Down the Memory "rail"

I will be in Dallas for a while now. We spent the whole of this week planning where to spend the weekend, without reaching any conclusion :P . Finally saturday of the 3-day-holiday dawned, and we fixed the historic M-line trolley trip as our 1st Dallas venture.

Saturday is a busy day for us, skyping with parents and all; followed by hatching up the plan, getting train timetable and map prints etc..and we started late by 1 pm. Me and my roomy walked down to the LBJ railway station near us. Another friend would be getting into the same train at the next station, and we co-ordinated well, but no DDLJ/ JWM scenes for us..our friend ran past our coach, did not hear us and got into another coach.

At our destination station, we climbed up this huge flight of stairs...   Mr. ignorant Google maps told us that we need to walk 13 mins to reach M-line, but it took us <13 sec to find the waiting tram. And thus started the day..

The driver was a very funny man..he dropped titbits about history of dallas here and there. He asked us where we are from, when we said India, he folded his hands, and "AirIndia maharaja style namaste", and said, next stop Mumbai! a few minutes later, next stop Cochin! (My roomy wondered if he wanted us to get off the train). We walked back the whole length of the M-line and then some cowboy-hat shopping, lunch, co-ordinated meeting with another friend who joined us after some football match which he simply couldnt miss, and another trip down the M-line. This time the driver chatted with us, and said he knew about Cochin and Mumbai because of the synagogues.

Now that our recent joinee had an I-phone, we decided to venture to Kennedy Museum. Kennedy was shot from the 6th floor of this building. One remarkable thing strikes me..Americans are very plucky. A president knows that people are dissatisfied with his new policies, yet rides in an open-hooded car. People hear gunshots, and run up the grassy knoll to nab the killer, surely they must have known that someone capable of killing a president wont flinch killing civilians? To top it all, the killer is arrested in 90 minutes! Remarkable police action indeed, and laudable self-discipline of crowd that enabled police look for the killer than waste time managing hysterical people.

A note on the train journey: I have annual train/ bus pass, but my roomy had to get the ticket. She got 2 tickets, which we thought was one for her so-thought unsuccessful card swipe attempt and one for cash payment. She gave off her 2nd ticket to a random girl. Just prior to the train arrival, we noticed that the tickets were actually for the zone change, and retrieved the 2nd ticket. Now for California's Caltrain you have to swipe the ticket to get in at the station, but here nothing of that sort. Yet we insisted on getting a ticket on our return journey. We reached station with the train, and our friend blocked the train door while we were at the ticket vending m/c lest the train left w/o us; and lo..there comes the ticket checker :)

Ichetuchnee river trip

The day started with the group arriving by the Indian standard time, spending extra time taking photos in our apartment complex rather than at the Ichetuchnee, few navigation errors and off tracks by GPS. The ride was wonderful, with wild yellow flowers along the highway reminding me of my friends back home. (In India, flower names are common names for girls)

sonaki?

We started down the river around noon, quite late, so could do either canoeing or tubing/swimming/snorkeling while the park was open. We all chose canoeing, and off we went in pairs or alone in the canoes. I made a secret pact with my friend that we will jump off the canoe at the midpoint and swim to the south shore. Our canoe partners made another secret pact that if we jump off, they will form a new gang in 1 of the canoes n canoe off leaving us swimming. 

We had to carry the not-so-light canoe from parking to the river. At start, water was quite shallow and the current wasnt fast (I was expecting a huge n gushing river). The lady who pushed off our canoe promised that the current would pick up. The water was cool and crystal clear. There were ferny fronds throughout the water bed except for the deep spots. So I dropped swimming plans as there was no firm leg support to prop myself back in the canoe, and canoe would upturned if i hoisted myself in. There was no need to worry about alligators, though my partner looked out for snakes whenever we dashed to the ferny river edges and had to maneuver ourselves back to the mid-river.

