Well! before the well-grounded sights and sounds of erstwhile aero-fantasies, flying high was perhaps just a metaphor to describe the super-achievers, but now flying high is literal - perhaps as literal as "Roving Mars" is today! Yes, you heard me right ... today Spirit and Opportunity are roving Mars - the fascinating feats of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. "NASA's twin robot geologists, the Mars Exploration Rovers, launched toward Mars on June 10 and July 7, 2003, in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. They landed on Mars January 3 and January 24 PST. The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. Primary among the mission's scientific goals is to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars..." To know more about this fascinating story of Martian revelations - read on!
Well! the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum (6th & Independence Ave, Washington, DC) had a lot to offer ... including this awesome documentary featuring the Martian Rovers, replete with images shot by the "MERs" (Mars Exploration Rovers), in the Lockheed Martin IMAX theater. Though it was tempting to keeping venturing through the tiers of air and space achivements at the museum, I took visual snapshots of select ventures. Among them, the 1903 Wright Flyer, the world’s first successful powered airplane, made me smile and sigh! It had a very brief operational history alright, with its entire flying career being on a single chilly December morning in 1903 in North Carolina. Yet, it was indeed a golden morning that let man feel and steal away the aerospace flavors, across the apricot tinted horizons and beyond! Yes, the flying machine was born in the cradle of the earthian skies and was destined to span the global skies!
Savoring the pages of history, walking westward on Pennsylvania Ave (yes! toward 1600 Pennsylvania Ave), we zipped in and out of the DC museums packed with - all you can see - goodies ... yet! little did the marvels of science and nature in the Smithsonian museums serve to satiate our, by then, burgeoning appetites ... so we scurried to a colorful ristorante in downtown DC to do justice to our starved tummies ...
Recalling the adventures from the previous evening, evening of the 25th, we drove to Columbia, Maryland, midway between Baltimore and DC, to relish a wonderful evening with my cousin and her cute family - Lali (didi), Papu (dada), and little Ishaan, made a cute Columbian family, warm and welcoming - this was the first time I met Ishaan, a toddler of about two, and nah! didn't add on to his stock of "Baby Einstein" toys. Read and bought these charming little children's books - tales for toddlers in Ballston, Arlington's, B. Dalton Books. Well! who's to say beautifully written toddlers' tales can't fascinate fully hatched and matured chickens :) Talking about the Ballston Mall - comfortably placed next to our hotel in Arlington (separated by a couple skywalks and NSF) - it had a Panera Bread, one of my favorite sandwich places and yes! I did have a portabella-mozarella and Saurabh had a low fat soup to keep us steady, without grumbling tummies in our hour's drive to Columbia, MA. Yes! three states in a row, Virginia, Maryland, and well! a quasi-state DC ... hey man! who doesn't want to upgrade her state count ... mine stands at 12+1 ... what's yours? hey, btw, don't count states you just stopped by to fill gas in your gas-guzzling giants ;)
Postscript: Notice how I love using alliterations ... well! my next in line literary teeming tingles could well be oxymorons ... any thing for rookies?!
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Anniversary Add-Ventures
We had a beautiful anniversary on the 29th of May - biking through the bylanes of West Lafayette. But then just saying bylanes and camouflaging a new discovery will hardly be fair to my readers ... so here's our cute, new discovery - the West Lafayette trail system. The impressive trail system here includes "The Cattail Trail" and the "The Northwest Greenway Trail". The Cattail Trail goes from a starting point close to our home all the way to school, via Lindbergh Road (no he has no Purdue connection, though Amelia Earhart sure does), Cherry Lane, and then finally Stadium Road, before we enter the school campus (~5 miles). We then rush off into the soothing cool waters of the “engineered” fountain splat in the middle of the engineering campus and squish-squash across the aquamarine deluge. Well! if you haven't really savored the beauty of the trail system yet - dive into the awesome criss-cross of biking trails, setting off on your Schwinn bikes to capture the bounties of adventure! Hey, btw - don't you forget your helmets!!
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Field of Dreams
We are just back from a day's trip back and forth - Cedar Rapids, Iowa - started on the evening of the 18th of May and returned after midnight the next day (aka. 20th). Was about 6 hours of driving and Saurabh and I shared the drive, well! I drove more than 50% :) Our Toyota Prius was giving us an awesome mileage (~48), of course it could have gotten better with no AC but we refuse to be indulging in any kind of self-flagellation, nevermind it being as trivial as climatic discomfort!
Well, the Cedar Rapids trip turned out to be short and sweet!! We went to this Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, a couple miles away from the downtown area and there we found these friendly, smiling Czechs, enagaging in various activities. It was there, that we entered this beautifully decorated "Czech Cottage" with this very friendly woman (owner) - Jitka (read as Yitka) - relating her Czech anecdotes to us. She had entered the US around the time of Communist turbulence in Czechoslovakia ... and has been here since, married, and with this pretty business-engagement housed in this cottage of hers - abounding in garnet jewelry, crystals, and Czech folk arts - yes! we picked up a couple small trinkets and knick knacks as souvenirs of this sudden Czech discovery in a midwestern town. Also, there was this "National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library", we could only see from the outside lounge, early closing hours, but then at the entrance to the museum there was this huge chandelier - hanging from the celing, made and brought in from the Czech Republic, fixed ostentatiously at the entrance to the museum. This Czech village kinda looked like a niche fringe outside of the US with people laid back in time, smiling and greeting people, and seemingly not engaged in an ever-widening frenzy of chores! What Jitka told us was that this village had been there for a long time, before she even moved in here, and now slowly there's just an aging brood of people living here, holding on to the prized Czech relics, with the outflux of the youngsters far and away.
