Roadtrip 2021 - Utah - 1 - Dead Horse

Spring Break Road Trip 2021: Nebraska -> Colorado Springs -> Utah (Dead Horse) -> Utah (Arches) -> Utah (Canyonlands)

  After 2 days in Colorado Springs, we drove to Moab, Utah. I was asleep when we entered the town & went straight for check-in and sleep. Next morning, the mountain rocks we visible from the hotel window itself, even being on first floor.

The 4 days stay was full of walking. There were orange rocks of all shapes everywhere. I was even dreaming of them at night.

National Park pass is useful when visiting more than 1 park. But there are state parks too and they won't accept the Natl Park pass. So budget for it.

1. Dead Horse Point State Park
2. Drive across the Canyons
3. Arches National Park
4. Canyonlands National Park

These parks are vast. Which means once in, you can't drive out for something simple but crucial like lunch. So pack & carry it with you. You don't want to stumble out of these vast, arid deserts, clamoring for food & water, while there is entire half day left to explore the parks.

Dead Horse Point State Park

Drive across the Canyons - Potash Road

Now the drive down the cliff is one of those extreme-dangerous-road-drive videos. My kid did get the whole thing on video. Including all our voices. First we thought we would mute the video. But nope - the voice commentary (of everyone's nervous chatter) is a gem of a companion to the cliff-visuals.

At the end of the road, in the bottom of the cliffs, park people have built what we thought we would need - a bathroom. Like really.

This is the Potash field which the reason for this road name. 

Arches National Park & Canyonlands National Park next up.

Roadtrip 2021 - Colorado

Spring Break Road Trip 2021: Nebraska -> Colorado Springs -> Utah (Dead Horse) -> Utah (Arches) -> Utah (Canyonlands)

Spring break roadtrip continued towards Colorado Springs after the night halt in North Platte, NE. In Colorado we visited:

• Mesa Verde National Park, 
• Royal gorge Bridge & Park Canon City,
• Pikes Peak Colorado Springs &
• Denver 

Denver 

Our first halt was to sight-see Capitol and surroundings. One marked thing visible are the Dispensaries and clinics unique to this state and their users roaming all the streets & settled in there.

Next up, Denver Art Museum. Lovely place to relax and take pics with its numerous installations.

Pikes Peak, Colorado Springs

First thing on entering Colorado, is the never-ending chain of mountains on all sides. That's a sight to see. This was a sight of the peak, from behind our Hotel.

Pikes Peak is a 16 mile drive with many overlooks for lovely sights. 

Finally at the peak on 16th-mile, is the place to park the car and climb/walk/crawl uphill. There were large stones and snow all over. Such a lovely view to see snow after so long - it had melted in MN in March itself. The climb uphill to the top looked treacherous, maybe was, but I didn't see any of the crowds get injured. So I did it too. Its a sight to behold. No amount of picture could capture the vastness of it all.

Royal gorge Bridge & Park, Canon City

As soon as we entered the park, it was a Disneyland feeling. There was Zipline, Gandola ride, Swing on the top-most point and a Bridge across the Gorge. And again, no amount of pictures could capture the stomach-churning depth of this gorge.

There are different state flags, and when we neared Minnesota, there was another MN family. Lot of yelling to show the homie feeling.

Gandola rides & Zip Line and Swigs basically stopped after 3pm. There were long waits in lines. Later for some or the other excuse, they closed after 4pm. 

Mesa Verde National Park

This hidden gem was revealed to us by another fellow hotel stayer.

There are these unbelievable Cave houses, villages, squares etc built on the cliffs.

Every village we stopped at, the poster explained the whole history. It was made & used by Pbuleo tribe between 1200-1270. Yet there was always a wonder, why did they build on the edge of cliffs ? Why not the plain lands slightly (miles) away and why on these slippery cliffs to climb everyday ? Who came here first & settled those 60-80 families eventually ? Phew.

The drive across the park stops at many overlooks to show the different cave villages and one final grand view across the whole thing. Its so hard to believe these were built in 1200-1270 AD and not some tourist-fraud thing.

Next hop to Moab, Utah.

The drive was via winding ghat roads. With river gorge on one side and yawning mountains looking like rock-slide on the other, totally reminded of Hindi-movies Kashmir.

Roadtrip 2021- Nebraska & Iowa

Spring Break Road Trip 2021: Nebraska -> Colorado Springs -> Utah (Dead Horse) -> Utah (Arches) -> Utah (Canyonlands)

This year Spring break we went out for the first time. A Road-trip to Utah. We passed through IOWA and then Nebraska and Colorado.

