First, my flight from New Delhi gets delayed by almost **8 hours**. I should add that the Air India put in abysmally little effort to help the customers — getting information from anyone was almost impossible, there was little or no ground staff around to answer questions, the little information that did get out was often incorrect and so on. When I first reached the airport at 6 in the morning (my flight was scheduled at 8:15 am), I was told the flight would depart at 12:30. I called up again at 11 am and was told that the flight would leave at 1 pm. The flight eventually took off at 4 pm, with no apology or announcements regarding the additional delays.

Then, at Frankfurt even the crew was confused — first, we were told that LA bound passengers are supposed to //stay// on board and only people whose final destination is Frankfurt should get off. After about half an hour of confusion and discussion, they told us that ALL passengers are //required// to disembark, along with their cabin luggage (this is standard practice, but the staff were fighting amongst themselves!)

Finally, I reached LA just past midnight, having missed the last flight to San Diego by almost 2 hours. Thankfully AI was responsible enough to put me on a 10 AM flight the next morning. However, what they did not tell me was that they put me on a 8:45 am flight //without// asking or even informing me. I’m glad they did for I wanted to reach San Diego asap, however I should have been notified. It was just co-incidence that I decided to reach the airport early in hopes of catching an earlier flight, otherwise there was no way I would have made it in time.

Anyways, alls well that ends well, so its back to business as usual.

We started off quite late on friday evening (around 7-8) and we took our time getting there — making some nice long breaks in between, having fun eating at Denny’s, hunting down coffee at starbucks and generally just having fun. So it took us almost 5 hours to get there (which means we reached there in the dead of the night at around 2 am).

It was a bit of a challenge to set up tents at 3 in the morning with just flashlights to go by and without waking anyone else up, but fortunately we managed it. By the time we got into our sleeping bags, it was almost 4:30. Naturally we got up late as well.

After lazying around a bit and having had a hearty breakfast, we set out for our first hike. There was some argument over wether we should do the hardest trail first (it was very very hot that afternoon, and it was already past noon) or the easy trails on saturday and do the hard one early sunday morning. After much debate, we decided to just get over with the strenuous trail first.

And boy, what a trail it was! PSD, Asim and I were at the head of the pack. Reaching the peak of Craig’s Dome almost took forever. Though the trail itself is small distance wise (around 3 miles one way), the elevation it climbs is not (2200 ft). It took us almost 3 hrs to get to the top. But it was worth it.

The views were awesome. We had a fun time talking about a whole bunch of things on our way up there. I found a suweet spot to sit on (a wide ledge on one of the rocks overlooking the valley) and then we waited for the everyone else to catch up. After an hours break, we began our descent.

The downward journey was easier, but irritating simply because it was so much effort to maintain control and keep ourselves from running downhill. Eventually we did reach the bottom. Went back to the campsite and cooked up a hearty dinner.

The next morning we woke up (relatively) early. After a short hike by the sacramento river, it was decided that we would drop Lassen in favor of a drive to Mt. Shasta. So after a light brunch, we drove upto Mt. Shasta, enjoyed the views for some time, and then started our journey back home.

We reached back around midnight on Sunday. It was a fun trip. But settling accounts on this trip is going to be a major PITA because of the REI screw up. Ah well.

2005/september

It was fun. Not because Mystery Spot is just fabulous, hardly so, but simply because I had a good time. As for Mystery Spot, I was a little unfazed. I mean, I couldn’t really see any “mystery” and the demos were also not that impressive.

Our tour guide was great though — she kept everyone entertained for almost an hour. It was fun walking around in that crooked house :-) At the end of the tour she asked how many people thought it was all just an optical illusion and I was the only one who raised my hand :-)

I would have been really impressed had they actually shown a compass going awry or something like that. But they glossed over all the best parts saying that it doesn’t happen all the time.

We went to [[http://www.beachboardwalk.com/|Boardwalk]] after that and it was //so much// fun! The water was cold but we still got in :-) But the parking was a total rip-off — $10!!! :-O

We left Friday evening and camped out at [[http://employeeprograms.hp.com/little-basin/|Little Basin]]. My camping experience this time was much better than the last—the camp site was much more like the traditional camping ground I had in mind, there weren’t too many people around, the jungle was lush and dense, the weather was nice, it wasn’t hot or dry and we even had an interesting incident with a racoon!

I also learnt a lot about traditional camping practices here in the US—like s’mores or the common breakfast and lunches people have, or quickly setting up a tent and so on.

On Saturday we drove to the [[http://www.bigbasin.org/|Big Basin State Park]] and hiked on an eight mile trail (actually we looped across walking on one trail the first half and coming back through a second one on the latter half). There were some nice waterfalls on the way, and we had a good time walking and talking and lunching together.