Archive for December 25th, 2008

Snow & Travel

Snow and travel never go well together. I came back to Seattle from San Francisco yesterday, and it took me about two and a half hours to get from the SeaTac airport to my house which was some 15 miles away. I rode the bus all the way and there were some scary times when the bus would start going sideways, sliding on an uphill or downhill.

I got home at 10 in the night, had dinner, did my laundry, packed for my trip to DC, went to bed at 2:30AM, woke up at 4:45AM to get ready for the trip. The taxi (SUV) picked us up at 5:30, dropped us off at the airport at 6:30AM, we checked in, boarded the flight at 7:20AM and waited for the plane to be de-iced and readied for take-off.

Well, we waited for about 4 hours(!!) at the gate, sitting in a tiny seat in the plane waiting for it to leave Seattle. The truck which was de-icing the flight malfunctioned and it took them(the airline) about 4 hours to find a replacement truck to de-ice us and get us off the ground. I am still in denial that I was made to sit for 4 hours in a stationary aircraft, which was later followed by a 5 hours flight to Newark.

So my brother and I land in Newark, pretty sure that we would have missed our connection to Baltimore since it was only a 4o minute lay over initially. Well, as it turns out, our connecting (40 minute) flight was also delayed by about 4+ hours and we waited another hour for that plane to be ready to fly us to Baltimore. Almost every flight out of Newark was delayed by about 4-6 hours today due to adverse weather conditions throughout the country.

I eventually boarded one of the tiniest flights I’ve ever flown in and reached Baltimore at 9:54PM EST. My uncle picked us up from the airport, and we made it home to some good home-made food. This ended our 14 hour trip from Seattle to DC. I am tired. I should be sleeping.

Happy (whatever you believe in) Holidays.

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Curry Village

Yosemite is a must do in the winter season if you like snow. A few of us made reservations for 2 nights at curry village in the park and were very unprepared for what we were about to encounter.

First off, when we stopped at a tourist information center, we realized that we absolutely needed chains to get anywhere close to the park. A short detour to Mariposa followed and we bought some chains for the Sonata. Driving on chains is a great experience by itself. Actually, it is more of a realization as to how much chains actually help you, while driving on icy roads.

We stayed in a heated tent for 2 nights and I went out on foot in the middle of a snowstorm on a closed road, into the forest with a friend (Arvind .aka. VG). I would definitely like to go back and spend a week in the icy wilderness when I get a chance again.

We started heading back to SF on Tuesday morning and realized that we had lost one of our chains on the way up on Sunday. The progress was a little slower than expected(thanks to a missing chain, traffic in SF) but I made it back to SF airport just in time to catch my flight out to Seattle.

I’ve never been to Yosemite during the summer but I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes snow in winter.

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