Iowa was breathtaking in Jan first weekend with all Hoar-frost everywhere. 360 degrees of glittering trees. Feasted our eyes for 4 hours. Sun was out but it was not melting coz 5-10F temps. Photos don’t do justice to this endless beauty.

In April, nothing stood out. 

Further on to Nebraska, wide plain lands. Cows in the first few were exciting. I kept yelling "Cows on the right/left" so kids would look up from their devices. Soon we discovered there are like million cows in the state. Which was great, until we could smell them too, from inside a locked moving car.

We halted in North Platte for the night, before proceeding to Colorado and then to Utah. Walmart & many eating places were right next to the hotel.

Roadtrip - Packing List 101

 My updated Roadtrip - Packing List 101. Which is different from Camping or Theme Park or Air-travel. These are essential items. You anyway need other regular use stuff.

Factors for this list:

1. Breakfast, lunch & snacks could be covered by many drive-throughs. But one meal needs to be home-cooked. Its not just financial, it's also gut-driven decision.
2. Meals in the Park - So if you are in a city or even village, you can step out to buy some lunch. Even that takes away 2-3 hours sometimes. But if you are going to park, there is no other option but to pack your lunch. There is no question of skipping it, coz you need to consider how long you can suffer, till you breakdown. I mean you will have to stay in the park till nightfall at worst case. And stepping out 50 miles for a meal is not worth it.
3. Cooler - to store yogurt cups, frozen peas or frozen parathas
4. Pack or shop what you left behind. Not all states have frequency of Targets & Walmart as your state. You might find local grocery stores for the staple items. But it could be few & far in between. Until then rely on gas-stations & their inventory.
5. Overnight bag - so packing might involve separate bags for each family member. But if you are going to move from hotel to hotel for night-stays, you need a overnight bag. Be flexible to move stuff around to one bag with only overnight supplies. That will reduce the headache of lugging multiple luggage to the room after a tired day of driving and getting them back to car again next morning.
6. Cold weather layering - need the hoodies & winter jackets. No matter how south, and which month; it's gonna be windy or cold and we end up needing some of those.

Clothing

1. Winter Jackets - coz no matter which month of the year and any corner of the country - its going to be cold or windy at best.
2. Gloves - for the same above reason.
3. Hoodies - coz maybe its not bitter cold, but its still cold.
4. Socks - you need clean ones after wading through sand.
5. Swim bag with all the paraphernalia - to utilize the hotel pool

Grocery/Ingredients list

1. Rice - count the cups based on people & nights to feed. And add more cups to that. 
2. Dal (Moong/Toor)
3. Pickle bottle
4. Turmeric, Chilli powder & Salt in zip-locks
5. Jeera in ziplock
6. Ghee / oil - small bottle
7. MTR Puliyogyre paste
8. MTR Bisibelebath paste
9. Maggi
10. Fruits, bread, jams, chips - shop along the way as you need.
11. Yogurt - shop along the way as you need.
12. Crate of water bottles - buy more every gas station

Cooking & Serving kit

1. Rice cooker
2. InstaPot - 3 qt
3. Cooler - small one will do
4. Griddle - lightweight for Paratha. Or can also be bought at the nearest Walmart/Target/etc
5. Paper plates, cups, spoons, forks (for Maggi)
6. Ketchup packets collected every drive-through
7. Tissue roll

Recipes

1. Peas-Rice
2. Dal
3. Frozen Parathas
4. Puliyogyre - White rice (w/ peas) mixed with MTR Puliyogyre paste
5. Bisibelebath - White rice & dal with peas mixed with MTR Bisibelebath paste
6. Maggi
7. PBJ - Peanut Butter Jelly Sandwiches

Toiletries kit or Shaving Kit

1. Nail-cutter - someone in your large party is going to need it someday; for sure.
2. Travel size shampoo, conditioner, soap - coz all hotels can't be trusted to have the right one
3. Medicines - Volini (for leg pain), Disprin (for headaches), Aquapor (for skin)
4. Rest you know

Others

1. Book bag - with book, book-light, pencil-case. A kids joke-book that I took, was a hit for all of us.
2. Neck-pillow - how can it not be part of a car !
3. Marker pen - to add name initials on  the disposable water-bottle cap, so we don't drink each others backwash - argh. And hence we don't discard perfectly good water, because we forgot whose is which. Ofcourse such water can be used to wash hands & such.
4. Scissor or cutter - coz someone need it someday.

Environment and Us - One-time Plastic Usage

2020 Pandemic response meant reduced human activity & presence, which let Earth recuperate. Animals were roaming freely & plants were growing in abandoned places. But human response saw increased usage in one-time plastics and other things which became thrash after one-time usage. Like PPE masks, gloves and plastic bags.

