We had been completely drained by all the travel, and the overall length of the previous day, and also by the length of the trip. Consequently, despite Jagan Peripa and Syamala Perima's desire that we make an early start and get a chance to see Morgantown and its surroundings, we were extremely slow off the blocks.
I was the first (amongst our group) to wake up - perhaps because I had a conference call that morning (one disadvantage of writing a chronicle more than 3 months after the event is that one does not remember the details). At any rate by the time I got down from the bedroom, Perima was up and about, and busy in the kitchen. (Poor Perima spent more than a fair share of our Morgantown trip in the kitchen).
Jagan Peripa's house is beautiful - its located on a small, curved street, with lots of trees. While we were driving back to his house the previous night, I saw an animal run across the road - I thought it was a dog, but on a closer look, realized that it was a deer. The house is built with three levels, basement, ground and first. The existence of the basement is not obvious at first glance - its massive, and in typical Coonoor family style, filled with odds and ends. The house is surrounded by a nice garden, with loads of large trees, and Jagan Peripa's prized vegetable patch at the rear.
By the time the Appa, Amma, Appu and Renu arrived and finished breakfast, it was well past 1030 am. We (viz everybody except poor Syamala perima) then set out for West Virginia University, to look at the place where Peripa had worked for over 35 years. The campus is huge. Amazingly for America, Morgantown has a public transport system - a personal light rail, which was the brainchild of a WVU professor. It connects most large buildings in the Campus, the Football (yeah, American football, not the real thing) stadium and downtown Morgantown. After parking our cars near the medical center building, we took the light rail to downtown Morgantown. By this time, Avi was hungry. I also think he was still feeling a bit under the weather, since he was certainly not at his best behavior. Fortunately, we managed to find some muffins in a store nearby, and he was slightly better after that.After lazing around and chatting post lunch (and deciding to skip a drive to some other destination that Perima had planned for us), some of us (Peripa, me, Appa, Appu and Renu) headed for a mall, where my prime objective was to buy a pair of formal shoes (since I had a business dinner in NYC the next day). Renu took ill while we were there, and after buying my shoes, we headed back to Peripa's place. Radhika, Avinash and I decided to stay put at Peripa's place for another day, but made a booking at the hotel for the next night, since Ram, Amrita and Sloka were to arrive on the following day.
Day 20 - June 16, 2011
From my perspective, the vacation in the US was over. I had a business dinner scheduled in New York City for the evening of the 16th, and an all day meeting in NYC on the 17th. Our original plan had been for all of us to take a flight from Pittsburgh to Newark on the 17th afternoon, and then connect onto flight to Bombay (on Lufthansa for the 5 of us, via Frankfurt, and on Continental for Amma and Appa direct to Bombay). However, since this meeting got scheduled, I had re-booked to fly a day earlier. I need to leave Morgantown by about 1230 to make my flight.
Ram, Amrita and Sloka had set off the previous night from Phoenix, AZ, and were to arrive in Morgantown after a difficult all night journey. Fortunately, their flight was on time, and they arrived at Peripa's place by about 11am - hence I got to spend an hour with them. At 1230, I set off in our hired Camry for Pittsburgh. The drive to Pittsburgh was beautiful - I got to take in the beautiful scenery that we had missed on the way in. The roads were fantastic - the only challenge was sticking to the speed limit of 65 mph once I entered Pennsylvania. There were times when without noticing (and following the other traffic), I was doing over 80 mph, which I did not want to do for fear of being ticketed in an alien land.
