My West Coast trip

It was Friday, 12th September, 2008. It was 1 pm. It was almost the beginning of what was going to be a very good vacation for me, my wife Sweta, my daughter Haley, my friend Prasanna, his wife Preeti and their daughter Paridhi. We were getting late. We had to fly from Richmond, VA to San Francisco, CA. We packed our baggage in the trunk of my car. Toyota Camry’s trunk is big but not big enough to accommodate baggage of six Indians. The passengers had to keep some bags on their lap. One would think of reengineering an intermediate car to adjust six people inside it. But we did not have to do that. Two of us – the daughters – were infants. As per the Federal laws, infants under 1 year should be seated in rear facing car seats. In our case, one lucky kid got a chance to sit in the car seat and the other had to sit in her mom’s lap. A cop might not like a kid not sitting in the car seat. But we were prepared for confronting it. The moms along with the kids sat in the rear side and the dads sat at the front. I was going to drive the car to the airport. It took about 25 minutes for us to reach the departure gate of Delta on Richmond International Airport. Ladies and kids along with all the baggage were dropped at the gate. Prasanna and I went to the economy parking lot, parked our car there in the slot A461 and took a shuttle back to the terminal where ladies were waiting for us. Our itinerary was Richmond to San Francisco via New York for going and Las Vegas to Richmond via New York for return. Because of our mistake at the time of booking, the ladies had a slightly different itinerary for going. Theirs was Richmond to SFO via Atlanta (rather than New York). Their Atlanta flight was at 3pm whereas our New York flight was at 5pm.

We went inside the terminal near the Delta kiosk. We met my friend Nimitt and Aziz. They had come to see off their mother and mother in law respectively who were traveling to India via New York through Delta only. Their flight to New York was scheduled at 2:30pm. We stood in the long queue in front of the Delta kiosk for about an hour. It was almost 2:30 by then. We requested the representative there to make an adjustment so that we all can travel together in the same flight rather than ladies traveling in a different flight from that of us. She could not do that because there were no seats available in the New York to San Francisco flight or Atlanta to San Francisco flight. So after taking the boarding passes, we hurriedly went to the security checking because the ladies had to fly to Atlanta at 3. After completing the security check, we reached the Delta boarding gate at 2:50. The Delta representative at the boarding gate refused to let the ladies go in the flight as the flight doors were already closed. Upon our explaining the matter, he issued two new boarding passes for the ladies in the Richmond to New York and New York to San Francisco flights. The boarding pass for NY to SFO had ‘seat requested’ written on it which means that the passenger is in a waiting list. A passenger with such a boarding pass can get a seat if one becomes vacant due to last minute cancellation or last minute class upgrade. The 2:30 pm flight to New York had been delayed and scheduled to depart at 4:30 pm due to bad weather in JFK. And we all got clubbed in this 4:30pm flight. So we six and Nimitt and Aziz’s mother and mother in law respectively traveled together in the same flight to New York (JFK). What a coincidence!

After reaching JFK, we learnt that the waiting list number for Preeti and Sweta were 5 and 6 respectively. The flight was also delayed by 1.5 hours. There is a similarity between JFK and Ahmedabad railway station. They both are equally crowded. The kids really enjoyed JFK more than anyone there. Haley in particular was running everywhere providing enough entertainment to the tired staff of JFK and anxious passengers. We tried to convince one lady in Delta staff of the importance of the ladies and the kids going with us. Prasanna thinks he is very good in convincing ladies. And he finally prove that when the lady came to the corner where we were sitting with heads down and called us to the kiosk where she confirmed the ladies’ seats. It reminded me some of the most memorable moments of my life with Indian Railways when I would be mostly with waiting list ticket. I would try to convince the TT to confirm my seat and eventually would fail to do so. I wish Prasanna was there with me at all those occasions. But anyway it wouldn’t have worked because the TTs in India are never ladies. With the ladies’ seats getting confirmed, our final hurdle was crossed. The only problem was that our seats were not together. As soon as we boarded the plane, I started working with the other passengers beside me to exchange their seats with those of Sweta and others. I succeeded in getting Preeti, Sweta and myself together. But before I could get Prasanna with us, the airhost made me take my seat as the plane had already started to the run way. The seat exchange became possible because the passengers around me were all singles. Unlike the Indians, American people somehow prefer traveling alone. If we had been in an Indian flight where most of the people would be with their families and friends, such a seat exchange would have been impossible. So we three with the kids sat together and Prasanna, unfortunately, sat a couple of dozen rows in front of us. Later on, it turned out to be that he was very fortunate. In the entire journey of 7 hours, the two kids became cranky one after another and cried so much that not only us but the people around us also could not sleep at all. Prasanna, healthy distance away from the noise epicenter, slept like he had never slept in his life before. Our kids normally behave judiciously at all occasions. But it was so congestive in the economy class chamber of the plane that even the adults with seats were struggling to lay their bodies in a comfortable pose to get one hour unbroken sleep. We can’t complain the kids without seats.

We arrived at the San Francisco International Airport at about 1:30am local time which was off course 4:30am per the origin time. One of the most fascinating facts about USA is that it is so big that cities on its west coast are three hours behind in time from the cities on the east coast. One of the 4 checked in baggage of ours had still not appeared on the carousel. It was Prasanna’s bag. He went in the baggage claim department of Delta. After a little research, they found that his bag could not make to the flight from JFK to SFO and it would arrive in the next flight which was after 12 hours. Meanwhile, I called our hotel front desk and asked the person where on the airport I could get the courtesy shuttle to the hotel. He said that the courtesy shuttle didn’t run from 1am to 5am; that it ran every half an hour in the regular hours. If our flight had not delayed, we would have caught a shuttle. With three checked in baggage and three hand bags we went to the exit of the terminal. We asked the ladies to wait just inside the terminal as it was unexpectedly cold outside. Prasanna and I took a few bags and went to the taxi area which was about 50 meters from the exit. A few cabs came near us and asked our destination in much the same way as that of Mumbai taxi drivers or Ahmedabad auto rickshaw drivers do. But they all vanished like fumes upon knowing our destination. Finally, a cab stopped near us. An apparently Chinese person came out. I must say I can not distinguish between Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese people. He must be one of these three. Upon knowing our destination – the hotel Travelodge – which was just 3-4 miles away from the Airport, he was a bit hesitant at first. But finally he started putting our baggage in the trunk. “Hurry up”, he said. He wanted to finish this trip as fast as possible. We said there were a few more passengers with us and shouted to call the ladies. They came out of the terminal with the kids and remaining baggage. The Chinese had not expected this and stuttered “Only 4 in the taxi”. I said we were 4 only; the kids would sit on lap. He was so shocked that he could not argue with me. We tried to fit the remaining bags in his humble car trunk. Luckily, we were one bag short. But still one hand bag was refusing to go in. The kimkartavyamoodh (not sure of what to do) Chinese shook his head and murmured something negative. Understanding the criticality of the situation, Prasanna, hurriedly came to help me and somehow managed to squeeze the last one in. We arrived at our hotel in 7 minutes. We paid $13 to the driver and he vanished instantly. The location of the hotel was very good. We had reserved a room with two queen size beds for two nights at the rate of $56 per night. He applied 14% SFO specific tax on top of the total. I asked him to take it off and showed our readiness to pay with cash. But he could not understand the logic behind it. So I gave up. We were allotted room number 763 which was almost a quarter of a mile away from the front desk. We took the hotel trolley and placed all our bags on top it. Prasanna drove it to our room. It was almost 3am when we entered the room. The kids were still awake. We examined the room and finally switched on the heater and went to sleep.

