Nothing can help me to understand that America is a country on the wheels better than drive along the long free way across the western part of US – the road that extends endlessly before you.

Along the road, we saw different scenes.

Sometimes, we passed the bridges in mountains (I-8 in Arizona)

Sometimes, we cross another road running to another direction

The mountains are always with us

and sometimes, we are winding in the mountains

The lands are green for some time

and most times, it is dots of greens with yellow lands

Sometimes we pass small villages,

But most times, it is just road after road

We passed deserts

and headed to big cities (Los Angeles)

But among all the differences, the key is, the road is always there, waiting for us to pass.

P.S. Here is the map of the trip.

Aspen is a nice town situated in the valley of Rocky Range. Aspen airport, a small airport (the smallest I saw in US, although it is still relatively larger than Nanyang Airport or Luoyang Airport) is very cute. That is the reason I choose to update the photos of Aspen airport first, when I am trying to upload the photos to my blog.

Not like large airport, they manually handling of luggage.

I am now in Hotel Jerome. With the antique light on the desktop, and piano from Colorado Public Radio (the housekeeper always tune to this channel and open the radio when they finished the house cleaning), it is a pretty quiet and “prestigious” night (This is the word Wendy learn from Amy in Arlington. From then, we used the word prestigious on almost anything that is nice).

The Trip

This is the longest trip I had in the States. The board meeting in July 7, 2010 in Menlo Park is pre-determined, and there is no way to move it within two months, and the date of Fortune Brainstorm conference at July 22, 2010 is also set. It caused some challenges for me to arrange my schedule. There is about two weeks in the middle of the two important meetings. Typically, I will send about a week in the silicon valley meeting varies companies for both business and learning experience, but there is still another week in the middle. It does not make sense economically and logistically to fly back and forth between the two countries within a week. (I did fly back and forth in two weeks to attend the eBay Global Leadership Meeting, and the Leadership eBay workshop in 2006). So I took personal vacation from July 14 to July 21.

Personal Adventure

In the 7 days of personal trip, Wendy and I drive a Toyota Carmy leaving Los Angeles, went few hundreds miles in the west US, and back to LAX. Here is the trip:

• LAX to Las Vegas via I-105, I-605, CA-60 and a long way on I-15.
• Las Vegas to Hoover Dam via a short drive on US-93
• Via US-93, and I-40 arriving at Williams, AZ (briefly passed Seligman, AZ)
• Via NV-64 arriving at Grand Canyon
• Getting back via NV-64 and US-89 (really beautiful road) to Flagstaff.
• Continued on US-89A to Sedona, and stayed in Cottonwood, AZ for one night
• Go to Phoenix, AZ via AZ-260 to I-17.
• Used AZ-101 to bypass Phoenix, and went all way to San Diego that day, via US-8, via Yuma, and El Centra. Loved the desert section, and inspected few days along the way by Border Patrol
• Spent two nights in San Diego because we really love it, and then drive along I-5 and CA-1 to Los Angeles.

Here is the route map. Recommended for people who have few days in the west US.

View Larger Map

The Way Back

Tomorrow, I am flying out from Aspen to Denver, and then to San Francisco, and then to Shanghai. The schedule looks like this:

25JUL 0800 ASE 0845 DEN UA6742 (45 min)

25JUL 1000 DEN 1146 SFO UA415 (2 hours 46 mins)

25JUL 1349 SFO 1725 SHA UA857 (12 hours 36 mins)

It takes 18 hours and 25 minutes to get back to my home, sweet home in Shanghai.

Acknowledge

Again, I’d like the thank everyone in the Silicon Valley and in Aspen who spent the time to host and talk with me. It is always inspiring to travel to the States, and meet with different people, and get new ideas.

At the end of the day, trips are all about people. I visited Hollywood in Los Angeles. Obviously, I still don’t have any idea about that place and industry. If someone just arrives at the Silicon Valley without talking with the people there, it must be a boring experience. At least there is a strip in Hollywood that people can have some fun finding their favorite star on the street. There is no such amusement in the Silicon Valley. You have to be there, attending meetings, visiting companies, and talk with people to get the idea. The only movie studio I know is Pixar, but I didn’t find their address, and I don’t think there is any way to visit without trespassing. So, thanks for making the trip possible.