There was a floating platform at the midpoint of the river, and this was my chance to go swimming. Once I dived off the platform, my opinion about the strength of the current changed considerably. The friend who had planned to swim backed out. Instead another guy, Amey, who learnt to swim in Krishna-Koyana, one  of the largest rivers in south India, jumped in. I was soon worn out, Amey continued to swim. While he was still in the water, 2 canoes toppled over..


Both guys tried swimming against current, and were tired. Amey was the ideal person for the "rescue mission". A friend held on to the upturned canoe with all his might lest the canoe went wayward.  My friend held on to our canoe while we rowed him against the current towards his canoe. Amey took over, the 2 guys lifted the canoe from the water, got all the water out, and helped my friend to get back in his canoe. This was the easier of the two "missions". The second was more difficult, because the guy in water was extremely tired and Amey had to lift the boat alone. But the guy soon bucked up, in fact, in the group, he reached the south shore 1st, and we 2nd. 


Hunger is the best sauce, and 17 rowers had the first hand experience of this saying. 

Packing n cleaning woes

I never disagreed that I am a pack-rat. But the impact of it never struck me before..

In India, when I ran out of space in my 1st cupboard, i was given 3 more..i did de-trash it once in a blue moon, but mostly the cupboards were brimming with engineering files, writeups, printouts and datasheets - which I was too superstitious to get rid of.

Here, when it is time to pack up, to be even able to pack, I first need to de-trash the suitcases! My mom, like any other mom, is the epitome of anti-clutter personality. She has a simple motto- if you need it in future, keep it. In my case, following her motto was fairly easy..i have a box full of publix and walmart receipts :( The recycle bin will next hold gift wrapping papers of my send-off gifts, the chocolate wrapper of my birthday/valentine cadbury etc etc. Again, my mom's voice quips in my head: memories dont lie in those objects, but in the time spent together.

I can now fully grasp why my friends booked tickets to India a week after their exams :)

The end result- Am I happy? I will spend the whole of the next week worrying about what all could I have lost when I was too brutal with scraps of paper. Chucking the grocery bills barely made a dent, but at least i made a teeny-weeny dent :)

Journey is more important than the Destination

One fine day, we (my friend, her  roomies, me n another friend of mine) set out to go to JAX as a picnic. Another friend (the root cause of the following story) was getting a parcel through her parents' business partner n we decided to get it for her from Jax too.

At around 5 pm we set out to what became a memorable journey. We knew it takes 2 hours to reach Jax, enough time for pre-sunset "beach-watch" :P. (Sun sets at 7.30 in the US). We dint have a GPS, but an I-phone. All was well till we reached Jax. We called up the parcel-aunty, asked her address. She said that she stays 20 mins away from any beach in Jax. I proposed that we go to the beach 1st and then to the aunty, but fate had some other plans for us. No one noticed that our friend had keyed in aunty's address instead of the beach in her iphone. (we realised on our way back, the road from outskirts of Jax to the beach was sans any nightmarish flyovers).

Once in the city, there was a time lag between iphone's updating the car's current location and the direction. To add to our woes, Jax has an intricate network of bridges n flyovers, and thanks to the updation time lag, we kept on missing the "exit-to" flyovers. Finally, the iphone battery got used up, so did the fuel. Then starts a phase of self-doubting, and "maybe its right that girls cant navigate". Thankfully, we came to our senses soon, decided to chuck the real-time directions, and go by our judgement and general directions from iphone. Once this phase set in, we found the aunty's place in a jiffy, and finding the way to the beach was even easier. In case any chauvinist is still doubting that we found our way to beach easily, they can confirm our story from our guy-frnds, specifically the time difference between our calls of "we finally reached aunty's place" and "wow, we are at the atlantic ocean".

Take-home lessons? Confirm the address keyed into the GPS. Sometimes the overall directions work well than the real-time ones. Most important, if we believe in ourselves, and not the male notions about our driving or navigation skills, we ROCK.