We woke up late in the morning even by Pacific Standard Time. We felt fresh as we had slept till noon per the Eastern Standard Time. Prasanna and I got ready first and went to the front desk from where we had to take the hotel shuttle to the airport. We had reserved a Fox Rent-a-car mini van which had to be picked up from the airport. Shuttle was to come in 10 minutes to take us to the airport. Meanwhile we complained a few things about our room to the front desk person. We also checked with him how to reach the car rental section of the airport. We learnt that shuttle would drop us to a predetermined terminal from where we would have to take an Air Train to go to the Car Rentals. This would take at least an hour. We asked him if there was any other rental car company around the hotel area so that we wouldn’t have to go to the Airport to pick the car up. Anyway our reservation with Fox was a courtesy reservation. He said that the closest car rental company from the hotel was at the airport only. Before our vacation began, I had searched on Google Maps to find out if there was any car rental company in the vicinity of our SFO accommodation. Then the maps had shown multiple companies like Hertz, Budget, etc. But I trusted the front desk person more than the computer. The shuttle arrived and we took seats in the front behind the driver. Prasanna again asked the same question to the driver to make sure that the airport was the closest place to get a rental car. But the driver had a different view from the front desk person. He said that the Fox rental car company was at a walkable distance from there. We stepped down the shuttle immediately and started walking in the direction given by him. He again met us on our way, honked at us and pointed to the direction. Finally, we reached the Fox office. From our room which itself was at a distance from the front desk, Fox was nearer. We told the lady at the counter that we had reserved the car at the airport location of Fox and if we could get a car from there. She asked for our confirmation number and checked it in her system. After a few minutes, she disclosed that the location at which we were standing in front of her was the same as the airport location where we had reserved the car. If we had gone to the airport and taken Fox shuttle to go to the Fox facility at the airport, it would have brought us there only. And in that case, Fox would have charged an additional amount of $15 for the airport transportation. The price at which we had reserved the car had an implicit airport transfer fee. Since we had come to the location on our own, the lady waived that fee. We were delighted as our decision to stay in Travelodge in South San Francisco saved both money and time for the car rental part. We asked for two car seats for the two kids. She went in and got them for us. We got Chrysler Town & Country minivan with two car seats for $60. We happily drove it to the motel room where the ladies were ready and waiting for us. After a few minutes, we all left for SFO downtown. We had taken Chintan’s GPS with us. The first destination we entered in it was the Golden Gate Bridge. Prasanna was driving the car. The SFO downtown was unique compared to the other downtowns we had seen. The houses on both sides of the road were unlike the common American houses you would find anywhere in the country. It seemed that the houses were built in Chinese architecture. In fact, we saw a lot of Chinese people strolling on the roads. We tried to imagine how Chinese the actual Chinatown area would look like which was supposed to be somewhere else. But it was evident that San Francisco had a huge Chinese population. In about half an hour, we were at the Golden Gate Bridge. We did not stop there but instead continued driving on it and crossed the bridge. The bridge connects San Francisco with Marin County. As soon as we crossed the bridge, we read an exit sign “Vista point” or visitors point. We took that exit to immediately enter the crowded place where the tourists were taking the photographs. With a little effort, we managed to get the parking. It was 12:30pm. It was rather cold outside and windy as well. Haley was sleeping. Sweta sat inside the car with Haley. Prasanna, Preeti and I came out. I took enough pictures of the couple in different poses and at different points with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. SFO downtown - particularly the Financial District was visible from there. After their photo session of 20 minutes was over, Preeti returned to the car and relieved Sweta. Prasanna did the same job of photography for us as I did for them. When we all returned to the car, Haley had woken up. We took her out with a shawl draped over her. We took a few quick snaps with her with off course the bridge in the background and returned to the car. Prasanna and I went for a quick walk on the bridge. The ladies with the kids remained seated in the car. The vista point was on slightly higher level than the bridge. We descended from the parking to step on the sidewalk of the Golden Gate Bridge. We walked there for about half a mile and took about turn from the first support pillar. I read an Indian person’s name officially carved on the pillar. I don’t remember that name. I wish I could know how the Indian is associated with the world famous Golden Gate Bridge. I must say that the Golden Gate Bridge was not as spectacular as I had expected it to be. I think it is a hyped place for tourism. It is the second longest suspension bridge. But I guess it should not be enough to attract tourists. In fact, Delaware Memorial Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge are better than the Golden Gate in appealing the eyes. I was thirsty and went to the welcome area and had some water at the fountain. I thought the SFO water was nearly as good as Indian water and advised others to have a few sips. Others were feeling hungry. I had upfront searched for the vegetarian restaurants in the three cities we were planning to visit in our vacation. The one that I had found in SFO was called New Ganges. Even though I had its address and GPS also confirmed it, we called the restaurant and confirmed the address one more time. I also asked the hotel owner if it was indeed 100% vegetarian and if he could prepare Jain food for me. I got a positive response. We started heading for New Ganges. This time I was driving the car. We had to cross the Golden Gate Bridge again to return to the SFO downtown.

We got a parking spot 0.2 miles before New Ganges. I did the parallel parking with the help of Prasanna. I have a driving experience of 30k miles. But I still don’t know parallel parking. Asking the ladies to remain in the car, Prasanna and I started walking down the street to locate our food destination. We finally found it with the owner giving directions on the phone. But the place was rather far away from our parking place. We walked back to the parking, took out our car, tried to search for another parking spot near the restaurant. With some efforts, we found one.

The restaurant from inside looked like someone’s living room rented for commercial purposes. We got two high chairs for the kids near our table and started looking at the menu. After a while, the owner came to take the order. He was looking at me with a pen and a small order book in his hand.

“We need one Mutter Paneer, one…”, said Prasanna.
The guy interrupted him instantly, “One by one please. Let me be finished with this gentleman”. Prasanna was shocked with the stiffness of his voice. He told us that ‘the per head bill’ should be more than $10 and total for a group of 4 or more should be $50 or more. I had never heard such a nonsense condition in any of the thousands of different restaurants I might have visited. I selected one sabji out of the several ones that he could make Jain.
“How much spicy should it be?” he asked.
“A little bit”, I said.
“In the scale of 1 to 10, how much spicy do you want it?”
“You can make it medium spicy”.
“Listen to what I am saying. In the scale of 1 to 10, how much spicy do you want it?”
It was time for me to be shocked now. Was he a primary school teacher in the past?
“Se..v..en” I stuttered.
“Do you want ghee on the chapattis?”
“Does it cost anything extra?”
He stared at me for a second.
“Have you ever heard if ghee on the chapattis costs extra?”
This was enough to fire me.
“For that matter, I haven’t heard of a restaurant charging a minimum of $10 per person”.

I am not sure if he heard that statement. He turned to others and took their orders. After he was finished with everyone, he repeated the entire order one more time.

“Make sure my sabji is Jain and doesn’t get mixed up with others”.
“You have to trust me. You have already told me once and that is enough”, he continued with a big lecture. I did not care to hear it.
“Let the lunch come and let us finish it. After that I will teach him a lesson”. I thought. I did not want to quarrel with him and leave his place and search for another when we all were so hungry. I noticed that the owner was Muslim. “Why is he running a pure vegetarian restaurant?” I asked myself.

Meanwhile the kids had stepped down the high chairs and were running everywhere in the restaurant. I pulled Haley with a bit of anger. He saw that and said “Be polite with the kids. If kids don’t do mischief, who else will do it?” I let her run away. After a few minutes the kids were playing with an electric cable without our notice. He suddenly shouted and pointed to that, “Madame, you take care of your kids. It is going to be our liability if something happens to them”. I just wanted to get the hell out of this place asap.

The good thing about the restaurant was that they cooked the food afresh. They took a little longer to fulfill the order. But the food was really excellent. None of us had ever eaten such good food in any restaurants in USA. It took away half of our anger. The guy also had melted a lot. He gave us extra bottles of water and polythene bags. He also gave us the direction to the Crooked Street.

“Are you OK driving on the hilly roads?” he asked. I nodded wondering why he was asking such a question to a person who was a skilled driver with an experience 30k miles.

We left the restaurant for the Crooked St at about 3:30pm. As per his instructions, we went to the intersection of Van Ness Ave and Lombard St.

“Should I take left or right on Lombard”? I asked Prasanna. He did not know it either. Garmin GPS was not aware of any tourist attraction called “Crooked St”. I knew that some portion of Lombard St was called Crooked St. I took left turn and told Prasanna whenever in my life I had tried to make a guess, it had turned out to be wrong. We went for half a mile on Lombard but there was no sign of the Crooked St. We stopped at a gas station. Prasanna and Sweta went in and came back after a few minutes with a couple of ice creams and the information on Crooked St. My guess of taking left was indeed wrong. I should have taken right. I took a turn from the gas station to go to the left lane which would turn on Lombard in the opposite direction. As soon as I started turning, a small lady with a big car rapidly came behind our car and honked at me. She was in a hurry. I did not care it. After all I also pay taxes to the US govt. The road was not her alone. We started heading in the opposite direction on Lombard. After we crossed Van Ness, Lombard was very steep for next 1 mile. To make the matter worse, the traffic was very slow - maybe because of a number of stop signs. Every 3 seconds, the vehicles were stopping. The real problem was to push the car up on the slope after stopping. Climbing the slope is easier when you are running continuously. But when you stop and run, it becomes difficult. As soon as I released the break the car was running reverse because of the steep slope. I had to hurriedly press the accelerator to stop it going back and move it forward. At the time, I pressed the accelerator, it was making horrible noise. Twice or thrice I managed to survive from hitting the car behind me. That stupid driver was also driving very close to my car. I signaled him to keep more distance as my car was going back because of the slope. Some other cars on the road were also making that horrible noise. Ladies were scared and had already started chanting Navakaar mantra. I remembered the restaurant owner’s question of whether I could drive on hilly roads or not. Just then an idea clicked my mind. Normally, in an automatic transmission car, the left foot remains idle as one uses one’s right foot to press accelerator or break. There is no clutch off course. But it was the day for the left foot to prove its worthiness. I pressed my left foot on the break and kept my right foot on the accelerator. When I had to move forward, I would use my right foot to press the accelerator with the left foot still pressed on the break. And as the accelerator started giving some momentum to the car, I slowly released the break. This technique worked fine. I had a big sigh of relief because the slope had become steeper afterwards. Thus, we safely reached the peak of the Lombard where there was another stop sign. A train-like tourist bus was coming perpendicular to us. I was slightly on its way so I put the reverse gear and backed up my car a bit. The crooked street that we had seen in the pictures was visible on the other side of the intersection. We just had to descend one block and we would be on the crooked street. The tourist bus went away. I released the break but the car started moving back. It shouldn’t have happened because now I was on slightly flat peak of the slope. I quickly pressed the accelerator. But the car rolled back with higher force and hit a pedestrian trying to cross the road from behind my car. He got hurt badly. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to change the gears to “D”. It could have been a very costly mistake if the pedestrian was hurt really badly. (Prasanna later on told me that I had hit a pedestrian). It could have been a very costly mistake if I had hit the car behind. We crossed the street and we were in the Crooked Street. There were residences on both sides of the Crooked Street. I spared a thought for the daily nuisance of the tourists that the residents might be undergoing. Prasanna got out of the car to take a few photographs. We descended the Crooked Street in a minute. Prasanna soon came down by walk. With his help, I once again did the parallel parking near the foot of the Crooked Street. We spent about half an hour there and took some photographs. The sun was directly coming in to our eyes from the top of the Crooked Street. It was about 5pm. Our next destination was Fisherman Wharf. Prasanna drove the car this time. We parked the car in the pay parking area of the Wharf. It was cold and windy outside. The kids were sleeping. So the ladies remained seated in the car. Prasanna and I went out. I asked a parking helper why this place was special. He said, “You can see the Pier 39, see the sea lions there, have sea food and take a ferry to Alcatraz Island”. I was more interested in Alcatraz Island. He said that I could buy the tickets from Pier 33. Prasanna and I started towards Pier 33. We saw a few Indians on our way. We asked them the same question as the one I asked the parking helper. We got the same answer but in detail. They also informed us that the ferry to Alcatraz Island had been closed for some days. We then went to Pier 39. It was a ‘happening’ place with lots of restaurants and shops. Some shows were going on. It reminded me of the Short Pump Mall of Richmond. There we also saw hundreds of sea lions. On our way back to the parking, we bought two coffees for the ladies. We felt they had got cranky. Two cappuccino coffees in the cold would soothe them. We informed the ladies about the Pier 39 and the sea lions. “It is not that marvelous. But if you want you can pay a quick visit to it”, we said. But the ladies were too reluctant to come out. It was 7pm. We left Fisherman Wharf and headed to Coit tower. The Coit tower was on a hill top. From the hill top, we got a spectacular view of SFO downtown. We did not go up the Coit tower. Washington Monument was better than it. Unlike Fisherman Wharf, ladies too had come out to get a few snaps to place in their Orkut album. In Chintan’s GPS, we entered Union Square as the next destination. We were not sure of the specialty of Union Square. As soon as we reached the downtown, with the tall buildings around, GPS refused to give directions because of poor satellite reception. We roamed around Union Square but couldn’t quite locate any spots of special interest. The ladies were feeling tired sitting in the car. They wanted to go back to the hotel. It was 8:30pm. We had one more place to cover in our list. It was Financial District. But because of the ladies’ demand, we skipped it and headed back to the hotel. “However good the Financial District may be, it will not be as stupendous as Manhattan”, we convinced ourselves. It was 9 and we had stopped at a gas station a few blocks away from our hotel. We refilled the tank and also bought some snacks for us. We dropped the ladies at the room and went to Fox office to return the car. We had rented the car for just 12 hours. We asked the agent if he could charge us only a proportionate rate rather than the pre-decided whole day rent. He refused to do so. But we were not unhappy as we anyway had got a good deal on the car. We straightaway went to the hotel front desk from where we took a shuttle to the airport. We found that the shuttle did not belong to our hotel alone. Rather it was owned in a partnership with other nearby hotels. The shuttle took us to Holiday Inn and Best Western to pick up other customers before it finally took all of us to the airport. We got down at Delta’s gate and went inside the terminal to Delta’s baggage claim office. Prasanna’s missing bag had arrived. He showed its baggage claim sticker to the officer and then we took the bag and again came back to the hotel shuttle service pick up area. While we were waiting for our shuttle, an Afro-American lady adjacent to us started talking with me. I learnt that she had moved to SFO from Brooklyn. The shuttle came and we finally returned to the room where the thepalas and puris were waiting for us. We went to sleep early as we had to take an early morning flight the next day.

