The SV Marathon expo was on Nov 3rd, 2007 (Saturday) at the Hilton in downtown San Jose. The Motley-Crew (oops I mean the Mountain View group - Kiran, Gurpreet, Karthik, Coach Martina, and myself) had decided that we would carpool from Landells school in Mountain View (our usual stomping grounds). We all got there around 10:15 am as planned - that was the last thing that went according to plan!
So, we all get into the car and get settled - Kiran was driving. Then someone says - 'So, do we have directions on how to get there?' A deafening silence issues and one can hear crickets chirp!
'Well, Kiran, you are the designated driver - so we thought you would have them' followed by 'Why don't you have GPS - after all, you are a pre-IPO VMWare employee' and then, 'I thought Martina would have the GPhone prototype being that she works for Google and all', and then 'We'll figure it out as we go along' (kind of sums up our marathon season :-)).
The thing you have to realize is that Kiran is a Formula 1 driver wannabe (one can spend hours trying to figure out his theory of how one should actually speed up on a winding exit ramp with posted speeds of 25 mph - something about centripetal or centrifugal forces) and he drives his car like a Ferrari (of course barring the minor problem that it is actually a Toyota Corolla). He gunned the engine (in as much as you can gun the engine on a Corolla) and sped out of the parking lot tyres screeching (OK, I made that bit up).
So, we decide that we will take the 280 freeway and it should take us there. Gurpreet has a sudden idea - let's call Sathya (our mentor) and ask him for directions. So, the call is made, and we have to take the Vine/Almaden exit and then a few turns later - Bada Bing, Bada Boom - expo, here we come! Easy enough right?
Not quite - Kiran 'Schumacher' Kamath speeds by the exit so fast that we miss it. 'I guess, we can turn around at the next exit and take 280 North to the Vine exit'; 'Well, there is no such exit in the other direction'. More frantic calling ensues to Sathya. Meanwhile, Kiran has taken some random exit per some one's direction. Finally, we make the one sensible decision for the day - we stop to ask for directions (on the phone though - still, no mean task in a car with 4 men and a lone woman! I mean, Men and asking for directions? Didn't Martina know that we men all have pre-wired inherent GPS systems with global maps in our brains with a fail-safe compass based navigation scheme as backup? :-)).
Anyhoo - Sathya is summoned - cross-streets are given - and after much more 'Your left; No, I mean the other left' and near fisticuffs/strangulation between some of the parties involved, we finally get to the Expo and park.
You see, all major odysseys need to have a worthwhile goal at the end - that makes the tough journey and overcoming obstacles worth it. The SV Expo however, was certainly not in that category - to sum it up in one word - 'Underwhelming' !! I mean, you can't really call something that takes up all of one ballroom in a hotel, an Expo can you? There were like 10 vendor stalls and a pretence of a line to pick up the race packet. Of course, this being Silicon Valley and all, it was so high-tech that we had not been emailed our bib numbers in advance; so, we had to go look at notices stuck on the wall with names and bib numbers (brought back unpleasant memories of looking at examination results and grades in school!). So, it looked like there were about 900-950 full marathoners registered and about the same number of half-marathoners. The Chicago Marathon veterans in our group (Kiran, Gurpreet, Martina) snickered derisively - I mean 2000 runners and a 1 room expo? Karthik and I didn't take this lying down though (after all, this was our official marathon for the year and a home one at that) - 'Well, at least you'll get to finish this one, and hopefully have enough fluids on the course!' - ouch (the Chicago Marathon fiasco was after all fresh in every one's mind).
We had budgeted 1.5 hours for the expo - you know, we did really have a plan (get to the expo by 10:40, leave around 12:30 to get to the Carbo Load lunch at 1 pm etc.). 20 minutes after getting there, we're already ready to leave! We run into Raghav (the Boston Qualifier from Team ASHA this year also know as 'The Kenyan in Indian clothing'). In order to kill time, we potter around for a bit. I pretend to be vaguely interested in the sales-pitch being thrown at me for some online health-point allotting website (a really sound business plan from the looks of it - just the kind that attracts tons of VC funding like the current crop of social networking Web 2.0 startups :-)). A couple of group pictures ensue (with the objective being to induce an optical illusion in the picture so that the expo actually looks bigger!).
The only saving grace from all this is the guy handing out the samples of Popped (not fried or baked!) potato chips - those were delicious and helped Gurpreet get over a hunger pang (when does he not have one :-)). Martina says 'Starbucks' - of course, since we all live in a 'Starbucks World', there was one right inside the hotel (and I guess if you missed it, across the street, down the road at the next block etc.). We managed to kill some time over there while Raghav imbibed the nectar (or poison depending on point of view :-)) and decided to head back to Castro Street (Mountain View) to congregate at - you guessed it - another Starbucks (since Martina does not drink coffee at Starbucks locations without ambiance and elevator music (this one certainly had none)).
We get to Starbucks in Mountain View where Kiran has another adventure trying to parallel park ('I've never lived in a big city and needed to do this') - maybe this wasn't part of his driving test? I guess you don't really need to parallel park in the F-1 circuit (unless you count crashing your car against the barrier and coming to rest parallel to it, parking!) We wait for a bit and are about to leave for the carbo-load when Martina saunters in. Some more time is spent chit-chatting and we then move over to the lunch venue.
The Carbo-load lunch is at Pasta-? (or as Gurpreet calls it - Pasta Kyon!). We get in and sit at the table and surprisingly (by ASHA and Indian standards) there are quite a few people on time. We get settled, wait a while for more people to show up (and the coaches), a few speeches and last minute words of advice are doled out, bread is served (the only thing served for the first hour plus :-)), more bread is consumed, and finally the pasta shows up. It's decent and people dig in - however, Gurpreet only eats one plate as apparently this is not as good as the previous carbo-loads (where he approached 'Carbo-Overload' with 2-3 plates :-)).
And so ends an interesting day, which by all means should have been dull and boring - but as I have learned, no day can be boring when one is in the company of the Motley-Crew!
No comments:
Post a Comment