Live flight tracking of Sonya’s return from London

11.00 PM 11/23/07 Friday night California Time: Starting from London Flight British Airways 283. You can see my little plane.

11.20 AM 11/24 Saturday, just past the Hudson Bay over Canada. Altitude 36,000 ft, speed 486 knots

1.15 PM: cruising over Wyoming Altitude 36,000 ft. Speed 528 knots

1.45 PM. Crowded sky – Just over Utah – My flight number is BAW283 Same altitude speed 524 knts.

Here is the trip so far:

Hello California – I’ll be home soon.

2.57 PM California Time – I am home!

Tracking Sonya’s flight – Delhi to London

OK, made it to London, about 6 hr flight.

I am trying to get back on the California Time, so I started on Friday at 3.00 PM California time, and got to London at 9.00Pm California time on Friday.

Next take flight from London to LAX at 11.00 PM and reach LAX at 3PM the following day – boy that’s a long flight.

I am having fun with fireworks in India.

It is the festival of light and my grand mother gave me a lots of money, so we went to the bazaar and got ourselves some nice fireworks.

It has this triangle like thing that when you light, creates a great fountain of lights and sparks. Then there are the chakkars, you light them and they go round and round with colorful lights coming out from the end.

Happy Indian new year to everybody!

Do you think I am scared of rattlesnakes?

Did a quick trip to Palo Alto last week and stopped at the Pacheco Pass and San Luis Reservoir – color of the water was so blue, it was unreal.

Heard that there were a lot of rattlesnakes there. Do you think I am scared of the rattlesnakes?

Umm.. actually I am a little scared!

Spring Break 2007: Day 4 – Jet Skiing in Lake Havasu

Lake Havasu was the most fun! From the painted desert, we went directly to the Lake Havasu and stayed at the Nautical Inn, which is the only hotel with rooms right on the water.

It was a two room suite right on the water with a large balcony. There was a sofa bed that pulled out in one of the rooms and I quickly put my dibs on it! I love jumping on those beds!

In the morning, my mom and I put on our swimming suits and ran to the beach and started to build a little castle. The sand was a bit different, so I did some experimentation on how best to build a castle (more on that some other time). The water was a bit cool but it was 85 degrees hot and it felt nice.

We went to the place called Naked Turtle for lunch and had a really nice brunch and glass of pineapple juice. We were ready to hit the water. I had also heard about the famous London Bridge that was brought from London and reused in the Lake Havasu.

My dad suggested getting Jet skies, the large ones where all three of us can ride and I jumped with joy; yes, yes, I want to ride the jet ski. My dad found a place where they had those and we decided to go visit the London Bridge and then go jet skiing.

The London Bridge was, kind of disappointing. It didn’t look like anything special. In fact we have a beautiful bridge in Pasadena that looks so much better. Oh well – forget about the bridge, lets go on the Jet ski!

We went to the Crazy Horse campground and drove to the marine shop. They had these big, powerful jet skies and I was ready. The guy at the shop told us the basics and lowered it in the water. My dad got on first and was steering, I got on next and my mom pushed it and then jumped on.

We were on the water for a few minutes and the water was very choppy and I was SO SCARED! The fact that the water was cold didn’t help much either. My dad brought the jet ski right back and asked the marine shop guy, Dan, to take me for a ride instead. Later he told me that the only way to stabilize the jet ski was to make it go fast and he was hesitant in going very fast when I was so scared.

Dan put on some life west and we went zoooooooommmm…. I had SO MUCH FUN!

On the way back we took the scenic route and passed through some very beautiful spots. Lake Havasu Springs had a very nice river/lake wrapping around.

On the way back, we stopped somewhere and my mom took the most beautiful picture of me and the blue sky and an interesting formation. Here is a thumbnail, click for a large picture.

Spring Break 2007: Day 3 – Playing Freesbie in Painted Desert

After a day of gem hunting, and a night of gloating over the loot of stones and two gorgeous geodes, we went to the Painted Desert. The place was full of colors, the most interesting ones were the deep blue colored rocks.