My flight to Newark had no hiccups, and I was able to get a cab to my hotel very easily. As we approached the Holland tunnel into Manhattan, there was a massive traffic jam, which my driver bypassed by going the wrong way down one way streets. -:)
I will ask Radhika to add to this and describe what the rest of them did - it involved going to a riverfront park, as can be seen from the pictures that I have added.Day 21 - June 17, 2011
The next afternoon, while I was in my meetings, there was a brief thunder storm over Manhattan. Sheets of rain poured down, and the lightning reminded me of Bombay at the beginning or end of the monsoons. Within 30 minutes, the storm had passed, and I did not pay it much heed at that time. At about 3 PM, I was on the dais, participating in a panel discussion. Suddenly, my phone rang - it was Radhika. I disconnected the call, but Radhika tried again, and then sent me an sms asking to call urgently. I stepped out from the panel (fortunately, it was an internal meeting), and called her. She told me that their flight from Pittsburgh had been delayed due to the thunderstorm over New York, and that they would likely miss their connection to Frankfurt. As it happened, I was booked on a later flight than the others to Frankfurt, and I thought they could be rebooked onto my flight. As soon as my meeting was over, I set off for Newark. As we headed towards the entrance to the Holland tunnel, my taxi driver turned on the radio, and heard that it was taking approximately 90 minutes to cross the tunnel - traffic was backed up due to that brief storm. I quickly had him divert to Penn station, and took the train across to Newark. Radhika and the others had boarded their flight, but it had still not left the gate. I got into a queue to rebook their tickets at about 730 pm - there were about 8 people ahead of me, but only two agents, and each person was taking an exceptionally long period of time.
Very quickly, I realized that Radhika and others would not be able to make my flight either, and decided to change my booking as well. Fortunately, this could be done by my travel agent from Bombay. The wait in the queue was interminable, and I still had one passenger ahead of me at 9 pm when Radhika messaged to say that her flight was taking off. Then it was my turn. Lufthansa informed me that all flights via Frankfurt to Bombay on the next day were overbooked - but managed to get seats for Radhika, Renuka, Aparna and Avinash on an Air India flight from JFK to Bombay via Delhi. While issuing the tickets, the agent however warned me to reach JFK before 130 PM the next day even though the flight was only at 5 PM, as the flight too could get overbooked. She then went about trying to issue the tickets, and by the time she finished, it was 1030 PM, and Radhika et al had landed in Newark. In the meantime, I spoke to my travel agent in Bombay to rebook me on a Lufthansa flight from JFK to Bombay (I could not shift to Air India as I had cancelled my flight, and the cost of changing airlines was prohibitive).
I had presumed that like in India, Continental Airlines (Lufthansa's code share partner), which had caused the delay, would have made hotel arrangements for them. However, when I caught up with the others, I realized that not only had they made no hotel arrangements, but they had not even rebooked Amma and Appa onto an alternate Continental flight to Bombay. In the entire airport, which is Continental's major hub, there were only 2 counters (served by 4 agents) to handle over 300 odd Continental passengers waiting to be rebooked. We stood in a queue for a while, but at 1130 PM, the agents announced that their duty period was over, and that we would need to return the next morning. On pressing, the agent informed us that one of the counters opened at 3 AM, while the other would open at 5 AM.
We then set about trying to retrieve the luggage that had been checked in at Pittsburgh. We were told to hand in a form, and then wait near a carousel to see if the luggage could be retrieved. Avinash was asleep in his stroller (that certainly was the best buy of our trip). We tried to see if some nearby hotel was available, but all hotels in the Newark area were booked. We then tried to reach both Nana and Jayashri - we were unable to get Nana, but Jayashri and family were at home, and we therefore decided that Appa, Amma, Radhika and Avinash would go to their place by cab once the luggage arrived. While we were waiting for the luggage, Renuka decided that she would go across to the Continental counter (which was to open at 3 AM), and camp there for the night. She was the first one to have this idea, and very quickly, a large queue formed behind her. At around 1230 AM, Renuka, Aparna and Appa / Amma's luggage arrived, and the foursome set out for Randolph.
