Cross Country Travel 1990 - Part II

In my previous post I had written about my preparation to travel cross country. The total driving distance was approximately 2500 miles, almost all of it on I-80 one of the longest east-west arterial roads in the continental United States. Since I was driving alone, I intended to drive for four days and sleep in motels en route for three of those nights. The actual cities where I intended to sleep were not known to me. My plan was to drive roughly 650 miles each day and before it turned dark, find Motel 6 to crash for the night and start all over again the next day!

Those were definitely simpler times!

My intention here is not bore you with mile by mile details of this expedition. Moreover, after more than 20 years, I barely remember little more than the highlights.

From Bay Area, I took I-680 till it joined I-80. I remember giving a hitchhiker a ride against all advice to the contrary. I picked up a middle aged person outside Sacramento. The drive through the Sierra Nevada was particularly fun especially on the downhill sections when I would put my stick shift in neutral and barrel down. I crossed into Nevada and after dropping of my passenger at Reno, continued ahead into desert country. Long straight roads with scrub like vegetation loomed ahead. Next I drove by a town called Winnemucca, NV. The reason this name stuck in my mind was the self-deprecating humorous sign "6 Billion have never been here". Finally after covering little less than 550 miles, I reached Elko, Nevada at about 6PM and stopped at a Motel 6. Guess whom I saw at the reception? If your answer is anything other than a Gujarati lady with the last name of Patel, you would be wrong!

The following day, after completing my morning ablutions, I headed out east and within an hour or so crossed into Mormon country, Utah. If you look in the interstate map of USA, you will notice that I-80 is quite straight in most sections. This particular section could only have been made with a straight edge. The sign at the outset warns you about the lack of fuel stops, rest areas, and in fact any humanity, for the next nearly 100 miles. Coming from India it is hard for us to understand abject barrenness. I still remember vividly the loneliness I felt at that moment. The highlight of the day was a traipse around the south side of the Great Salt Lake. Till then I had never seen an inland water body that large. Here was a lake whose opposite shore was too far to see! Of course that changed when I saw the Great Lakes in Michigan a few months later.

As I headed east of Salt Lake City, I started to get into mountain country. I wish I had the ability to describe the majesty of the Rocky Mountains. I could use a lot superlatives without describing anything of value. Each turn of the winding road opened spectacular views of the range. I would be in a valley with two mountains looming on each side or on top of a mountain with a view of ever more mountains both behind and ahead of me. After driving nearly 650 miles, I decided to break for the night at a town called Laramie, Wyoming. I again found a Motel 6 just off the freeway and parked my bags.

And then I had an adventure.

After getting directions, I went to eat at a Pizza Hut on the main street. The food was delicious as it usually is after a long and tiring day behind the wheel. It was time to pay and head back to hit the sack.

Things turned bad.

I discovered that I did not have my wallet. With a lot of embarrassment, I explained my predicament and told the cashier that I had left my wallet along with my jacket and that in the motel and pay him with in the hour. I am not sure that the the cashier, a young kid, found my confession plausible. Would you? Nevertheless he let me go.

Things then got worse. I was stopped by a police officer for speeding.

It seems I was doing 35 in a 25 MPH zone. With even more difficulty I explained why I was driving without a valid license and how I was getting back to the motel to pay for my dinner. The cop probably subscribed to the motto trust but verify and tailed me all the way back to the motel and waited for me to get back to from my room.

The outlook then got further worse. I could not find my jacket or my wallet!

Now I was worried about things beyond paying for my dinner or even explaining to the police. How was I going to pay for the motel? How was I going to get to the East Lansing? What the hell was I going to do? In a short span of 2 minutes every possible horrible scenario played itself in my mind. I came out and showed the cop everything except my driver license such as my insurance information! As I was talking; a preposterous idea came into my mind; what if I had had my jacket all along and had really left it in the Pizza Hut. Before I could consider this any further the police office ducked into the car, made a quick call and came out. I waited with bated breath for the axe to fall. The police officer told me to listen quietly. Then he told me to go back to the Pizza Hut and told me to pick up my wallet and jacket. He then told me to drive slowly through town! With relief I thanked the officer, I went back. it turned out that when I took my seat at the booth, I had put my jacket, out of sight, on the other side of the booth. The explanation only made me feel more foolish. With as much dignity as I could muster, I collected my stuff, laughed at my stupidity, paid my bill and drove back.

