USA Trip 2023 - Reflections - Part 2

After the wonderful start of the trip, it was business time. We started our work on a Sunday (it was an upgrade support visit) and we had to work through the week, going to the office daily. I thought this was it – regular work followed by relaxation at the hotel in the evening. We also went out for lunch with our colleagues to some Indian restaurants in Redwood City and San Carlos and had some amazing Indian food. I had no idea about the next surprise waiting for me.

As it turns out, we have the facility to rent a car in the US for our daily commute from hotel to office and we did rent the car before reaching US. But due to some confusion around the pick-up times, we missed our rental reservation and ended up not having a car. When we informed our VP about this, he asked to go ahead with a new reservation; and reserve we did. This is where it gets interesting – on the day of the pick-up, my colleague who had told me to help with picking up and driving it, couldn’t show up due to some issue. But he gave some words of caution – on the basic driving rules. Now, it was up to me to step up to the occasion and pick-up the car. As an Indian driver with no driving experience in US, I was pretty tensed while going to the car rental agency for the pickup. Call it a co-incidence, the Uber cab driver was an Indian! That was my small window of getting a crash course on ‘Driving in the USA 101’ from him. Armed with that very little knowledge and my faith in the God, I went and picked up the car. It was just a 3 mile journey to my hotel, but that accounted for one of my biggest personal achievements in recent times. The car that was allotted to us was a Nissan Altima sedan – the longest car I ever drove in my life. Luckily, it was a modern car with support navigation which helped me a lot during the drives.

That evening, I took up my first serious drive – a trip to the Google offices in Sunnyvale from San Carlos. It was a 20 minute drive including a few miles on the US freeway 101. This is when I had the first experience of driving on a US freeway, with suer fast vehicles zipping beside me and me struggling to keep up the pace with them. The visit to the Google office itself is an amazing experience. It started with the reception area – a huge wall adorned with real computer mother boards! This is a testament to the engineering values that Google is built upon. Past that, I witnessed some of the crazy, interesting, and fun work spaces ever. After the traditional looking Sunnyvale offices, we visited the Bay View campus – a new gem in the Google offices crown. This is an entirely different architecture with open views and airy work spaces, all nestled under a huge tent like structure. What’s interesting is that the panels on the roof open up to allow sun light, thus reducing the need for artificial light in the office buildings. It would be interesting to see such eco-friendly architectures replicated in other places too. We finished that evening with a visit to Costco to buy stuff for our colleagues in India.

After that came my next big drive in the US – a road trip to the Santa Cruz beach. It was a journey of almost 55 miles one way driving along freeway 101 and highway 1. Although I had an idea of how the drive on freeway 101, I had no idea how the drive on highway 1 feels like. As it turns out, it was a winding road cutting through mountains and changing altitudes all through the way. It was also one of the very scenic drives with mountains in the far and tall trees to the sides. There were sharp turns and narrow roads where I had to maintain a constant speed of 40 Mph. Though it was stressful, I can now say that that was my most adventurous drive so far. After a journey of 1.5 hours, we reached the Santa Cruz beach.

Now, the beach itself was very beautiful. Pair that with the perfect sunny atmosphere, this was a perfect weekend getaway. I walked on the beach, got into the water, toyed with the waves and had a lot of fun. The clear blue skies and dark blue ocean with layers of pale cyan waters made the entire scenery very relaxed and even more beautiful. We walked up to the pier and walked along it, watching seals along the way and the beautiful mansions by the beach. After spending a good 2 hours and an ice cream for lunch, we headed back to our hotel. The way back was even more interesting, since the 101 North was closed for some road work. So we had to take the freeway 280. This being a new route and me being a rookie driver in US, I made some obvious mistakes – missing some exits, drive lanes, driving through some wrong lanes and making some detours. I even had a close call with another car – it was a perfect Hollywood moment where he came too close to my car and suddenly applied the brakes – making that screeching rubber sound on the road, followed by a long honk. That was real shock to me and I was taken by a jolt. The next 45 minutes seemed like an eternity, all the while me regretting my choice to drive the car so long. But, after a brave show on the road, we finally reached the hotel and relaxed for a while before heading out to San Carlos downtown for an evening walk.

San Carlos downtown was a typical US city marketplace – streets lined with road side restaurants, shops, bakeries, banks, parks and a vibrant population lacing them. The walk in the evening was very relaxing one, especially after the tiring drive in the day. We checked out a bakery called ‘Paris Baguette’ – specializing in French bakery food. Surprisingly, this is a popular bakery chain in the US that is owned and run by Korean management. That evening, my dinner was a platter with some delicious food – a chocolate croissant, a pineapple cream brulee, a cheese apple tart and some warm chai. What a sweet way to end a day!