We pulled over to admire the view and I found a frisbee that I had gotten with my Wendy’s kids meal a while ago and we just started to toss it around! The weather was perfect, sun was shining, the air was crisp and the view was out of this world and we were just running around taking it all in.

For a moment it felt like we were on an alien planet with strange landscape.

Then we went to the Sapphire trail where one can see the most of the blue colored rocks. The color was so intense and then on top of it, there was a layer of gray soft rock and then a layer of deep brown and the top layer was red. It really seemed like God had taken the time to carefully apply strokes of color to each layer.

Spring Break 2007: Day 2 – Looking for gems at the Petrified forest

Petrified forest was something else! There were these trees on the ground and they looked like regular brown tree that fell over and when you touch them, they are actually stones! Imagine that, a tree made out of stones, perfect in every detail. The bark, the ring, the spots, Amazing!

We also saw the petro-something drawings and “the newspaper rock”. It was just a huge stone with a lots of petrographs on it. We were joking that since it had a lot of pictures of animals, it must have been the sport section! Thank god, the newspapers are made with paper now; can you imagine if every morning, somebody drove to you house and threw a big rock on your front lawn!! Just kidding!

There was this man-woman sign on the rest rooms and my dad tried to convince me that the signs were really petrographs, drawn 6-700 years ago… Ha Ha..

And then we went to the gift shop and there were so many gems there! I picked out some geodes and got to pick a bunch of gems.

Now I have 23 gems, 2 geodes and 1 piece of petrified wood. One of the geodes has white crystals and other one has dark purple ones. I like them both.

Spring Break 2007: Day 1 – Sunset at the Grand Canyons.

It was a little cool when we got to the Grand Canyons, but we went in to our cabin, which was right in the park, and snuggled in. The next morning, I got the big picture and it was really really HUGE! The sight of Grand Canyons – It was bigger and deeper then I thought it would be.

A part of it looked like the battleship ready to fight some aliens and other part looked like a top of a temple. We went around the rim, had a nice lunch at the Arizona Room and then went back to the west rim for the Sunset.

It was really very beautiful; there were the colors of the sunset and then there were the colors of the canyon walls.

It was getting kind of cold, so sneaked in to the gift shop and got myself a key chain with a compass and a thermometer! pretty nice.

Improvised Sledding on Mt Baldy

Had a great visit to Mt. Baldy yesterday. It was a nice and warm sunny day and I wasn’t even sure there will be any snow there. My dad tried to tell me the white lines on the road was actually snow.. ha ha.. he is such a kidder!

We got to the ski lifts and I was a bit apprehensive about getting on those dangling chairs but as soon as I got on there and lowered the bars down, I started enjoying the ride. It was exhilarating for sure.

I looked around and there still was a sprinkle of snow on the ground and the area where people were practicing had a hard ice on it. My dad found a broken piece of a bucket there and in no time I was riding that piece of plastic and made it in to an improvised sled! It turned out to be a perfect sled, it had a curvature and ridges and moved so fast!

I think I was on the improvised-bucket-sled for a couple of hours, almost till the sun went down!

Mt. Baldy (real name Mt. San Antonio) is the highest peak in Los Angeles county. Wonder why is it called Mt. Baldy? Did you know that the peak of the Mt. Baldy was used in the famous experiment to calculate the speed of light? If I had known, I would have taken my laser gun with me!

Had and awesome trip to India

Had an awesome trip to India. I love visiting India: I of course get pampered a lot but that’s not why I like it there. There is just so much love that I feel there. Surrounded by all the relatives, my cousins and aunts and uncles and dida and dadi and I get along with them so wonderfully!

Tried out some new foods (loved “treat” candy from Cadbury) went to new places, learned a new language, watched a Bollywood movie Dhoom II, got some sparkley clothes, what more can you ask for?

It seemed a little different than last time when I went there too, I don’t remember so many new malls and so many fun things to do.

The flight is loooooooong, but I slept through most of it. I didn’t even feel jet lagged when I got back. In fact I was ready to go back to school the very next day!