to reach west Yellowstone in Montana. I found that Idaho was mostly barren land and ranches around. The lunch break at Perkins restaurant was nice with their delicious Santa Fe mini chimis. It was about 5 hours driving since the speed limit was 75mph at many places.
I stayed in Yellowstone Inn, which is a family owned cabin. The room was very clean and everything was made of varnished wood. There was a microwave and fridge in the room as well. It was just blocks away from the west entrance of Yellowstone.
By the time I freshened up and all it was close to 8PM. However, it being summer, there was light till 9:30PM around that area.
I drove inside the park and stopped at the fountain geyser area. The mudpots, bacteria mats and geysers at the backdrop of sunset were amazing.

I will write more about my trip soon, I gotta go now. In the mean time check out the park map as i will be using some of the area names from here:

My Solitary Amtrak Experience

I always wanted to ride a train in USA as I was exposed to train travel in India (India has the largest railway network under single management). Here are some of the most luxurious ones: http://www.luxury-train-travel-tours-india.com/. I love train rides.
I did some research and found that Zephyr would be a good option to try out Amtrak (http://www.amtrak.com/) between San Francisco and Reno. I visited the Amtrak website to buy tickets and the fun starts here. Since I live in San Jose I put the option of train from San Jose to Reno (http://www.renonv.com/) (roundtrip). Since, I overlooked the option of Zephyr and I did not think that Amtrak will have bus as well as train services between Reno and bay area, I mistakenly chose some complicated combination of bus and train going to Reno from San Jose with hops in Oakland and Sacramento. On the day of travel, when we (me and my girlfriend whom I convinced earlier that it would be a fun travel) were waiting in san Jose Diridon station (we reached early morning around 8 am), we were happy to see an Amtrak train coming to the station, only to discover it will not leave until 3 PM. Some of the crews of the train were totally lost when asked about the train and what time it is going to leave and where.

Coming back inside the station and discovering that my tickets only allow me to travel in train between Oakland and Sacramento, I was ready to have a heart attack.
The buses waiting outside did not have any driver and none of the people at the station had any idea what was going on. After a while, a station clerk announced that Capitol Corridor trains are running 3 hours late and I was explained that the California Zephyr starts from Emeryville (40 miles from San Jose) only!!!
At that point, I was surprised at the mess I made of the trip planning since most of it would be in Amtrak bus and not train! So much for a train ride! Luckily the bus to Oakland was late and station clerk refunded 100% of the whole trip cost ($154 total for two persons roundtrip).

We came back up home fast, and I was constantly thinking what to do next. We started looking frantically for other options and finally decided to rent a car from San Jose airport to Reno airport. We also booked a one-way ticket from Reno to Emeryville on Zephyr.
Drive to Reno was mostly un-eventful. We stayed in Atlantis Resort & casino. I tried my luck & skills in Blackjack (http://www.blackjackinfo.com/) and gained some capital. I was playing in the slot machines and tried hard to find the pattern of events. Being a student of statistics, I formulated a naïve thumb rule of gambling: You cannot increase the probability of winning but you increase the expected value of win if you bet properly. What it means is that you have to bet high on a card for which you think you are going to win and bet low on cards you think you will lose. There will be more times you lost but you can bet high on the ones for which you are going to win then effectively you make money. Does it make sense? May be not. But, it makes sense to me and that’s what matters. Continuing on the trip description…

The road to Black Rock Desert

Next day we drove to Pyramid Lake. I saw this lake on the Nevada map and found some interesting information. Pyramid Lake is the remnants of the pre-historic Lake Lahontan. The area around this is so remote that you get scared that if something happens to your car then you will be stranded for days. I touched the water of the lake to fill the pre-historic ness of the area :). It was a soothing experience to hear the ripples of water hitting the shore. There were some people who were fishing in the lake too. During summer time people do boat ride, fishing and other fun stuff in the lake. It is named so because of a pyramid like rock present within the lake.
Pyramid Lake is the site of some of the Earth's most spectacular tufa deposits. The Tufas are composed of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). The large tufa mounds, reef- and sheet-like tufas formed within Pyramid Lake, between 26,000 and 13,000 years ago, when the lake was part of pluvial Lake Lahontan.

Continuing further north is an area called Black Rock Desert. I did not know about Burning Man Festival until I found their website (http://www.burningman.com//). I was pretty impressed by the concept & ideals of this group and hope to visit some day.

In the evening, we went to downtown Reno to see some of the hotels and walk in and around downtown and also to check out the Reno Amtrak station so that we know from where do we catch the train to bay area. We followed some direction marks on the street only to be surprised to see a they always lead to a construction area. Where the hell is the station then, because we could see the rail tracks. After little more “treasure hunt” we came to know that the Reno station is under construction and there is only a temporary wooden structure as the stationmaster’s office and there is a bus, which takes people from that point to the next station at Sparks where the train stops. Since we bought the tickets online we went inside the office to get the hard copy tickets when a passer by Amtrak employee remarked, “Amtrak always runs late”, and he had a smile to his face as if he is proud of that.

Now, my girlfriend got little sick in the trip. She hates smoking and the casino smell caused some issues with her health. So, I thought let me find out any earlier train to the bay area. The Amtrak customer service person told me that we could catch the Christmas day train, which is coming from Chicago(California Zephyr runs between Emeryville & Chicago) but is 3 hours late to reach Reno. I decided on that train and got a very good discount on the tickets.