Then the worst happened, the sky fell.

Or so it seemed to me. I had never seen clouds this dark. I had never seen rain this thick. It felt more like a sheet of water was pouring on my windshield rather than drops. I had never seen so much lightning flashing nor thunder so loud. I have never before driven during a cloudburst. It made me completely aware of my insignificance in the grand scheme of things as never before.

Even though I drove very slowly and the wiper was at maximum speed visibility was literally nil. I somehow managed to get back to the motel without hurting my car, or myself, or more importantly anyone else. Thus ended my second day, both physically and emotionally exhausted.

Cross Country Travel 1990 - Part I

Couple of years ago, I had written about my first year in this country. That was in the left coast, now I am in the right coast. How did I get here?

The stated goal when I first came to the US was; learn automated chip testing and setup a chip testing facility in India to test chips used to support Bubble Memories. Towards this noble goal, I spent several weeks in a training facility at Schlumberger in San Jose, learning to read chip manuals and to write software based on the specifications. With help from my boss Ajay, I also created a novel high-speed technique to measure current; traditional current measurements required milli-seconds whereas we only had a few micro-seconds.

Anyway, within 6 months of my stay here, it was clear that the contract I came for would not be renewed for various reasons. I was dumb. Instead of finding another job in the Bay Area, I decided to look into academics. With my boss's blessing, I picked what I was told was a good school, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and several middle of the pack schools such as Michigan State (MSU) in East Lansing, MI, San Jose State in Bay Area, Oklahoma State in Still Water, OK, and lower ones such as Wayne State (WSU) in Detroit, MI. Do not ask me about my criteria for selecting these schools. I am sure I could not have put more than a limited amount of thought in the process; how else does one explain this rather more than random list of schools!

All except University of Wisconsin gave me admission; UW had good standards and they wanted to keep it that way! No school other than Wayne State gave me a scholarship. Without expending anymore thought than one would in changing clothes, I chose to uproot myself and move across the continent to MSU. You may ask, If WSU gave me scholarship why did I go to East Lansing?

Well my friend, PG who was then at MSU, assured me that if I got good grades during summer term, the chances of getting a Teaching Assistant ship (TA-ship) in fall was a near certainty. For those of you that did not go to graduate school in the USA, getting a TA-ship is akin to a professor getting a tenure, This meant that you were a cool-cat and you now had a little more financial security and consequently you could now afford to eat out once every other week at Pizza Hut!

Back to the answer; my thought process was; Detroit is a bare 100 miles away from East Lansing; if it did not pan out in MSU, I could always transfer to Detroit where I had a scholarship. I had the proverbial bird in hand. Anyway that is another story.

So here I was at the end of May 1990, in San Jose, CA ready to embark on a long journey. I had made my plans; I had PG's phone number in East Lansing, I had gotten my car checked out, I had changed the engine oil, and I had loaded the car with my worldly possessions. It is amusing that there was a time when everything I possessed could fit into the back of my Honda Civic with space to spare! Now my 4 bedroom house is not large enough!

That's it; I was ready. No wait, I also had gone to AAA of California and had gotten maps of the route I was going to follow!

I did not know how many days I was going to travel, I did not know where I was going to sleep each night, I did no know who I could call in case of emergencies! It is not that planning was an anathema to me; I just did not think! I had a map, I had a car, I had a rough idea that I was going to a place called Spartan Village in East Lansing; what more did I have to know!

I expressed my gratitude to the host family with whom I had been a paying guest for the past year and after saying my adieus, I drove away. It is hard to express the feelings that were going through my mind at that time. Many years later I heard these lines spoken by Morgan Freeman in one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption. You may remember that near the end of the movie, Red breaks parole and heads to Zihuatanejo, Mexico to be with his friend Andy. As he is riding the bus, you hear a voice over

... I find I am so excited I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it is an excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain ...