Driving @ US

After due consideration and lots of confusion, I decided to buy a car for myself.
The basic reason was that I had no other means to commute to my work place.

I bought my car on 7th Jan. I completed all the formalities like registration, insurance, etc on the same day. I was ready to hit the roads by almost noon. I had to right away drive on a hi way to get my car back home. Though nervous initially, started enjoying the drive with time. I just roamed around the local roads, to feel more comfortable.



Prabhu, me and prashant decided to go to karthik's house for the long weekend which fell on Jan 14. Karthik and I succeeded in brainstorming Swami also to come from the west coast in just a single phone call. We were all really excited to have the grand get-together. Prabhu, me and prashant decided to rent a car to go to Karthik's house which was just over 100 miles from my place. I was very eagerly waiting for that so that I can do a part of the drive. There came the twist. Prashant decided to back out of the get-together as he had some official work over the weekend. Within 24 hours of this shock there came another shock from Prabhu, he also backed out owing to a release that he had to do the following week. All we could do was, just discuss on how this profession kills us.

With Prashant and Prabhu backing out, the option of taking a rental car from NJ was completely ruled out as it turned out to be an expensive option. I had only two options; either take the train or drive my car. After a series of thoughts, I decided to drive all the way myself. The only concern for me was that I had no navigator and not even a CD player in the car. The day before I started, bought a FM transmitter so that I can enjoy some good music using my small mp3 player.

I started on Friday evening 0445hrs from my office at Montvale, NJ heading towards North Wales, PA. The drive was real good at Garden State Parkway and was then I entered I-78. It all took a fraction of second for me to miss the route. I was gazing at my route to see the exit number from I-78 and before even I could do something, I was on the wrong lane that merged to some other Hi Way. All that I could do was get into the next exit and then go to a gas station and get the route back to I-78. I almost wasted 20 minutes on this. Things were real smooth after that until it became dark. That is when I remembered the Weather forecast for the day. It was a real foggy day and I almost had zero visibility in US 202. I could not see the lanes or the sign boards clearly. For a few minutes I became real nervous. I put the car on the shoulders, had a gulp of water and then relaxed myself and started driving again. I kept following US 202 S as the map asked me to merge into US 202 S through various roads, All I kept looking was signs for US 202 S as I kept driving on 202. As time preceded US 202 almost became like a local road and the drive was even more terrible. I wasn't even sure if I missed the right turn into Summneytown Pike that I was supposed to take from 202. I could see a road named North Wales road and my instincts told me that I was somewhere around North Wales and didn't go too far. All I could do was again look for the gas station. Hurray! There I found the gas station. Unfortunately I came past the turn that I was supposed to take, fortunately it was just over a mile from the gas station. I reached Karthik's house by 0830. I was a real long drive for 110 miles. Had some food and after some chit chat, after which I went to hit my dreams.

We had to pick up swami from Phili airport at 1200hrs. I n Karthik went to the airport and picked him. We then had to go to Indian grocery stores, so that we can have some good Indian food for the next 2.5 days. We started cooking lunch at 0430pm and we ended up having it as a dinner, Swami didn't want to go out anywhere, so we decided to stay home see movies, cook, eat chit chat, and speak to friends in India thru conf call. We really had good fun doing all these. We had a wide variety of food like kara kozhambu, rasam, kovakkai poriyal, pongal, thakkali saatham, paneer butter masala, etc

All good times have an end. We three had to part on Monday AN. I dropped Karthik and Swami at the train station, so that they can go to airport. After filling my petrol tank, I started from North Wales at 0315 pm. The return journey was real smooth. I managed to reach back home by 0545 pm. I was back to my usual routine. After all, life is all about this.