Day 22 - June 18, 2011
The luggage service at Newark Airport shut down at 1 AM, without any sign of Radhika's luggage. Aparna and I therefore went across to the Continental counter and waited there with Renu. At 3 am, we were the first to be served. We found that there were about 200 people in the queue by then. There were no tickets to Bombay on Continental's flight leaving on Sunday, June 18, and hence we booked Appa and Amma on the next day's flight. By this time it was 4 am. I was concerned that Radhika's luggage may end up coming out on the carousel when it reopened at around 530 AM, and decided that I would wait for the luggage, while Renu and Appu headed for Randolph. I waited till 630 AM but there was no sign of the luggage. I went back to the counter, and was told that I should wait till 8 AM, since they were very busy, with 2 people handling 1000s of pieces of lost baggage. At 8AM, I was back at the counter. I was told that their system showed that Radhika's bags were checked in on the Continental flight to Bombay (the one which Amma and Appa did not get tickets on), but they were not able to locate the bags in the mess - and that we should take our chances at Bombay airport. Fortunately, this Continental flight was scheduled to arrive around the same time as Radhika's Air India, and I decided that waiting further would serve no purpose and headed for Randolph as well. The terrible service the moment something went wrong brought home the downside of the airline industry's push for cost efficiencies - there is absolutely no buffer left in the system. Of course, that was the reason why we were paying barely 20% more in Indian Rupees for our tickets too and from North America than Lali Athai had paid when she flew to the US in 1992 (despite oil prices having risen 8 fold, and INR inflation averaging 10% p.a. in this period)
I had intended to take a nap on reaching Randolph but it was almost 1030 by the time I got there, and we needed to leave for JFK by 12 noon. A quick shower, a coffee, and some breakfast, plus all the adrenaline from the need to get Radhika et al onto the Air India flight, meant that I did not really feel drained despite not having slept for almost 30 hours. Sunder decided to drop us at JFK. We made good time till we were close to Manhattan, but then got stuck in a jam at the George Washington Bridge (despite it being a Sunday afternoon with fine weather). Clearly, the infrastructure for getting in and out of Manhattan by car needs drastic improvement! Fortunately, the jam ended as soon as we crossed the bridge, and we were able to make fairly good time to JFK. Nevertheless it was 2 PM when we reached the Air India check in counter.
As the Lufthansa agent had anticipated, the Air India flight was overbooked. We were holding confirmed tickets, but they had been issued by Lufthansa. And to our dismay, the Air India check in counter agent told us that the flight was overbooked even while counting people holding tickets issued by Air India itself, and that it would be only after 4 PM, when check in was scheduled to close, that they would let us know if Radhika et al could board the flight. Fortunately, there were only 2 people holding LH tickets who had reached before us - within another 30 minutes, there were another 20 people in the same boat. While Radhika et al waited near the Air India counter, I went across to the Lufthansa terminal (frankly, JFK is far, far superior to Newark as an airport), and was able to get a standby booking on a Newark - Frankfurt - Bombay flight the next day for Radhika and team. The next hour seemed interminably long - but finally we were called forward, and fortunately, all four made it onto the flight. In a sense it was good that Radhika and team had not got a Lufthansa ticket - they were going to reach Bombay earlier than I would, and also benefit from better food and the inflight entertainment system on the flight (including Chotta Bhim for Avinash).
After dropping the others at the Air India counter, I headed for the Lufthansa lounge, where I typed out Part 4 of this blog during the 3 hour wait for my flight. I boarded my flight to Frankfurt at 815 PM, and was fast asleep within seconds of hitting my seat. All I remember of the JFK Frankfurt flight is briefly waking up to put the bed down, and then being woken up when it was time to land in Frankfurt. I usually try to adjust to my arrival time zone during long flights, but it was clearly not possible on this occasion.
On arriving at Bombay, I was relieved to find that Radhika et al had reached home without a hitch, and that they had managed to retrieve Radhika's bags which had arrived on the Continental flight.
There was to be just one more adventure on this trip. Amma and Appa were of course still in New York. They reached Newark airport without a hitch, and check in for their non stop flight to Bombay was smooth. After boarding, the plane started taxiing on time, but had to return to the gate due to some malfunction. Fortunately, this was resolved before the FDTL of the crew expired, and they were able to head out to Bombay, arriving about 3 hours later than scheduled.
Our marathon trip to the US and Canada was done and dusted, and fortunately, we had no issues except on our return journey. It certainly would not have been possible, or as much fun without the advice, hospitality and company of all our friends and relatives - Jayashri, Sundar, Nana, Divya, Jagan Peripa, Syamala Perima, Mytili, Heather, Ram, Amrita, Anand, Jyoti, Prashant, Rachna, Shrikant, Jaya, Vijay et al. I am sure that Appa's prayers also played some role in ensuring that this complicated exercise in un-packaged tourism went off smoothly.
We returned carrying fond memories and having learnt at least one lesson - never trust the transport infrastructure - viz. airlines, trains or airports to ensure that you make your connections - always stay over for a day at your final stop before taking a direct flight home. Radhika and I should have known this - we had almost missed our flight from Milan to Bombay (viz Zurich) in 2006 due to a train strike in Italy, and had ended up missing our connection this time.
Until next time...
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