I am leaving Los Angeles airport for Aspen, Colorado.

A small aircraft, flying to a small town, from a very big city, and a noisy world.

Update

Arrived at Aspen, CO. What a small but decent airport. It IS a very nice town. On the whole way from LAX to ASE, I was thinking about the difference between places – the warm and green west coast, the desert like Arizona, and Nevada, and finally the green and beautiful Coloroda again. Why is that?

Travel helps people to understand the world better.

Here are some changes I made during the last few days of west US trip.

1. Urbanization. California is really urbanized, but in US, there are places like Arizona, and Nevada which rural lands separate cities, just like China.

2. Whether people obey rules is not dependent on which country the person is, it is based on the overall environment – economical and demographic. I saw Las Vegas is like Shanghai – there are more people stop you and send you cards with naked girls and phone numbers than people selling fake Rolex on Huaihai Road. People horn in busy streets in Los Angeles, just as Shanghai.

3. Small towns are preferred. Sedona and San Diego have unpredictably jumped to the top of the favorite city list for Wendy and I. I San Diego is not small at all, but it does give people the small town feeling.

4. Los Angeles airport is not clean, the traffic is bad, and it is so big and hard to commute – just like Shanghai. It is the size of the city that makes the two cities similar. The problem of large cities is common to both cities. For a city with 19 million residents crowded in a small area, it takes effort to keep it clean and working.

5. Parking is hard and expensive in big cities like Los Angeles, just like Shanghai. Parking is easy and free in cities like Sedona, and most small cities in Silicon Valley, just like most cities in China.

It turned out I found much more similarity between China and USthan differences during the trip. I agree that travel makes better world citizen.

American cities are mostly clean, well planned, well organized, and rule-enforced. I saw the quiet small towns like San Francisco, Palo Alto, Seattle. Even in New York, I see the characteristic of American cities – in certain neighborhood, the style of the buildings – especially the heights of the buildings are pretty similar. In smaller cities like Cappuccino, CA, any small change in the exterior of the house needs approval from neighbors, or the city. I never experienced so much constrain about a building in the America. After watching nice community with decent houses, well cut grasses, and trees, it started to be a little bit …. hmmm… boring.

Las Vegas is the exception

I was completely impressed by the exaggerated buildings of Las Vegas. How can they practice their imagination in such a big scale. Look at the New York New York hotel, which we stayed on our fist night. From the outside, it is a complex consists of all the land markers of New York! They even have a big roller coaster surrounding the building with people screaming days and nights. We stayed in MGM Grand, a hotel with 5000+ hotel rooms. What?! Everyday, I have one sentence in my mind when I was there: “Las Vegas doesn’t have a city committee to approve their building designs.”

There is another city like Las Vegas: Shanghai

In Las Vegas, I was excited. It is like an adventure park – the whole city. The smell in the air, the energy of the people, and the nice restaurants, and services… everything reminds me of another city: Shanghai.

At Las Vegas, I started to understand why so many people from the States feel excited about Shanghai. I lived in that city for 15 years, but I never feel that excited. Why? I just realized it shares something in common with Las Vegas: the wildness, and the energy.

The skyscrapers in Shanghai are the carrier of the most crazy architects in the world. They pour their imagination onto that land which is eager to get the most modern, and cutting-edge designs. People don’t worry about whether the new building can fit into the skyline of the city or not, since the whole city has already been a big mass of mixture between the west, and the east, the old, and the new. Why bother to constrain yet another building? Look at any of the buildings in Shanghai, and think about moving it to somewhere in the world. Paris? San Francisco? Maybe the only place that people will accept buildings as tall as WFC, or as strange as the Bund Center, is Las Vegas. Even people in New York will be concerned.