Based on expected arrival of the train, we reached the temporary office location to exchange my tickets with the latest change that I made. I was also interested in checking out whether there is any room available in the train. The stationmaster checked it and said yes there was one available with complimentary lunch. I was excited and bought tickets paying the difference amount and waited for the bus to pick us up to the next station.

After some time, the bus came and I realized that there are a lot of people waiting outside to go to the bay area in that train. I was vaguely looking at the ticket design and shocked to see that the ticket dates are for the next day travel. What the hell!

I ran inside the stationmaster’s office and showed him the tickets. Now, I have never ever seen anyone in my entire life get so pissed off about himself as this stationmaster. He was cursing himself like anything and could not believe he made such a mistake. He was saying that the system showed the next available option for the room when he reserved it(It suddenly came to my mind that similar events happened to me when I was booking online and it gave me bus/train combination because I chose San Jose as my origin and not San Francisco). Now, I was getting panicked to see this guy behave like this and was also wondering about the back up plan to get back home safely! We had already returned the rental car in Reno airport earlier in the day.

After apologizing he said he could not do anything but give me the normal tickets and I could check with the ticket checker in the train to see if any rooms are available. Realizing that there is no point in arguing on this matter I came outside to tell this to my girlfriend who smiled at me which made me feel that I am the culprit of all the mess that’s happening.

Then the bus took us to the next station, which is normally a station for loading/un-loading only. The train came and we boarded it one-by-one and the train clerks were asking about Christmas gift while boarding, which I guess I was looking for too.

I shoved our luggages downstairs and went upstairs to our seats. It looked nice inside and quite high from the ground. Train started, ticket checker came, we explained the situation and he said there could be rooms available. Now, the ticket checker is the same guy(he helped us later providing some train/bus schedules from Emeryville station) who smiled the previous day made the comments. He came back saying that there are rooms available and we bought the tickets again paying the difference for the room; I was hoping this was my gift from Santa.

The room was very small but I did not expect anything larger either. It was cozy with nice little arrangements for hanging coats,dimming lights etc. There was camp bed arrangement and sits can be unfolded into a bed. We sat down with a sense of relief and it made me nostalgic of the all the train trips I had made. After settling down, we went to the food cabin and were very impressed by the arrangements. Food items included sandwiches, pizzas etc and cheesecake for dessert.

The menu card had a quote by Harry Truman "You get a real feeling of this country and the people in it when you are on a train." Each table had a fresh rose in a stand and had a big window to see the outside beauty. I must admit that the pizza was very delicious. After a while an old couple joined us (Amtrak believes in the concept of community sitting which means people could be accommodated with other strangers in the train if there is a dining table available). This couple has been in Amtrak many times before and likes it. Just then, I realized one important thing about availing Amtrak: If you have enough time in your hand and you are not using Amtrak as part of your trip to go from A to B and you have to be there by so and so then you are good. Amtrak experience is the journey and not to reach the destination in time, which I believe is a philosophy regardless of how much we can hate it.

It started snowing high up in the Sierra through which Zephyr travels. It was a really beautiful journey through the Sierras. As with all good things this was also very short-lived. But, enough time to take some pictures, make some videos and feel good about it.

There was a very nice transparent viewing coach accessible to everybody in the middle of the train. There are coffee & snacks also available at the same area.

We reached Emeryville station around 8PM, 2 hours late. We took one ACE transit bus to reach MacArthur BART station. At the beginning of our trip I had dropped my car in Fremont BART station so that we could go from there without catching a cab or calling friends to pick us up.We came home, exhausted (yeah definitely, but not too much) but was wondering how many times we had changed tickets and what a headache it has been. Now, no wonder people who have traveled in Amtrak have always something to say and most of the time it is a not very positive feedback. See this Amtrak mooning link http://www.moonamtrak.org/ to believe it if you have not made any Amtrak travels yet. Amtrak runs on huge subsidies from US government and there is already a lot going on about improving its services and making it more competitive. See this official report: http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-06-145

To me, train travel is a unique experience and US should invest more in improving the quality of trains. But, I guess there are lobbies in Washington influenced by the airlines, automobile & car rental agencies who do not want this to happen for the their business sake. The tracks that Amtrak travels on are shared with the goods train companies (Union Pacific for example) who own them. So, Amtrak and hence the people have less priorities over the goods to travel across US. However, given the less polluting nature of train travel and the number of people who can travel at one time this is a very nice mode of transportation.

But, looking back, the lunch in the train (revolving restaurants are nothing compared to this experience except food!), the view of the snow capped mountains in the Sierras, the little room we rested in and overall winning some bucks in the casino and the serenity of the Pyramid lake area made me feel it a was trip worth doing and will remain in my memory for a long time and that’s why I am writing this travelogue after more three months of completion of my trip.

Now, will I travel again in Amtrak? So, this is what I have in mind. If someday I get laid off from my job or get sick of working, I will take a looooong vacation and travel in Pacific Surf liner from Seattle to San Diego. I will reserve a bigger room with showers etc. and will carry lot of books with me.

Now, will I ask you to travel? Heck yeah. Every experience is worthwhile in life. Try California Zephyr from Emeryville to Reno one-way ride between December to February. Enjoy….

nightmarish

According to an article in National Geographic magazne 99% of human population share the same gene, still we are struggling to maintain a peaceful co-existence between cultures, religion etc.etc. in our planet.
What does our instinct tell us? What are we trying to achieve? Do you think it would have been better if we could remember only a day's events and everyday is a new day, with new meanings, new existence... there is no way of starting from zero...
Or is it just a fantasy of weaklings ? Can we not just appreciate the beauty and creation of this universe and forget the mundane differences between people...when will we win over our greed?