Travels and Travails in America

In one fell swoop I lost three hours of my day. Travelling eastward around the globe, unfortunately takes time…literally. Returning from glorious, sunny California to snowy upstate New York was forbidding enough, additionally I also had to cope with the brutal way in which my hours were taken away from me. Often we look at some guy, and think wow he has it all..a great life, career..whatever..California is that guy of places. Since much has already been said and written of the glories of the pacific state, I won’t expound much here, but believe you me when I say, CA’s the place to be.

Riding the metro was fun. Coming from a city like Bombay where riding the metro can be a life or death experience, San Francisco was very very cool. Calm collected, orderly and not crowded. One dwells too little on micro moments of joy that life throws at us to enjoy them thoroughly. Like the rush of the train when it accelerates, travelling alone in a new city, roaming footloose, wherever mind dictates. Not wanting to do the ‘touristy’ stuff that normal mortals do, I decided to see SF my own way. I roamed downtown and its dark streets among skyscrapers, and walked through Chinatown with its pungent aromas and quaint charm. I took the metro randomly, only to arrive at the seaside. The train was all things at once, bustling underground telling of corporate deals and big city life, trudging through dreary suburbs, reeking of an ennui that only urbandom can bring and unexpectedly issuing above ground to merge with the streets and wait for road signals. The last stop was an unassuming square, only the horizon was endless. The Pacific. Somehow I was excited. I couldn’t help it. Here it was the pacific in all its glory at 32 Fahrenheit. Belying its name, the waves roared, surged and hopelessly ever kept crashing. What is it about lonely humans and the ocean?