Day 5 of the tour

Today was the most eventful day. We were all really tired last night and it was good that we sslept for 4 hours in the Walmart parking lot. Our goal is to reach San Diego the southern most point of the Western Mainland US. Considering we started this trip from Boston and came via New Orleans, this would be a North - South and East - West trip.We got up at 8 AM and started proceding towards Temple while being in touch with the rental company. We needed to goto a RV service center. Spare tyres are usually good only for a couple of hundered miles so we needed to get a new tyre. Also the water in the sink had been leaking for two days making the bathrooms and the sink unusable. We pulled into Lone Star Service Center in Holly Hall which is close to Temple. The guys there were terrific and put us back on the road in 90 mins. We finally reached Temple at 2 in the afternoon. We had a great lunch there and then hit the road at 5 in the evening. We reached the town of Fort Stockton Texas around 11 in the night for gas and food. It is a small town in Texas. This is where things got interesting. Our driver drove to the drive through which is of 8 feet height with our RV which is 12 feet and 4 inches. The owner came out called the cops and tried to make a big scene. He actually wanted us to give him a cheque of 1800 dollars for the small dent on the drive through roof. He then started saying ridiculous things such as that our rental RV insurance that we took does not cover the damages and that we dont even possess our own personal car insurances(Even though that doesnot matter in this situation at all). However we called the rental company and gave the phone to the cop to explain everything when he started using abusive language. The cop told him to stay away just got our details and then asked us to leave. The cop was really nice other wise we would have had a tough time. A couple of hours later a cop pulled us over and gave a speeding ticket for doing 79 at a 65 zone. Everyone can guess who the driver was. He had a very eventful day indeed. He was warned in the guestbook to drive slowly but then here is today having driven into the drive through and with hours later a speeding ticket from a Texas State Trooper. I think that at this point I should take over. Bye for now.
-Amit

Day 4 of the tour

We started our day 4 with a tour of New Orleans City. It is a multicultural and vibrant city. Post lunch we started at 3 pm for Temple, Texas a city which is an hour north of Austin. We reached Houston at about 10 pm and stopped for some time in one of our friends place. Half an hour later we were on the road for Temple a two hour drive. Hour an hour into our journey we stopped for gas when we noticed that one of the rear tyres had a huge gash on it. Since there are two tyres on each side of the RV we decided to continue slowly to a town called La Grange and park in the Walmart parking lot there. We reached there only by 2:00 AM and the tyre service guy came and fixed the tyre at about 4:00 AM.

Day 3 of the tour

Day 3 of the tour was quite thrilling still exhausting. We had to cover a distance of 1090 miles between Rockville in Maryland to New Orelans in Louisiana, going into really beautiful scenic routs across Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi before entering into Louisiana. The travel took around 21 hours to cover. The last 100 miles was quite difficult to drive as there was terrible traffic. An incident involving 6 car collision that occurred in the last 30 odd miles that we had to cover did not help. All we could do was to park the RV in one of the camping grounds fortunately very close to the city center and chill out a bit. We did explore some places in the city center late in the night and came back around 3.30 in the morning. Wow what a day. We sat down and discussed the plans for the next day and the pot luck party that we would have on day 4. Check out for some pics later- Cheers- Sreenath

Day 2 pictures

Day 2 of the tour

We had a cool day 2, meeting with several of our friends in Maryland, honestly a bit disappointing too as we expected a lot more of our friends. Many of our friends could not be seen because of the long memorial day weekend. However, we managed to raise 230 dollars this day. Something satisfying. Some good friends that we met with a year ago, were here at very short notices. Nico came just in 2 hours' of notice and was indeed quite nostalgic for us (The French-Indian Connection). Kempiah who normally spends some time at home and rest at the NIH decided to join the rest of our tour, thanks to Amit for the wonderful RV that he booked. Kemp almost immediately fell in love with the RV. I am still amazed at the deal that he obtained and for the excellent RV that he got for us in the tour. (see photos which will be updated in a while). To top it all, we had excellent dinner so quickly prepared by Dimple. We came back to the RV, had some pints of beer. Amit and Kishore had quick showers at Kemp's place, when I conveniently slept in the RV. Rest in the day 3 of the blog.

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Peace, Love and Joy

Sreenath Subrahmanyam
Marie Curie Transfer of Knowledge
Industry Academia Partnerships
F68, Cranfield University at Silsoe
Bedfordshire, MK 45 4DT
United Kingdom
Phone- :+44-01525-863164
Fax - :+44-01525-863540
Email : sri (at) cranfield.ac.uk
Website: http://www.ssree.com
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First Day of the Trip

A BOAT...that is what it feels like.
My brother had dropped me of yesterday at the RV place and we had a grand tour of the RV. In reality it was more like dummys introduction to RVing. Anyway here I am on the Masspike driving this RV trying desperatley to fit the RV between the two white lines. For those who know about the Masspike there is a streach of road close to the Natick exit that is subject to high crosswinds. Now put someone who hasnt driven an RV in that situation. It was more like a first timer taking out his boat....
Finally after getting stuck in traffic for 2 hours I finally reached New Jersey and got my first meal of the day. Couple of hours later I got to the venue of the pot luck and found a really low turnover. We were dissapointed of course, but we decided to utilize this oppurtunity to break in the RV. We have the pot luck right in the RV itself!!!! What a way to start the trip!!! AND we raised 140 dollars.
By the time I picked Sree from New York, it was late in the night so we decided to halt at New Jersey tonite and start fresh early morning tomorrow morning.
Amit
May 23, 2008

Photo Sale

The sale of photographs which capture nature and landscapes taken by Sreenath, one of our members, in Manchester, UK has generated 65 pounds. This is our first fund raising event for this year and we are encouraged by the success of this event considering that this event could not be widely advertised and we expected only a couple of pounds for each photo. We would like to thank Karthik Mahedevan and Anna Mitseva for helping us in organizing this event and the enthusiasts who generously contributed by buying some of the pictures on display.

Amit
May 20, 2008