Cloth masks with their use-n-wash & reuse again are cool alternatives to the use-n-throw blue masks. But there are other aspects which got left behind and should not be forgotten.

Individual actions

Shopping Bags

* Got the repeat-use thylas/jhoola/bags to cut down the one-time usage plastic-bags taking up all of the under-sink cabinet space. 

* Canvas bags for heavy duty grocery from Indian stores. Lighter fancy ones for Target, Aldi & others. 

* Have multiple bags in the car trunk. Once we haul groceries home, we are generally too tired to put them promptly back for next shopping trip. 

* Lockdown times was bit unsure about carrying personal bags to public stores. Most stores asked me to bag items on my own, which is fine. And for some that I was unsure, I left the bag in trunk & got groceries in the cart to the car, like the usual shopping in Costco/Sams. 

* Saved all the time from sorting bags to dump in designated spots. Saved space at home otherwise littered with plastic bags.

Purple mesh bags are purple onion bags from Costco/Sams. They are in great shape to use as is. White strip of labels need to be cut off; else the bar-code interferes with the cashiers scanning. In pre-pandemic world, got compliments from atleast 5 fellow shoppers. But I stopped using it on 2020 & am slowly getting back to it.  

My COMPOSTING adventure. 

* Got the black composting bin from City. I know a lot are available on Amazon. It’s placed in the backyard, close to veggie patch. 

* This winter I put up a bin on deck for a stop-gap arrangement. Filled it on daily basis and when snow melted on the path to outside bin, emptied it to larger bin. Our thrash-bag output is reduced to 1-2 per week. 

* Organic waste in in bags in the large bin, coz makes it easier to move the black-gold to the veggies patch. I got tired of shoveling it from the floor one summer.

* Earthworms - I never bought any. Only the ones we found while digging for regular garden work - those went in the organic waste bags.

* Smell is not a problem. In winter it’s all frozen. After defrost any smell is locked inside the bin. Once it turns black gold, there is no smell at all; just a hint of Mango & pineapples. 

* More composting tips here: https://recycleminnesota.org/work/compost-bins-rain-barrels/

Gardening tips:

* Rice & dal washed water straight to plants will yields immediate flowers. 

* Put banana peels (minus the end hard parts) & egg shells in blender & purée with water. Put it straight to potted plants or veggie patch. Heard the same with potato peels, but haven’t tried it. 

* Tidy cats boxes make great containers for veggie plants. I borrowed from a neighbor & planted creepers ( watermelon & butternut squash) & Malabar spinach. (White paint box container garden pic from Gardening FB group). The creepers would stay clean away from soil and I could move the containers anywhere I liked for sun.

 

Political muscle

Individual actions to recycle & reuse will improve that family’s lifestyle quality. But without support from infrastructure, even the best intentions see limited action. 

* Toronto & Bengaluru have city collection systems for separated organic waste; which all goes to a central composting facility. 

* Meanwhile entire Texas state does not have recycle at any spot. Imagine the amount of landfill being used just by plastic & paper. 

However, individuals act is limited by political guidance. Hence it's important to influence or be involved in the political direction of the city, state & country. 

This article captures this relationship in detail: “....without strict laws to curb carbon emissions, no individual’s choices matter all that much. For them, the most important action is political — to try to change the direction of national and global policies....” 

Likewise, once the world is back on its feet, I hope there are more measures strengthening & improving all aspects of these, while reducing burden on the environment.

• medical waste disposal
• landfill 
• PPE manufacturing

Office Pantry politics

Office pantry is quite a unique spot. 

Its a meeting spot. Some people gather & conduct an impromptu meeting, with complete specific details. Some gather to gossip about their office nemesis or boss or process. Then there are loners who glide in & out of pantry doing only what they came to do.

Layout wise it generally has a Scotsman water filter/cooler/dispenser. Vending machine for snacks or carbonated drinks. Refrigerator for office folks to store their lunches & other food, sometimes all week or month long. Few microwaves for office folks to heat their lunch or coffee or popcorn. Some pretty much do the cooking. Those ready-to-eat packages need 5-10 minutes of microwaving.

Sink is a major boiling point. Dirty cups or food crumbs left in sink are major trigger points. From time to time, some put up passive-aggressive notes.

Some deal with it in a funny way.

One time when 2 microwaves broke down, then the default solution is to walk up or down to the next floor & use theirs. A poster came up polling for "Guess When the New Microwave will come & win a Microwavable meal." Way to keep it interesting.

All that I am describing applies to North American offices. None of this would make it to a show like Office or any movies showing corporate offices. But this drama is too entertaining to be lost in space.