The alarm was set to 6am in my cell phone. Prasanna awakened me and asked me why the alarm had still not buzzed. I told him that it was only 5:45 and placed the blanket on my face to avoid the light coming into my eyes from the bulb Prasanna had switched on. Although it was almost 9am EST, I was still feeling sleepy. But Prasanna awakened everybody as he felt it was late. He and I are opposite in this sense. If we have to catch a flight, he will start getting edgy 3 hours before the time whereas I will take it very casually until the last moment. He asked me to hurry up and I asked him to relax. I was the last one to get ready. It was 6:20 and I was still in the hotel room. Prasanna and Preeti had taken most of the luggage to the front desk and were waiting for us as well as the shuttle. We had decided the previous day to take the 6:20 shuttle because the next 6:50 shuttle would make us late in Prasanna’s view. My phone started ringing. It was off course Prasanna.

“Hurry up, dude, the shuttle has arrived”.
“We are on our way. It is difficult to run with these bags. We will be there in 2 minutes”.

After 1 minute, he again called me.

“Hey, we are leaving. The driver is refusing to wait for you”.

I ran with all my energy and just showed my face to the driver from a distance. He stopped seeing me coming. Sweta was following me at a distance apart. We made it just in time. The driver took the usual route. We got down at the departure gate of Virgin America. It was for some reasons on an International terminal. The driver helped us in getting the luggage out. Prasanna slipped a five dollar bill to him. He appreciated the generous tip and disappeared with his shuttle. We tried for the first time in life, the self-check in of the baggage. We found it embarrassingly simple. It was simpler than Karan Johar’s masala movies. How on earth we were not aware of self-check in facility and wasted so much time two days ago in waiting at Delta’s kiosk at Richmond airport. If we had tried it on Richmond Airport, the ladies wouldn’t have missed their flight. But then, they would have been in separate flight. So in a way it was good that we did not try self-check in on Richmond airport. After finishing the security checking, we sat near the boarding gate of VA. While we were waiting and chatting, we heard an announcement with Sweta’s name. Sweta and I went to the boarding counter. The lady at the counter informed us that they would have to change Sweta’s seat. I had booked the tickets with four of us in the same row. She told us that two infants could not sit in the same row for security reasons. So they chose Sweta over Preeti to move to another row. I tried to argue a bit. But it was worthless. Upon my request, they moved my seat next to hers as well. Now we were one row ahead of Prasanna and family. The Virgin American flight started off a couple of minutes before the scheduled departure of 8:35am. The plane seemed brand new with an attractive interior. Some of the in-flight entertainment and snacks were also free. Our ticket cost per person was just $59 including taxes. I must say that it was the best domestic airlines in all the ones I have traveled within USA. In the entire flight, I was busy playing the anagram game. At 10, we were over Los Angeles city. We tried to locate the Hollywood sign from the tiny window. But our attempt was in vain. We landed LAX at the right time. On LAX, I drew $60 from the BofA ATM. We had a reserved a car with Deluxe Rent A Car. I called Deluxe. The representative gave me instructions to come to their facility. Meanwhile, all our bags had arrived on the carousel. As per the instructions, we went to the Rental Car pickup area just outside the terminal. After 15 minutes of wait, the suggested white ‘Johnny Park’ shuttle arrived which took us to the Deluxe location which was actually outside the airport premises. On our way, we observed a number of roads and flyovers approaching LAX. I thought, not all of them were necessary. Were they built to impress the tourists with their complexity? There were a number of people waiting in the queue for their turn at Deluxe. It must be a popular car renting company in LA. But we did not have to wait too much for our turn. We had reserved a mini van for mere $25.

“Show me your driver’s license”, the lady with red hair said.
We quickly provided the same to her. Deluxe doesn’t rent cars to the local LA drivers. One can rent a car at Deluxe only if he can prove that he is not from LA. She was satisfied with our Virginia driver licenses.
“We have requested two infant car seats in our reservation”, I said.
“Each car seat would cost $7 extra”, she said and asked us to select a couple out of many in stock they had. We found that none of them had a base. We complained about it in the same way we did at Fox in SFO to get a discount. But this time, we did not get it. The lady summoned another lady. The second lady looked like Indian at first.

“These are very old car seats. Then, they did not come with a base”, she said after having a quick look at them. Hmm. We were lucky to get a discount on renting car seats at Fox in SFO. They did not know the fact that old car seats did not have a base. Neither did us.

She went away and the red-head lady again took the charge. Yet again Prasanna proved that he had skills to convince ladies. Upon his requests, the lady waived the charges for one car seat. She asked if we needed loss and damage waiver for an additional $13. We at first told her that our Geico insurance covered it but after a second thought, we went for it for peace of mind. Prasanna presented his Costco membership card to get an additional 10% discount. Our total was $48 approximately. We got a Toyota Siena minivan – Prasanna’s favorite. It was driven for $75k. Hmm. That was the reason why we got it that cheap. But in fact, I admire this business strategy. I don’t mind renting a car driven for more than 50k miles if it is going to cost me less. Ultimately it is going to serve the same purpose as a new car driven for 5k miles or less. We set “Royal Pagoda, Los Angeles” in the GPS. Prasanna started driving the car. The kids were having fun. They came out of the car seats and started crawling and walking in the spacious car. After about 20 minutes, we entered the Chinatown of Los Angeles. Oh my goodness! We were not in US anymore. We were in Shanghai or Beijing. Chinese people were walking everywhere on the streets. All the tiny shops had the hoardings written in Chinese. Noisy fire crackers were going on the corner of a street and had prevented the traffic from moving forward. This was the last thing one would expect in a US city. The GPS indicated that we had arrived at the destination when we reached a traffic signal. But we were not sure which one was Royal Pagoda as the hoardings were written in Chinese. I got down from the car and asked Prasanna to drive around the place and come back there after 2 minutes. The light turned green and Prasanna went away. I entered a motel premise where GPS was pointing to and asked a Chinese who was smoking outside his office.

“Is this hotel Royal Pagoda?”
“Yes”, he said with a firm voice.
“Can we park our car here” I asked after looking at the hotel parking. It was a mere formality.
“No, you park there” he pointed across the street where there was pay parking lot. “This is for hotel guests”. He was unnecessarily rude.
“We have a reservation here” I said.

I went out. Just then, Prasanna also came back there. I told him that it was Royal Pagoda only and asked him to take the car in the parking lot. He took a couple of attempts to park the car in slant parking spot. The Chinese was still standing outside and watching him park the car.

“It is easy to get a license here”, he said. Obviously he did not appreciate Prasanna’s parking talent. “In India, China, Hong Kong getting license is difficult”.

Didn’t I look Indian to him? I remembered how I got my driving license in India. I drove for not more than 50 meters with my tutor sitting next to me and taking control of the car whenever I was faltering. In two minutes test, I got my driver’s license.

“In India, it is really difficult?”
“It is very difficult”, he said as we went inside his office. Prasanna and Sweta were heading towards us from the parking. Preeti was still inside the car with the kids. We did not want to infuriate the already angry Chinese by showing him that we were 4 adults and 2 kids requesting only one room. We had reserved one room in Royal Pagoda for 4 adults and 2 infants through Hotels.com. So technically we were not doing anything wrong. But we did not want to take a chance with this angry Chinese. Chinese songs were being played on his computer. I looked at the clock for time. The clock had the digits in Chinese. Hmm, this is the reason why Chinese people staying in USA or Canada for last 50 years still can’t speak English. The Chinese digits are not difficult to write. For example, one horizontal bar is the digit 1. Two parallel horizontal bars mean 2. Three bars mean 3. I memorized all the 12 digits in a minute. He gave me the keys for room no 15. It was adjacent to his office.

“Why were the crackers being fired on the road? Is there your festival today?” I asked.
He just shook his head disinterestedly.
“Do you have LA street maps” I again asked.
“Look there” he pointed to a rack outside his office. I searched all the different advertisement papers in the rack but couldn’t find it.
“It is not there”, I said.
He said something absurd. He seemed annoyed to me. I did not dare ask any more questions. We went into the dark room he had allotted to us. It was not that bad except the bathroom which did not have bath tub. It just had a shower and was pretty small in size. But we did not worry too much about it. After all we had to spend only an hour there before we would go out. I went to the car and asked Preeti to go to the room. She took Paridhi and went to the room. I took Haley, locked the car and returned to the room. The Chinese probably observed this but did not mind it. We started getting ready one by one. Sweta was feeling thirsty. She went to the front desk and asked the Chinese for some drinking water.

“How many bottles” he asked in his typical speech.
“Two bottles”, Sweta replied.
He went in and came back in a minute with three bottles. Maybe he was not as strict as he seemed – not at least to the ladies.
“What is the network key for connecting to the wireless internet” I asked as Sweta went away with water bottles.
“royal pagoda – all smalls”.
While others were getting ready, I did some research on internet for getting a list of vegetarian restaurants in Los Angeles. The first in the list was Samosa House. I called them to check if they had Jain food as well. They had a lot of Jain food options. It was 15 miles from our hotel. I called some other nearby restaurants. All though they all were pure vegetarian, they had less or none Jain food options. It was my turn to take bath. After I came out from the bathroom, I found that others were cooking Maggy.

“Come on guys, we are getting late. It is already 1:45. We will take our lunch out”, I said with frustration.

We left the motel at 2:30pm. Our first destination of the day was Hollywood Sign. Los Angeles has got a lot of hills. The sign was visible from a distance. We were delighted at its first sight. Chintan’s GPS took us to a place and declared that the destination had arrived. We were miles away from the sign. Although it was very well visible from there, we still wanted to reach right to the sign on the hill. There was not even a bird flying there where the GPS thought was the destination. We spotted a Mexican guy. I ran to him and asked him,

“I want to go there”, I pointed to the Hollywood sign.
With his broken English, he explained me to continue on that road called Beach St for 3 miles. So we continued on the same road until we hit a place where a few cars were parked with a few people gathered. We found an Indian family there.

“How can we go to the foot of Hollywood sign”, I asked one of them.
“You can not go there in your car. You need to climb the hill on foot if you want to go there”, that person replied.
“Then, where are these people going on foot?”
“They are going there”, he pointed to a hill top which was at 100 meter elevation from where we were standing. “You will get a good view of the sign from there”.
“How far is it approximately?”
“Oh, it is only 10 minutes walk”.
We decided to go for that view rather than going exactly to the Hollywood sign which was difficult to reach. The weather was excellent in the afternoon. We climbed the hill, took a few photographs of the sign as well as Los Angeles city from top and returned. I sat on the driving seat this time. Our next destination was Venice beach. We took some snacks at a 7-11 before we hit the freeway. ‘Freeway’ seemed to be the word in use in west coast for ‘interstate’ of east coast. I guess people in big cities are very aggressive with their driving. I had a few troubles in changing the lanes or merging on the freeways. They were driving a lot over the speed limit and aggressively changing the lanes. LAPD was not as active as Henrico Police in Richmond. It took about 40 minutes for us to reach the Venice beach. We got an idea of how big the city of Los Angeles is compared to San Francisco or Richmond. We dropped the ladies and infants at the parking area near the peer and asked them to wait for us. We did not park our car there as parking was very costly there. We left the peer parking for searching for free parking on the streets. We spent about 20 minutes to find an open spot. On VA beach, you find street parking very easily if it is a Sunday. But that was not true for Venice beach in LA. I parked the car there. I have got a parking ticket on VA beach. We came out and read all the signs nearby to make sure we had not parked at an illegal place. There were cars in front of ours. So we felt safe. Just then, a person with a pick up truck stopped by us.

“Sir, are you leaving or have just arrived”, he asked. He was himself searching for a parking spot.
“No, we just arrived. But you can park your car behind ours. There is some space there”, I said pointing behind my car.
“No, I can’t park there. The curb is red there. In fact yours is also parked in front of red curb. You will get a ticket”, he said.
Just then a car vacated the parking spot on the other side of the road. So he went there and parked his car there. How can you single-handedly parallel-park such a long pick up truck? I struggle with parallel-parking my tiny Camry. It was a new rule that we learnt: “One can not park his car near a red curb”. Last time, when I went to New York, I had learnt a rule that one can not park his car near a fire hydrant. I learnt later that a fire hydrant is called Johnny pump in NYC.

“How come the cars in front of ours are parked here if one can not park near the red curb” I asked myself and went forward to see the color of the curb there. It was not red. The red paint on the curb started only from the spot where I had parked my car. We quickly vacated that spot and tried searching for another for 10 minutes. We finally found a safe spot at some distance from the peer where the ladies were dropped. But it was just one block off the beach. We walked for 5 minutes on the beach to reach the peer. We did some photo shooting there. I wore Prasanna’s goggles for my photo shooting. Afterwards, I just lost it somewhere and never found it. Prasanna was disappointed with the loss of the goggles as we still had 3 more days left in the vacation. I was delighted with the soothing touch of the serene water of Pacific Ocean. Cold wind was blowing continuously which made us leave the Venice beach after 15-20 minutes. Prasanna and I went to the parking spot to bring our car and came to the peer parking to pick the ladies up. We wanted to take the ride of famous route 1 which is also known as Pacific highway. But Chintan’s GPS understood only an address or an intersection or a tourist attraction. Yeah, Route 1 was not an attraction in GPS’s view. We asked a big white man on the street for the direction to go on Route 1. Luckily he was very helpful and in detail explained us how to reach there. We followed his directions and also some road signs to finally hit the Route 1. I was driving the car. We drove for about 15-20 miles on that highway. On our right side, there were hills. On our left side, there was ocean. It was a beautiful highway. I had a certain spot in my mind which I had seen in a Hollywood movie. I guess it was Route 1 only. But I never hit that exact spot. We decided to take a U-turn before it started becoming boring. Prasanna came to the driving seat. This time the ocean was to our right. I entered the address of Samosa House in the GPS.

Samosa House was a 100% vegetarian restaurant and an Indian grocery store. It had its own parking place. We found that the owners were Punjabi Jain. We ordered two fixed dish dinner between three of us. One Jain dish was ordered for me. The others also went for Chaat afterwards. The food was not that great. Kids started running and shouting in the spacious hall of Samosa House. They went to the grocery area and started throwing things out from the racks. They provided enough entertainment for the other customers. After the dinner, the ladies did some grocery shopping. They bought tea, a tea-strainer (to filter the tea), some Indian spices (to cook my food) and some other things. Sweta was having a severe headache because of not getting tea for last two days. The others also wanted tea desperately. We had brought with us an electric burner. Originally it was bought for cooking my food as I might not find 100% vegetarian restaurants everywhere – particularly in Las Vegas. But later on others decided that they would also use the burner for cooking Maggy, boiling the milk for the kids, etc. So we took Maggy and other things with us but forgot the take the necessary stuff for cooking my food. Luckily, we found this grocery-cum-restaurant store there in LA. The restaurant owner advised us to visit a Jain temple in LA. But we did not have time to visit it. We left Samosa House at about 7:30pm in the evening. It had got dark. We searched for “Beverley Hills” in Chintan’s GPS. But it asked for the street number. It did not recognize it as a tourist attraction. We entered any street number to get some directions. On our way, we filled the gas tank. In half an hour we were in an area around Beverley Hills. We saw a big stone block with “Beverley Hills” embossed on it. But we did not stopped there to take photos as the ladies were tired, kids were sleeping and it was anyway dark. We fumbled for spotting Hollywood film starts’ bungalows. We saw good bungalows but were not sure if they belonged to any film stars.

“Let me take you to the Rodeo Drive” I said judging the irritation on ladies’ faces.
“We want to go to the hotel. We don’t want to see anything”, yelled Sweta. LA turned out to be very big against our expectation. We spent a lot of time in traveling in the city from one point to another. That’s why probably the ladies were already feeling fatigued.
“Let’s keep this as last”, Prasanna supported me.

Rodeo Drive was indeed fabulous. Since it was a Sunday evening, all the giant shopping malls for which it is famous, had closed. We couldn’t have gone inside. We parked the car parallel to a curb. Prasanna and I came out and took a few photographs of the street and again got in the car.

“How about Hollywood Blvd now”, I asked hesitantly.
“No”, said Sweta instantly. I am not writing the rest of the conversation as you might have already figured out what it would have been.

We were heading back to Royal Pagoda. We did not visit the world famous Disney World or Universal Studio in Los Angeles. Neither did we cover the Sea World of San Diego which was just an hour away from LA. We have planned to see all these three in Florida. We are planning to visit Florida in Jan’09. We reached Royal Pagoda at about 9pm. We dropped the ladies to the room and entered in the GPS the address of the Goto bus pick up location in Chinatown near BofA. We had to take the bus from there to go to Las Vegas the next day. It was just 0.2 miles from the motel and on the same road as our motel. Prasanna entered the address of Deluxe Rent A Car, LAX from where we had picked up the car in the morning. I was on the driving seat. In a couple of minutes, we hit the freeway to confront again with those hostile drivers of LA. But this time the ladies and the kids were not with us in the car. This time, they were going to experience the hostility and aggressiveness of a Richmonder. We reached the Deluxe 5 minutes before the projected time by GPS. The distance was about 16 miles. I enjoy night driving on interstates. I see two advantages in it. Firstly, there is less traffic and secondly, you don’t have to check the blind spots as you can make the judgments by looking at your mirrors only. If somebody is driving in your blind spot, his headlight will illuminate your mirror. We asked the Deluxe agent what the easiest way to go to Chinatown would be. He said we would have to go to the Airport and get something from there. We got in the courtesy Johnny Park shuttle they had. While the driver was waiting for other passengers, we asked him if there was an easier way to reach the Chinatown. He said we could take a Metro from a station a couple of blocks away from there. His English was not the greatest. We got down the shuttle and started walking in the direction he had suggested. It was certainly not two blocks. We walked for about 10 blocks before we saw the Metro bus station sign board. We were not sure of the timings of the bus. Neither were we sure of the bus route. We waited there for 10 minutes. The Johnny Park shuttle that we left at Deluxe came there and stopped by us in the right most lanes without the emergency lights on. The driver opened the door and suggested that we were standing at the wrong location.

“The Metro station is there. Cross the street”, he was chuckling as he said pointing to the other side of the road. The road was a 3 by 3 lane road.
“Then what station is this” I asked pointing to the bus station board.
His chuckle disappeared and said, “No, not this one. You go there”.
“If you were to pass through this road to go to the Airport, why did you make us walk this much at 10:30pm”, I thought.

We followed his instructions as we did not have any choice. After walking a little further to the pedestrian crossing or Ped Xing, we crossed the street and there was indeed a Metro station there. It was LAX Metro railway station. The station looked really vacant. We wanted to know if there was a train to go to Chinatown. There was Metro train map on the board. We started reading that. Meanwhile, I saw a big white person looking like a TT. I asked him how I could go to Chinatown. He was very helpful. But his English was broken. Does anyone speak fluent English in Los Angeles, I asked myself. What we understood was we first needed to take a Green line train to a junction called “Imperial Wilmington”. From there we had to take a Blue line train to 7th Street. From there we had to take a Pink or Red line train to Union Station. Chinatown was half a mile from Union Station. So it was going to be a long journey. We went downstairs and bought two tickets from the vending machine. Each ticket cost us $1.25. I started looking at the map on my own to find out a shorter way of reaching to the Chinatown. Prasanna was looking at the Metro bus map. Meanwhile the Green line train to Norwalk came. We boarded it. In the train, we decided to get down at Harbor Freeway and catch a Gold line train from there to reach the 7th street. This would save some time as we wouldn’t have to go two stations further to Imperial Wilmington. And there was supposedly a bus option as well at Harbor Freeway. After getting down at Harbor Freeway, we found that a bus to go to Chinatown had left at 11pm. It was 11:15 then. The next one was at 11:56pm. We also found that there was a map reading error at my end. There was no Gold line there. So eventually we had to take the Green line train again to go to the Imperial Wilmington station. We did not buy any tickets for this trip. I wish we had followed TT’s directions perfectly. He was immaculate with his guidance if not with his English. We followed his guidance accurately afterwards to reach the Union Station. It was a very big railway station. It reminded us of the Grand Central station of New York City. Somebody helped us find the nearest exit to Chinatown. After coming out of the station, we switched on the GPS and set Royal Pagoda in it. It was about half a mile from there. We started walking with GPS still kept on. On our way, we saw a mad woman incessantly shouting and cursing someone with vulgar language. I felt afraid of her and increased my speed of walking. It was 12:30am and I thanked god that in LA there were no stray dogs like those in Ahmedabad to chase people moving late at night. To remove my fear, I tried to divert my mind by counting the number cities in California that start with ‘San’. San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, San Mateo, San Marino, San Bruno, San Pedro, We did not see all of them. But we saw those green or blue sign boards with these city names written on them. We arrived at our motel room completely exhausted. Maybe we should have taken a cab from Deluxe. We went to sleep at 1am.

The next day we woke up early in the morning and got fresh. We checked out the motel at 6:30am. We walked to the Goto bus pick up location towing our entire luggage with us. Luckily all the big bags had wheels on them so towing them was not difficult. While we were waiting for the bus near the Bank of America, Chinatown, an Indian lady came there and stood by us. Prasanna asked me if he should confirm with the lady if we were standing at the right place for or not. I told him that we were 4 whereas she was alone; that if at all anyone should confirm, it should be her and not us. I called the Bravo Travel Company the bus of which we had booked through Gotobus.com and asked them why the bus had still not come. He asked me to wait a little more. We ate the final pieces of parathas left while the bus still had not come. Finally, it arrived half an hour late. A smiling-face Chinese driver came out.
“Which casino are you going to in Las Vegas, sir”, he asked.
“Hooters”, I said.
“OK, I will drop you at Tropicana. Hooters is one minute walk from there” he said.
He helped us put our luggage in the trunk. I had never seen a smiling and helpful Chinese speaking good English. He observed that we had two infants.

“Sir, you have only 4 tickets. You need to pay for $30 per infant extra!” he said.
We were shocked.
“Even the airlines do not charge anything for the infants under 2 years.” Prasanna said.
On our arguments, he did not soften but with a smile still on his face he said, “Alright, we are getting late. Let me discuss this with my boss. For now, give me $60 for the two infants. If my boss agrees, I will refund the same on reaching the destination”.
We followed his instructions and got on the bus. We left Chinatown at 7:30am. In next one hour, we made 3 or 4 more stops to pick up other passengers from different places. At 9 we made one more stop probably in a remote suburb of Los Angeles. The driver called us to come out and see his boss. Prasanna and I quickly came out of the bus. Near the steps, a tiny Chinese lady with excessive make up and black goggles was standing. She was his boss. She was struggling to speak English. I wondered how come she was his boss. The driver had a good personality and good control over English. His listening skills were excellent. He did most of the conversation with us on his boss’s behalf. Finally, they refused to refund the infants’ tickets. I think the main reason was that they were already not making much with the bus trip because it was a Monday – a weekday and half of the bus was empty. Finally at 9:15, we started for Las Vegas. We all sat in four different seats. The kids remained with their moms. I am not sure about the others but Haley and I went to sleep in 15 minutes. I woke up at 10:30. Haley was still sleeping. Others were awake. I looked outside. It was desert and cactus everywhere. We were still in California. We took some dry snacks. Most of the passengers in the bus were Chinese. Many of them were reading Chinese newspapers. At 11:15, our bus took an exit to a service area. The service area was in a city called Barstow. It was on the border of California and Nevada. There was a 15 minute break. The driver instructed everyone not to bring the food inside the bus. We entered a restaurant and ordered a few subways and drinks. My mother always says that I eat very slowly. The 15 minute break was too small for me to finish my food. For others it was not. I entered the bus sneaking my sub and coke from the driver and sat on my seat. After a couple of minutes, the driver came to my seat. He was going to everyone’s seat for collecting his tips - $2 per person. He saw me eating inside the bus. He definitely did not like it but still managed a smile as we had enough arguments earlier on the infants’ ticket issue.

“Tips from infants too?” Prasanna asked.
“If there is a ticket, there is a tip too”, he said with a smile

At 11:30am, the bus again started its journey to Las Vegas. Haley and Paridhi were awake for the rest of the journey. After an hour, a series of casinos started on both sides of the interstate, sorry freeway, I-15. We guessed we were about to enter Las Vegas.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering Los Vegas”, Prasanna said cheerfully.
“It is Las Vegas – L-A-S Vegas – not Los Vegas. Los Angeles and Las Vegas!” I had to correct him for the third time in the day. How come he doesn’t know the correct name of such a popular place!

We realized that we entered the city of Las Vegas. We were fumbling in all directions through the dark glass window to see as many casinos as possible. We spotted Luxor, Mandalay Bay, New York New York and MGM Grand. In one minute, we reached our destination – Casino Tropicana. Hooters was just one block away from there. It was very hot outside. We walked to the Hooters with our luggage. Hooters was two blocks off the famous The Strip or Las Vegas Blvd. It was on Tropicana Avenue and in front of one of the gates of the giant MGM Grand.

There was a long queue in front of the front desk. Prasanna and I stood there while the ladies were still waiting for us outside the casino area.

“From where did you get these coupons” I asked a person standing behind us in the queue.
“From the counter there”, he pointed to the other end of the Casino, “Make sure you enroll for their Owl’s membership card”.

It took 15 minute before it was our turn.

“Our check in time is 4:00pm, sir” the front desk agent informed us. It was 1:30pm then.
“If you want, you can wait in the swimming pool area” he added.

We left our luggage in the clock room and came out. We informed the ladies about our room not being ready. We again went in and collected our Owl membership cards and coupons. We were mainly interested in the $200 coupons for playing on the slot machines. It was 2:30pm. We decided to walk on The Strip rather than waiting in the swimming pool area of Hooters. We all started walking towards the Strip while taking a few photographs of MGM from the side. It was really very hot there. Kids were crying. We all were tired of the bus journey and needed some rest. So finally we decided to return to the Hooters without even reaching the intersection of The Strip and the Tropicana Ave.

The swimming pool was on the opposite end of the casino from the entrance. We had to traverse through the entire smoky area of Casino. Prasanna went inside the casino after some time for doing his analysis of the Casino. Preeti and I went inside the shop near the swimming pool. We bought two small bottles of milk at an expensive price. Sweta was taking care of the kids. At 4 again I stood in the queue in front of the front desk. It was a bigger queue this time. I got my turn in 20 minutes.

“We need two king sized bed Strip facing rooms on the same floor” I said.
He did not have any rooms satisfying my requirements.
“Do you want two queen sized double bed rooms? They are facing the Strip” he said.
After a little thought, I said, “alright, I will go for those two rooms”.

I got the keys and went to the Swimming pool area where the ladies were resting. Prasanna also returned after 5 minutes.

“Two queen sized beds in one room will reduce its available space. Since we are only two people per room, a king size bed is sufficient” he asserted.
“Let’s change the rooms then” I said.

We again went to the front desk. This time we did not stand in the queue. The agent who allotted the rooms to me recognized me instantly and called us.
He allotted two king sized bed rooms facing the Strip. But the two rooms were on different floors. Mine was 759 – 7th floor and Prasanna’s was 1059 – 10th floor. It was 5 pm. The room number 1059 was still not ready. So we got the keys for only one room. We asked the clock room agent to bring our luggage to the room number 759. The elevator to the building was inside the casino near the swimming pool. As we entered the room and settled, a helper with our luggage came in. After leaving our luggage, he waited a bit and finally went away. Realizing the reason for his waiting, I instantly went out and called him back. I handed over a five dollar bill to him. He appreciated the generous tip. The room was excellent inside. We did not believe that we had reserved it for just $29 per night. I have paid hundreds of dollars for staying in ordinary hotels. It was a spacious room with an area of 330 sq feet.

At 6, Prasanna also got the key to his room. We moved his luggage to his room from mine. We decided to take rest in the rooms and reunite at 7:30pm. I retained his laptop in our room. After they went, I plugged the laptop to the internet. I was not able to connect to it. I called the facility and registered a complaint. In 15 minutes, a technician came in and tried for a while to get the internet up. But he couldn’t get it working. He returned with his tools.

As planned, we reunited at 7:30 in our room. We cooked Maggy on the electric burner we had. At 8:15, we were out of the Hooters. In 5 minutes, we were on The Strip. We took a few more photographs of MGM and other casinos. There were twenty four hour open Walgreens and CVS stores on each side of The Strip near MGM Grand. We stepped in Walgreens and bought some grocery and snacks. As we were walking down The Strip, we saw many mainly Mexican people standing in a series and offering photographs of size of a playing card to the pedestrians going by. Haley was in my hand. They were not offering any cards to me. I tried to peek at one of the photographs. On seeing it, I remembered the story of Hugh Grant and the reason for his break up from Elizabeth Hurley. After a minute, Sweta took Haley from me. As soon as I walked a few steps alone, I also started getting offers to take those photographs. Las Vegas is a sinful city. It promotes the three basic things that Hinduism refers to as Mahapaatakam (great sin) – gambling, drinking/smoking and prostitution. As we walked down a few meters further, we saw a few Ferraris and Harley Davidsons parked in front of an auto showroom. Obviously Prasanna and I posed with those engineering marvels as if they were of our own. I have read in the books that Las Vegas is the second thing after the Wall of China that is identifiable from Moon because of the enormous neon lights the city casinos throw. We were already dazzled with just a hundred meter walk down The Strip. After a walk of half a kilometer, we reached Bellagio. We watched its famous fountain show that reminded me of the Vrundavan Garden of Mysore. We went inside the casino. Its interior was magnificent. No wonder it was one of the top 10 casinos in the world. As usual the ladies were feeling tired after a kilometer walk. They sat along with the kids in the main hall of Bellagio. Prasanna and I went on to explore the casino. We saw some internal construction going on at one place. It was so very well isolated from the rest of the casino. A few casino people were coming from the other side with the construction material.
“Excuse our mess sir”, one of them said with utmost politeness.
“There is absolutely no mess here, man! Come to my house. There is no construction going on and still there is a lot of mess” I replied. But I am not sure if he heard that.
The casino had lots of fashion shops, food outlets and other entertainment stuff apart from the ‘casino’. We returned after 20 minutes. The ladies were feeling a little relaxed. The kids too were playing around and had already had their food. We asked the ladies to walk around and explore the casino.

“The fashion shops are too costly. Don’t even do window shopping and waste your time”, I instructed Sweta. Obviously, she didn’t appreciate the instruction. After they went, the kids started giving tough time to us. While Haley had got a little cranky and sleepy, Paridhi wanted to explore the casino on her own. She had recently learnt walking and was not ready to stay in her dad’s lap. If Preeti had been there, she would have said, “kya bolati hai, khud ghum legi tu?” It means “What are you saying? Will you roam around alone?” Off course, Paridhi hasn’t learnt to speak at all. But that is a unique trademark sentence of Preeti. We heard that statement from her hundred times in the last three days. Only the verb in the second part of the statement would change. The rest of the sentence with the tone and the style would remain exactly the same. In fact, we also had started speaking it every now and then - not only to Paridhi but also to Preeti herself. Paridhi was providing great entertainment to the tourists coming in. I know, Bellagio owners wouldn’t like my addressing their potential customers as tourists. I was patting on Haley’s back. In a few minutes, she went asleep. After half an hour, the ladies returned. At 10:30pm, we left Bellagio. Another round of fountain show was going on as we left its premises. We crossed the street to come to the Casino of Paris which was right in front of Bellagio. Prasanna claimed that he was a good photographer. He tried to take our photograph with the entire Eiffel Tower in the background. He virtually laid down flat on the earth. Paridhi had gone asleep as we entered the casino of Paris. We felt as if we had instantly changed the time zone. The sky was light blue with sporadic white clouds hovering. It was a beautifully designed artificial ceiling with a theme of sky. We wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We pressed the ‘Up’ key of the elevator. We waited for 15 minutes but the elevator refused to come down. We went to the other end of the casino where there was an escalator. A security person was standing by it apparently to prevent people going up.
“We want to go up.”
“The restaurant is closed sir!”
Who the hell wants to go to the restaurant?
“The restaurant is at the top of the Tower?”
“It is not at the top of the Tower. If you want to go to the top of the Tower, you need to buy a ticket which costs $10 per person”.
$10 for going to the top of an artificial Eiffel Tower! No way. I told Prasanna that we would anyway see the actual Eiffel Tower when we would make a trip to Europe. He agreed with me. We walked around the Casino for a few minutes. As we came out of the casino, the light blue sky got replaced with pitch black one. We realized that it was night time actually. It was 11pm. We all were feeling tired. The kids were sleeping silently in the strollers. We decided to go back to Hooters and have a good night sleep. Beside Paris, there was a beautifully illuminated casino of Planet Hollywood. It was really gorgeous. We took a few snaps of it from outside.

We tried our luck and the free slot machine coupons in the Hooters casino before going to sleep. They had separate machines for the people playing with free coupons. I guess the machines were designed to prevent anybody from winning with the free coupons. Nevertheless, it gave us a feeling of gambling.