Talking about New York, I have an architect friend who designed many buildings and areas in Manhattan. He complained that if the top 10 most favorite buildings/architects in New York were built today, 7 of them will not pass the current city planning code. Those buildings cannot get a building permit include Brooklyn Bridge, and Empire Building. Since people care their skyline so much, they started to be conservative of any change, and when the “new land” becomes a historical site, they don’t want to change anything.

That is the beauty of new land like Shanghai, and Las Vegas. Just build new things! The skyline has not been widely accepted yet, so build, build, build! Architects in Shanghai started to warn people that don’t be over loose about the control over what building can be built in that city, since “foreign architects will use Shanghai has the test field for the buildings that cannot be built everywhere in this world”. He is correct, and that is the reality of Shanghai today.

Shanghai is spiritually similar with Las Vegas. It is not about gambling, it is about wildness, and imagine nation. To better define Shanghai, I find it a combination of the spirit of Las Vegas in the scale as big as Los Angeles.

Arrived at San Diego from Sedona, AZ. It was pretty long trip, but Wendy and I was excited about the few hours on road, especially when we see the few miles of desert at the border of Mexico.

My Impression of US Cities

As anyone, before really setting foot to a place, we have some fixed impressions about it. It may comes from TV series, movie, or a photo. People always make mistakes about the impression.

I thought Las Vegas was just about few streets with some big hotels. I was completely wrong. It is a huge city! From the entrance of I-15, the lights of the cities look like a sea!

My impression about San Diego was also few Mexican style houses, but it turned out San Diego is a modern city with the feeling of Seattle, WA. It is actually the 8th largest city in population in U.S. I now know it is much bigger than Seattle.

From Summit of Summer to Normal Temperature

The outside temperature changes dramatically today. In noon, near Phoenix, it was as high as 113 °F (45 °C), and at night, in San Diego, it is as low as 66°F(18°C).

Travel by car is the best way to learn about geography. The high mountain (called Peninsular Ranges) separate the humid and cool wind (in winters, warm wind) from the ocean. The worlds on the east and west side of the range are completely different, just like the Himalayas separated the comfortable lands in India and the tough climate in Tibet. When you travel, you experience the two world within just few hours. The highest point of the road is 4181 feet at Crestwood Summit (picture), and the lowest point is few feet below the sea level somewhere near El Centro.

I will write more about the very “unplanned”, “stay where I like” style of my trip in the future.

I am a big fan of the Pixar movie, Cars – the story of a race car, and the historic route 66, the American’s mother road, or the main road.

The movie is a very decent, and thoughtful work with the thought of the impact of modern, and fast life, symbolized by Interstate 40 (I-40), and the old-good-sweet time symbolized by route 66, on the life of the people (like the cars in Radiation Springs town).

Wendy and I was on I-40, and Route 66 yesterday.

It was completely not a planned trip. But it turned out we were on the highway crossing California to Nevada, and finally arrived at Arizona. Driving at 102°F in the middle of the desert, when we finally enter the area with trees, grasses, and mountains, I find out the signs to historic route 66 along the highway.

Obviously, the shape of the curved Route 66, and the straight I-40, and the Grand Canyon-like mountains reminded me of the movie cars.

Although Wendy don’t enjoy to leave highway as much as I do, I finally pulled out at a small town called Seligman, AZ. We bought some water, ice cream, and one of the big Route 66 sign in the local super market. Outside the market were many old fashioned store – that type of signs you see in old American movies (including Cars). From the parking area of the super market, we saw cars running as fast as light in the I-40 not far away. On the current Route 66? You can make U-turn as you wish.

When I am at hotel, I did some research, and surprisingly find my intuition was right. Seligman, the two with just 495 people living there, is one of the key inspiration of the Pixar movie Cars. John Lasseter has said in interviews that the town of Radiator Springs in the Pixar film Cars is loosely based on Seligman, although from the name, and location, the town Radiation Springs in the movie is more like Peach Springs on Route 66.

I thoroughly enjoyed the moment of peace, the icecream, and the history of route 66 in the small town of Seligman.