The only thriving business in this town of Cedar Rapids, seemed to be Rockwell Collins, a leader in the design, production, and support of aviation and communication electronics. Considering that the US is now fighting its never-ending battles in the Middle East with billions of dollars spent at the warfront, defense contracts are definitely on the rise, and so are these billion dollar companies. Well! talking of dollars well spent, I was just reading about Dwight Eisenhower's ambitious project with wide reaching repercussions, the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, where the federal government invested more that $33 billion to establish a network of highways across the country. Since Saurabh and I have traveled together, driving on these highways, so many times for the last close to three years, we appreciate this great contribution of Eisenhower through and through. In fact, he was a Republican president, the first one in about two decades then, and proved his mettle both in war and home affairs. Those were difficult times for America, recuperating from the Second World War's lesions, and recuperating fast with vigor and laudable leadership by heroes of the land.
Drifting away from the politics of the land, and talking about the climatics ... it's been fabulous weather for the last couple days and the sun and shine in the land of the mighty, made us buy mountain bikes to gallivant across the midwestern lands. So, marking my calendar, to note the start of my biking days ahead - 20th May, 2006. Btw, looks like buying bikes here, means buying a host of paraphernalia, and one on the list remains - biking helmets ... well! yes! we do want to guard the gray cells of wisdom to pass it on to our little ones across the windows of time.
Well, the Cedar Rapids trip turned out to be short and sweet!! We went to this Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, a couple miles away from the downtown area and there we found these friendly, smiling Czechs, enagaging in various activities. It was there, that we entered this beautifully decorated "Czech Cottage" with this very friendly woman (owner) - Jitka (read as Yitka) - relating her Czech anecdotes to us. She had entered the US around the time of Communist turbulence in Czechoslovakia ... and has been here since, married, and with this pretty business-engagement housed in this cottage of hers - abounding in garnet jewelry, crystals, and Czech folk arts - yes! we picked up a couple small trinkets and knick knacks as souvenirs of this sudden Czech discovery in a midwestern town. Also, there was this "National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library", we could only see from the outside lounge, early closing hours, but then at the entrance to the museum there was this huge chandelier - hanging from the celing, made and brought in from the Czech Republic, fixed ostentatiously at the entrance to the museum. This Czech village kinda looked like a niche fringe outside of the US with people laid back in time, smiling and greeting people, and seemingly not engaged in an ever-widening frenzy of chores! What Jitka told us was that this village had been there for a long time, before she even moved in here, and now slowly there's just an aging brood of people living here, holding on to the prized Czech relics, with the outflux of the youngsters far and away.
The only thriving business in this town of Cedar Rapids, seemed to be Rockwell Collins, a leader in the design, production, and support of aviation and communication electronics. Considering that the US is now fighting its never-ending battles in the Middle East with billions of dollars spent at the warfront, defense contracts are definitely on the rise, and so are these billion dollar companies. Well! talking of dollars well spent, I was just reading about Dwight Eisenhower's ambitious project with wide reaching repercussions, the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, where the federal government invested more that $33 billion to establish a network of highways across the country. Since Saurabh and I have traveled together, driving on these highways, so many times for the last close to three years, we appreciate this great contribution of Eisenhower through and through. In fact, he was a Republican president, the first one in about two decades then, and proved his mettle both in war and home affairs. Those were difficult times for America, recuperating from the Second World War's lesions, and recuperating fast with vigor and laudable leadership by heroes of the land.
Drifting away from the politics of the land, and talking about the climatics ... it's been fabulous weather for the last couple days and the sun and shine in the land of the mighty, made us buy mountain bikes to gallivant across the midwestern lands. So, marking my calendar, to note the start of my biking days ahead - 20th May, 2006. Btw, looks like buying bikes here, means buying a host of paraphernalia, and one on the list remains - biking helmets ... well! yes! we do want to guard the gray cells of wisdom to pass it on to our little ones across the windows of time.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
A first time blogger ...
I finally decided to dive in and blog ... kinda in preparation for a summer long thread of exciting travel! I also have a fair amount of "to-dos" in place for summer ... but then name a graduate (PhD) student who aspires high and does not! It hasn't really been that exciting for the past couple days in my small town of West Lafayette, where I go to school at Purdue - with this namby-pamby rain getting me rather brooding and less than usual chirpy ... but then, I guess I have had my share of accolades with my impeccable GPA and a graduation gala for graduating with an MS from Chicago. Well! thinking of graduation I have had quite a few graduations over the last couple of years ... who says time's measured in hours and minutes ... graduating from the well-chaperoned warm parental niche on the other side of the globe to a wifey of a charming young man in the Occidental soils ... graduating from living by myself in a bachelor-like apartment in Chicago to a wonderful new home in this Purduette land ... from a big-city girlie to a small-town scholar ... and then of course - my latest love - a hybrid pristine, silver, Prius!! Well! with so many graduations over a space of two years, am almost giddy with graduations and therefore, Saurabh and I decided to have a break this summer ... and well! with France, Germany, and India traveling, coming up this summer, I guess I will have a lot to learn, a lot to share, and of course a lot to blog! Talking of travel, we love to travel ... given that we come from a town with close connections to Earhart, you can hardly blame us ... so, will get back to blogging from the bounties of Le Mont-Saint-Michel, France - yes! the tales of my French Rendezvous are coming up sometime soon ... till then - Blog and don't Slog!
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