Haley awakened us at 7:30am on Tue, 16th September, 2008. After all it was 10:30am for her as per the EST. Later I learnt that Paridhi also woke up around the same time and awakened her parents too. We had got coupons for free breakfast in Dan Marino’s – a restaurant in the casino area of the Hooters. The breakfast was excellent. I mainly took fruits and milk. We all got ready by 10:30am. Our first destination was the MGM Grand right across the Hooters. While it was splendid from outside, it was magnificent from inside as well. I could not believe that MGM was behind Bellagio at the third place in the ranking of grandest casinos in the world. It alone must be at the first three places in the ranking. We saw the indoor lion habitat - a glass structure housing the MGM mascots. We then bought four tickets of the monorail. Each ticket cost $5.
“Such a big casino! It has got its own railway station” Prasanna said.
The monorail is a rail system developed by various casinos on The Strip in parternership. The monorail runs from Mandalay Bay to Stratosphere and return. The purpose of our taking the monorail was twofold. Firstly, we wanted to experience the monorail system. Secondly, we wanted to go to an Indian restaurant on the other end of The Strip. So as per the plan, we got down at the Sahara Casino. We thought it might be based on the theme of Sahara desert. We explored it as well. But it was against our expectations. The Indian restaurant India Oven was in front of the rear side of Sahara i.e. two blocks off The Strip. It was 2:00pm.
“The restaurant is closed, sir”, the apparently restaurant owner said. He looked Gujarati to me from his face. I wished he was not a Gujarati because for some reasons, I can not digest the fact that a Gujarati also can run a non-vegetarian restaurant. In order to confirm that, I started talking to Sweta in Gujarati. On hearing our conversation, he immediately asked, “Are you Gujarati? Which part of Gujarat are you from?”
We introduced each other. He became more congenial. But he still refused to open the restaurant for us.
Prasanna asked him, “How good is this Grand Canyon?”
“Have you seen Matheraan in India? It is like that only – but on a larger scale”.
“Can you recommend to us any good places in Las Vegas”, Prasanna asked as if he was not a restaurant owner but a tourist guide.
He named a few places like fountains of Bellagio, Pirates of the Treasure Island, street lights in downtown, etc.
Prasanna tested his patience a little more by asking about the bus service in Las Vegas. He gave some useful information without losing his patience. We followed his information and walked to the Stratosphere which was on The Strip beside Sahara. We took a few snaps of the Stratosphere. Stratosphere is first casino resort located on the north end of The Strip whereas Mandalay Bay is the last casino located on the south end of The Strip. The Strip distance between these two is approximately 4 miles. The temperature must have been 90 degree Fahrenheit. In ten minutes, we got a bus. It was an air conditioned bus. We bought four daily passes. The passes would expire after 24 hours. The pass cost $5 per person. The bus was a double-decker one. The bus reminded me of the Bangalore vestibule buses. Obviously there was no seat vacant. In fact there was hardly any space to stand. Some people were literally dangling with their feet in the air. I had a folded stroller in one hand and Haley in the other. I am not sure what my companions were doing. I made my way to the stairs. I went a couple of steps up and stood there. Some other people also did the same. In a minute, the driver instructed us in the loud speakers, “For security reasons, you can not stand on the stairs. Please get down”. We had to follow his instructions. I went on the upper deck. I managed to get some space to stand. The good thing about traveling with kids in a bus or a train is that firstly, kids’ ticket is free and secondly, kind people seeing you standing with kids vacate their seats for you. The same thing happened with me too. The bus was making a stop every two minutes. What was worse was the stop duration was five minutes because of a number of people boarding and getting down. The bus took almost forty minutes to travel a distance of four miles. We got down at the MGM stop. We asked the ladies to return to the room. Haley had caught a fever in the heat and smoke. Prasanna and I wanted to buy some food. A lady near the bus stop invited us to visit the small Las Vegas Tourist Information Center situated on the side walk. The info center officer offered a few free coupons for some casino shows. We declined the same as we were leaving Las Vegas the next day. We found a subway and bought a few for us. On our way back to the room we also visited a couple of Grand Canyon tour operators. We checked if there was any promotion going on with their air (plane) tours or heli (helicopter) tours. All the promotions were costlier than what we were getting through internet. The cheapest deal on internet was a South Rim Grand Canyon airplane tour for $229 per person. We definitely did not want to spend 5 hours one way in bus going to the South Rim of Grand Canyon. The bus ticket was also $80 per person. We concluded that Grand Canyon did not deserve either $80 per person on top of 5 hours one way bus journey or $229 per person in airplane. “Let’s spend our last day in Las Vegas only”, I suggested Prasanna. We returned to our room at 4 pm. We had realized that we should have got down from the bus at Excalibur stop rather than the MGM because the former was nearer from Hooters. We had the food and some rest to gather at 7:30pm again. Haley’s fever had got reduced somewhat. We used our bus passes to go to Sahara again. The bus journey was equally painful as it was in the afternoon. It was 8:30pm when we reached the restaurant India Oven. It was open this time. The supposedly hotel owner whom we met with in the afternoon was not there. Here also that vicious rule of “minimum $50 order for four people” existed. We ordered some food making sure that we obeyed that rule. We ordered Jain food for me. We initially ordered two butter naans for us. But the waiter told us that the naans had eggs in them. I hadn’t heard of any restaurant using eggs to make naans. We went for butter rotis. The service and the food were not that great. But we had very limited choices with Indian restaurants in Las Vegas. After the dinner, we had to go to the Fremont St in downtown for seeing the volcano show. Later on, I learnt that the volcano show was hosted at Mirage and not at Fremont St. Before leaving the restaurant, I confirmed with the receptionist that the bus could take us to the Fremont St. We walked to the Stratosphere bus stop where many other people were waiting for the bus. We had to wait for 20 minutes before finally two buses arrived at the same time. It was 10:40pm. The show at Fremont St was supposed to take place at the top of every hour after dark which meant that next show was at 11pm. We reached the Fremont St at 11:05. Upon my inquiry with a security person, I learnt that the show was over. We would have to wait for the next show which was scheduled at midnight. We were in not-so-famous Fremont Street Experience mall at Fremont St, Las Vegas. It was a pedestrian open-air mall with a lot of modest casinos and restaurants around. Haley was not feeling well. She was crying her heart out. Others were complaining that we shouldn’t have come to this place.
“It is so far and not so special anyway”, the ladies complained.
We found a secluded corner and sat there on the earth. We asked Prasanna and his family to go and explore the mall. In ten minutes, Haley stopped crying and went asleep. The entire day was a complete waste. We saw only one good place – MGM Grand in the whole day. While we were still sitting there, I got a call on my cell. It was Prasanna.

“Hey, come here as soon as possible. There is a movie shooting going on here. Hrithik Roshan is going to be here”, Prasanna said hurriedly.
“Where are you guys” I asked.

We stood up and went in the direction suggested by Prasanna. The place he was referring to was a block inside the mall. In fact this was the actual place where the show would take place at midnight. We saw a fellow standing by a movie camera on a tripod.

“Where is Hrithik” I asked.
“He will be here soon. They are shooting a movie called Kites. The heroine is some Barbara Morie” Prasanna replied.
I had not heard of either the movie or the actress.
“Are you sure he is coming here? I mean I can expect seeing him in MGM or Bellagio or Wynn but not here”.
“You see that fellow? He is Anurag Basu. He is the director of the movie. He has directed many famous movies like Murder, Gangster, etc”.
“I haven’t heard of him”, I said.
“Neither have I. This is what the cameraman told me”.
Anurag Basu did not look like a director from any angle. After a few minutes, Hrithik indeed came there. We checked his hand and counted the number of fingers. He indeed had six fingers in one hand. It was really the film star Hrithik Roshan. He was not looking as fair as he looks on the screen. Later on, I learnt that he had applied a cowboy make up. That’s why he was not looking that fair. We started taking photographs. But the security persons stopped us taking photographs. The shooting soon started. Hrithik walked a few meters in heroic style and picked up a hat lying on the floor and wore it. Later, I learnt that the cowboy hat was designed by a special group of European designers. The producers had spent thousands of dollars on procuring this hat. “Cut it!” I heard the words. After that they took several retakes of this small scene. I was not able to comprehend what was wrong with the actor’s performance that the director took so many retakes. In one of the retakes I deliberately walked with the other people in the background while Hrithik was coming and picking up the hat. I wish that retake got finalized and I would appear on the silver screen. While we were watching the shooting, a few American people asked us what was going on. I told them that an Indian movie was being shot and the man with hat was an Indian super star.

“Aha, his hat is very similar to mine, isn’t it?” one of them exclaimed.
“Uncle, a hat like yours is sold at half a penny in Indian Bhindy bazaar” the words almost came out of my tongue.

We finally got a chance to take a few photographs with him. Prasanna got a chance to speak with him. He told him, “Sir, today only we learnt that acting is a difficult task. For such a small scene, you have to work so hard” although he was thinking “You are so bad an actor that for such a trivial scene you take half a dozen retakes”.
“Yes, that’s true. Hey, don’t put these photographs on internet, please”, Hrithik said as I clicked the camera while the two were talking. He was constantly smoking.
Later on, Prasanna did put the photographs in his Orkut album. The title of the photograph was “Me giving acting tips to Hrithik”. I also placed my photograph with Hrithik in my Orkut album the title of which was “a film star with a super start”.
Meanwhile the light show started. Millions of synchronized bulbs got illuminated on the 100 meter long curved ceiling of the mall. The effect was a movie projection on the long ceiling. It was really amazing to watch. But after meeting with Hrithik, we were not in a mood to appreciate anything else. At twenty minutes past the midnight the take was finalized and the shooting was packed up for the day. The world is indeed so small! We couldn’t have imagined in the best of our dreams that we would meet such a big star at such a small place and at such an awkward time. We decided to return to the room.
“The credit goes to Viral. Because he brought us here, we got to see Hrithik”, said others in unison. Are these the same people who were cursing me an hour ago for bringing them here? “Our entire west coast trip is worthwhile now”, Preeti added. I did not like that statement. There were many other things that we enjoyed in this trip besides the movie shooting. But I remained reticent. There was a Walgreens in the mall too. We bought milk and other necessary stuff from there and came to the bus stop. There was long queue of people waiting for the bus at 12:30am. We stood in the queue. We waited for 20 minutes for the bus. Haley meanwhile woke up prematurely and started crying. She still had a fever. We finally got on the bus. The bus was crowed even at this hour. Now this is unlike the Bangalore buses. Indian buses don’t remain crowded after midnight. A few kind people voluntarily donated their seats to the ladies with the kids. Haley was still crying with an increased pitch. She continued doing so for next 15 minutes. I finally asked Sweta to get down at the next stop. The next stop was Sahara Casino only which was familiar to us. Prasanna, Preeti and Paridhi were still in the bus. We took a cab from there. I sat in the front row with the driver whereas Sweta with Haley sat in the rear one. Haley stopped crying afterwards and went asleep. The cab driver looked like a quiet man to me at first until he decided to tease a few girls driving a car in the adjacent lane. The cab was a big SUV. He increased his speed and deliberately tried to go to the lane where they were driving in the blind spot area of our cab. Seeing the possibility of the SUV cab colliding with their car, they got frightened and honked at us. The cab driver chuckled and returned to the original lane. The girls realized that it was a deliberate attempt of the cab driver to frighten them. They also increased their speed and came close to our cab. They started shouting and cursing at us. Their car was on my side and my side glass was open. They noted down the cab number and warned the driver that they would complain it. I looked at the driver. Come on dude! The only person today I expected to see the stunts from was Hrithik - not you. He dropped us at Hooters Casino at 1:30am. Las Vegas cabs are very costly compared to New York or Washington. Their per-mile fare is $3.50 compared to $2 in most of the other metros. I paid $14 to the driver. Sweta went up in the room whereas I stopped by the reception counter. I wanted to extend the reservation of our room by one more day. We had initially reserved two rooms for two nights only. But after feeling the scorching heat of Las Vegas, we had decided that we would retain one of the two rooms for one more day even though we were going stay only up to evening. They increased the rate by ten dollars for an extra night. I argued with them to retain the same rate. But they refused to do that. I reserved the room at that increased rate and went up in the room. Prasanna and family came 20 minutes later. We went to sleep at 2.

