2007-10-24T13:30:11-07:00
5151
2937
4323
7
2007-10-31T20:34:09-07:00
2007-10-24T13:30:11-07:00
<p> </p><h2>
The End!
</h2><p><font size="2">
I still felt like I was calling my friends and trying to convince them
to go on a cross-country ride but the fact was that I already did it
and was on the last leg of that four thousand mile, eight day blast.
Seven days went by with every single moment being relished in one way
or the other. Now, here we were in Idaho, cruising at 90 mph with vast
expanses of open land on both sides and the golden tinted sky above us.
"Let me get the last sunset of our journey". I said to my friend who
was driving. He pulled over and I captured the moment forever. This<img src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=ddtp32xd_44dvwr9jfr" id="e7g1" style="margin: 1em 1em 0pt 0pt; width: 320px; height: 213.12px; float: left;" mce_src="http://docs.google.com/File?id=ddtp32xd_44dvwr9jfr">,
I can share with everyone but not the millions of other moments I froze
in the hard drive of my brain. 12 more hours of driving and it would be
the end! Life would return from the state of natural bliss to the state
of materialistic dependency. Cell phones, e-mails, TVs and what not.
Worry about deadlines, competing with colleagues and impressing the
boss. Life would run by the clock and dictated by the gadgets.<br><br>
Though Portland is almost due West (a little North) of Yellowstone,
there is no direct route in that direction. One has to either drive up
into Montana, go through Washington and then come down, or go down in
Idaho and again back up into Oregon. This would increase the drive time
considerably but there is no other option. We entered Oregon sometime
after midnight. Not sure how the night passed but the last Sunrise of
the trip was caught right on time. The drive was awesome on the banks
of the Columbia River and then the Hood River. Mt. Hood in Washington
was playing hide-and-seek and we could see the landscape slowly change
from uninhabited thousands of acres of land to sparsely populated
pieces to townships to a fairly congested city. It was an uneventful
journey except for the time when I was half asleep while driving as we
lost the Red Bulls we were carrying. We reached the car rental by 9:00,
Returned the SUV and my friend rented a regular sedan for the rest of
the week till his car would arrive. We picked up the keys to their new
apartment and checked in. It was a very pretty, quite big two bedroom,
two bath apartment for a lot less cost than a very basic one bedroom
apartment over here. We were tired but completely satisfied. It was a
successful trip and a happy ending. Ooops... not yet an end for me. I
had to catch the flight back to JFK the same night. We had our lunch
and started to transfer pictures from their camera onto my USB flash
drive and from my camera into their laptop. It took more than an hour
to transfer the 5 Gb worth, 2000 odd pictures, from my camera to their
laptop. Now I had the duty to filter them and post them on my website
once I returned to NY. I knew I would be busy for at least half a dozen
weekends after going back home. My friend and his wife gave me a ride
to the airport that night and I was in New York once again the next
morning. Luckily it was a non-stop flight and I slept almost every
minute I was in the air. We took a full week to to go there and I was
back in five hours.<br><br>
I was home again and after more than two months from the trip, here, I
got a chance to put the wheels on the road into words on a website.</font>
<br>
</p>
12253
2937
1
5151
1
2007-10-31T20:35:05-07:00