Sunday, May 08, 2005
USA Trip - Episode 1
After a nine-hour flight, we reached Frankfurt at 7:45 AM (German time). Frankfurt is a huge, grand and a beautiful airport. We took a hot shower (incidentally it cost us 12 Euros – approximately Rs.700), and after a five-hour halt, left by a United Airlines flight for Washington DC at 12:45 PM (German time). It was also nearly a 9 hours flight, of which 85% was over the Atlantic Ocean. The flight was comfortable. We met many Europeans and, as usual, many Indians. I took breaks every 2 hours on both these long haul flights and walked in the aircraft to keep the body/legs in motion. We had a grandstand view of Atlantic Ocean off & on. It was a great feeling at that height.
We landed at Washington DC at 3:45 PM (US Time) on 6th May’05, and went through very stringent immigration and customs checks. We expected a two-hour ordeal but it got over in less than half an hour. We took a chance and boarded an earlier flight to Roanoke (Virginia) (5:25 PM flight instead of the 10:45 PM flight that we were booked in). The airline staff was extremely polite, cordial & helpful. We reached Roanoke by 6:30 PM and were received by our elder daughter Uma. It was a great experience flying across half the world for over 19 hours (flying time). To our pleasant surprise we were delighted to see our luggage also being unloaded from the same flight .As per rules it was to be loaded in the later flight that we were booked.
From the airport we were driven in a Honda Civic car at an average speed of 65 miles/hour on a fantastic interstate highway. We observed that there was excellent traffic discipline by drivers of all types of vehicles on the road. Route marking along the highway was excellent & very helpful. What a contrast to Indian roads and drivers! We reached Blacksburg town (45 miles from the airport) in less than 45 minutes. The countryside although the drive was undulating with tree lines, valleys with crests and troughs & thick green foliage all through It was extremely a treat to see well-maintained shoulders of the road. The population density, we observed, was low, maybe that is the reason for such cleanliness. We need to learn a lot from this activity of maintaining and keeping the environment & roads clean. Perhaps it will take a long time for us to reach this level! Incidentally when we reached Blacksburg it was still daylight (8:30 PM).
After a hot shower, we had dinner and hit the sack. We were quite tired and jetlag was catching up. (We had crossed 5 time zones) We woke up the next morning around 7:30 AM, had breakfast, went back sleep and got up at 4:30 PM (A jetlag activity). Our younger daughter, Vidya, joined us from Singapore on the 7th.
Our daughter’s house is a two-bedroom apartment and overlooks the Blue Ridge ranges, which are part the Appalachian Mountains. The entire area is very scenic, full of trees, very serene and calm. The apartments in the US are self-contained in all respects- gas, dishwasher, microwave oven, centrally heated/ air-conditioned environment, copious water supply etc.
The clothes are washed, rinsed and dried at a community laundry, which is 100 yards away. This is fully automatic and gets activated by dropping the required coins in a slotting machine.