We woke up rather late in the morning. It was the last day of our trip. It was Wed, 17th September, 2008. Haley did not have fever. Prasanna and family had enough of Las Vegas and decided to visit Hoover Dam. Hoover Dam is a man made dam built on the river Colorado near the border of Arizona and Nevada. It is 45 miles from Las Vegas. We were not interested in Hoover Dam. Haley’s health might possibly deteriorate if we traveled in the heat and the bus. Meanwhile, Prasanna called me and informed me that he had succeeded in convincing the Hooters agents on not charging an increased room tariff for an extra day. He is genius at convincing the people and saved ten dollars for us. Since Haley was playing well, Sweta and I decided to go out at 10:30. We swore that we would keep Haley away from the smoke as far as possible. We used the bus pass that we had bought the previous day to go to The Venetian. The bus was for some reasons less crowded. The Venetian was indeed very beautiful and unique. It was built on the theme of Venice in Italy. Venice is famous for its waterways and water transportation like gondolas, ferries and water buses (vaporetti). The Venetian was built on the same theme. It had a water body around the main casino building wherein they were running gondola rides. Italian people were driving those classical gondolas. A gondola could accommodate 4-5 people. The driver would sing a song in Venetian to entertain the passengers. We did not take that ride as we anyway would visit the actual Venice in future. The weather was cool because of previous night rain. Haley was playing in the front open space of The Venetian. She had her lunch there only. It was good to see her enjoying in the sun and smoke free environment. Meanwhile, I got a phone call from Prasanna. They had checked out their room and had reserved a private bus to go to Hoover Dam. Since there was some time left before the bus departure, they were seeing Luxor and Excalibur casinos meanwhile.

There was the world famous Madam Tussaud’s museum in The Venetian. We did not go inside it as we had seen a bigger version of it in New York City. I found that The Venetian had got an indoor gondola ride too. We went inside the casino building. The casino ceiling was designed in the same fashion as that of Paris. It had an artificial light blue sky giving an effect of evening time. They had placed street lamps in the middle of the road that ran alongside the indoor water body. There were shops on both sides of the road. For a moment, we thought that we were walking on the streets of a European city. Sweta went in a hat shop and tried one on her. As we walked further on the road watching the gondolas going parallel to us, we saw a few men and women dressed in fancy garments. We stopped at that place. Soon they were joined by a few more people and a street show started. It was the Streetmosphere show of The Venetian. Sweta in particular liked that show very much and took a movie of it as well.

We came out of The Venetian at 1pm. Haley had gone asleep. The casino of Treasure Island was right in front of The Venetian. We crossed the street and enter the premises of TI. There was a huge wooden ship lying in open in the front of the casino building. We took a few photographs there. I wanted to see the famous show ‘Pirates of the Treasure Island’. But it ran in the evening time after dark. We tried to explore the casino from inside. But it was not so special particularly after seeing the MGM. We came out and walked to an adjacent building block which was the Fashion Shaw Mall of Las Vegas. There was a beautiful song going on which was audible on the pedestrian walk too. I tried to memorize the song. But later on I forgot both lyrics and tune. We went to the third level where there was a huge food court. Sweta ordered a Taco in Taco Maker whereas I ordered a sub in a Subway. We had our food there while Haley was still asleep. After we finished our food, we came down and crossed the street to enter Wynn. Wynn is rated as the number one casino resort in the world. It was very similar to Bellagio from inside. There was an artificial fall inside its premises. We took a few photographs of it and sat beside the fall in the chairs lying there. Haley had woken up. Her mom fed her with Gerber food. We spent about twenty minutes there. Then we strolled around in the casino for a few minutes. Wynn was not based on any theme. So we were done with it rather quickly. We used the pedestrian over bridge to come out of Wynn and cross the street. We saw the bus standing and loading the passengers at its stop. We ran hard to catch the bus. We did not want to miss it or we would have to wait for another twenty minutes to get the next one. We were heading back to Hooters. We got down at the Excalibur stop at 3:00pm. There were 10 minutes left before our daily pass expiry time. We utilized it to the fullest extent and till the very last minute. The casino of Luxor was adjacent to the bus stop. Luxor was visible from the window of our hotel room at the Hooters. It is built on Egyptian theme. It had a sphinx and a pyramid. Although we were tired, we walked all the way to the foot of the sphinx. The pyramid was behind the sphinx. It was a pretty casino from outside. We did not bother to go inside as Sweta was really tired. In ten minutes, we decided to return to the Hooters. While returning, we took a few more snaps of Excalibur, New York New York, MGM and Tropicana. We were resting in our room at 4pm. We called Ritesh and Apeksha to wish for their birthdays. We all were sleeping by 4:15. Prasanna and family returned from their Hoover Dam trip no sooner than we had woken up. He described in detail his trip. It was a good trip with lots of fun. Their bus driver also played the role of the tourist guide. He provided enough entertainment to the passengers apart from providing them the guidance.

It was 6pm. I wanted to go to The Strip one more time. “The pirates of Treasure Island” show was still left in my list. But Prasanna did not want to take any chance with our flight at 10:20pm. They were tired as well. Ladies also wanted to try their luck on the last day of our trip. While Prasanna and I chose the baby-sitting job, the ladies went downstairs and played roulette and fortune wheel. They returned in half an hour losing all the money we had given to them. For the final time in our trip, we cooked Maggy and tea for us. We packed our stuff and checked out the room at 8:00. We got the cab from the main entrance of Hooters.

“I can take only 4 passengers in my cab”, a cab driver said.
We checked with another. We received the same attitude.
“We are four only”, I said pretending not to count the kids.
“I can take only 4 heads in my cab”, he rephrased.
How about the rests of our torsos?

We took two cabs as anyway the airport was just 3 miles from Hooters. We paid $11 to each cab. We used self-check in kiosk this time too. The McCarran airport is the most beautiful airport I have seen in my life. It has a number of slot machines placed everywhere on the airport so that people can start gambling as soon as they arrive in Vegas. We had a lot of time before the flight departure. The ladies – Preeti in particular utilized the time to play on the slot machines to recover the loss made at Hooters. After the security checking, we had to take an air train to reach our terminal. We settled at the gate at which we had to take our flight. Haley had got cranky because of disturbance in her sleep. She cried incessantly for almost half an hour. Prasanna and I meanwhile went on to explore the beautiful airport. At one place, we found “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign. I remember seeing it in a friend’s Orkut album. We also took a snap against it. Our flight was on time. Haley went to sleep after we boarded the plane. Although we all were together in the same flight, Prasanna and family were sitting at a distance from us. We did not endeavor to exchange our seats with other passengers to remain closer. The estimated travel time to JFK was about 5 and half hours. It was one hour less than the SFO to JFK sector obviously because Las Vegas was east of SFO. Although we had forgotten to ask for a bassinet seat for Haley this time too, the journey was not too painful as she slept for almost entire journey. At the time of landing at JFK, Sweta suddenly started shouting. She complained about acute ear pain. She was almost crying and remembering her mom. Haley was still asleep. I started worrying as her pain was not going away. I thought the pain started because of the flight’s landing phase. We still had not landed. I asked for an air hostess’s help. She advised her to close both the nostrils with her hand and try to exhale. It worked wonders. She felt relieved. After five minutes, the wheels of our aircraft hit the ground. I also felt relieved. The gate for our next flight was very close to our arrival gate at JFK. They had frozen JFK with their powerful air conditioners for some reasons. We felt as if we were in Antarctica. Fortunately, we had those dark blue Delta shawls with us. We wrapped the same around us to prevent the cold. Our flight to Richmond was also on time. In the plane, both the families were seating close to each other. We landed at RIC on time. Our luggage also arrived safely. I switched on my cell phone and opened the notepad file to find out the location at which I had parked my car. It was A461. We took the shuttle to economy lot A. The driver dropped us at A461. My car was there safe and sound. We got down and started placing the luggage in the trunk of my car. The shuttle driver waited for a minute and then left. My car started at the first twist of the key. After all I had installed a new battery just a couple of months before. We reached home safely and without Henrico uncles noticing a kid without a car seat in my car. It was 11:30am EST on 18th September 2008. It concluded one of our best trips and vacations in USA.