In the current remote working world, especially for those who have got out of college and started working, the absence of this spot is going to leave a vacuum in their work experience.

Ghost alarm

My phone has a ghost alarm and I need to rant about it.

I googled but there is hardly any material on this. Its pandemic world and I don't have to be dependent on all the wide range of morning alarms. But now this is something to deal with.

The bug is that my phone starts a typical alarm sound, as soon as I plug it to power charger - whether at night or in the middle of the day. And then for added measure, it goes off again at 2-ish am & 4-ish am. Keeps me up all night. It stops only after pressing any button. Gwad how I hate that particular alarm tune ! Hate it.

I called Apple Support - which first of all is hard to find. Their solution was to delete all apps, backup only photos. Then erase the phone & reconfigure it. I just upgraded to their latest phone & I have to bear with this low-grade bug ! I have borne with this for more than a year now and its severe problem now. 

So after simmering for some more time, I decided to delete apps in iterations, to find the culprit. First to go were the million games my kids had downloaded. No difference. Then went news and other miscellaneous apps. Now remaining were my favorite Facebook, essential Gmail and financials ones. Before sacrificing the Bank and Mail apps, I decided to delete Facebook. My screen-time usage of FB was through the roof anyway. Oh how peacefully I slept that night. Like a baby.

Omg, so the FB app wanted me to be online forever ? Even skipping on phone charging obligation ? Oh how much more devious could FB be !?!? All those stories to increase our mobile on app or online presense times, were perfectly true. No scope for being in denial. It worked.

Then I switched to Instagram for my dose of showing & viewing Art. Few peaceful days and then it started again. Oh my ! Ofcourse FB & IN are the same family of apps. ! Ridiculous. Off went INSTA too, from my phone.

Now the only way to get my fix was Mobile Browser for FB & IN. Few peaceful days. And here it is again. Solution, is to close the tab with FB & IN on it. My gosh, that leaves me laptop browser to access these sites; like all other sane people are doing. 

Then I switched to watching shows on Prime, all day long. And now the alarm is back again. Which means its Apple bug - to keep me hooked on using it all the time.

I am this close to throwing my phone away and switching to flip-phone.

Update 9/12: Fixed after I took it to the Apple store, vented at them. They reinstalled the OS and erased everything. Basically started fresh without any backup except photos.

Winter Running 101

I got a few inquiries about how to get into Winter walking. Here I share my checklist which is handy for running. But I guess it will apply to other winter outdoors too with minor changes.

Few things to remember with Winter Running/Walking

1. Oft repeated phrase: There is no bad weather, just bad clothes. Very true. Any temp is fine. Just make sure roads are fine. Not icy or black ice.
2. Cotton is sin. No garment on your body should be Cotton. It soaks up the sweat, stays wet & chills your skin.
3. Once back home, get out of every SINGLE garment and get into hot shower. All kids & chores can wait. If not there will be chill & shivers that sometimes stays for the entire day; and worst case frostbite.
4. Remember that the run/walk times will be slower or different from your other weather performances. More caution will go into checking the road for black-ice, slushy snow or plain ice; and then zig-zag ahead via alternate path. 

CLOTHING:

Here is the list for running in sub 30F weather. These are my personal recommendations and I am not affiliate and do not stand to get paid for promotion.

Tech shirts - Layering tech shirts is very useful. In sub-30F, 2-3 shirts and in sub-10F, 3-4 shirts will be needed. What is different about tech shirts, is that they are made of synthetic material and designed to wick the sweat away from your skin. If the cloth touching you skin is wet, pretty soon it will freeze up and frostbite that area of your body. On those lines, cotton is sin in cold weather running. Because cotton absorbs the moisture and keeps it there. So always look for "wick dry". 

Wind-sheeter jacket - to stop wind from entering inside and cooling your core.

Baselayer: Thermal clothing. Target brand and also other brands like Craft & Mizuno.

 

Compression tights - those pants are a blessing to run outside in temps below 60F.

Wool Socks - or ski socks if you like. Here are some from Target brand. Your toes will thank you later.

 

Gloves - if you are looking for lightweight ones there are many options. Most of them allow you to use your touchscreen phones without removing the glove.

Underwear - should absolutely not be cotton. Never. Link to C9 products in Amazon.

Neck gaiter - protects neck from cold wind. Also from breathing in that freezing air.

Cap - Any comfortable one 

Headbands - are useful and best when they shield ears from the burning freeze.

 

Chapstick or lipbalm

Face cream for drying skin.

Links:

1. This video is the best resource I could find about the right clothing for cold weather running or snow running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eC5toC0vms
2. 22 Genius Running Hacks For When It’s Cold AF Outside: https://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonrosenberg/winter-is-coming