None sweeter than those of Sunday mornings when Natasha was a preschooler and I would bundle her up in the car, take her to the airport and standing against those giant glass windows next to the gates watch the planes take off and land. Those days, you did not need a boarding pass to get thru security. We would visit the American Airlines Admirals club where she would always drink some orange juice and then head out to the train that would take us from terminal to terminal for some free ride.

Best couple of hours in an airport for me.

Best couple of dollars for parking I have ever spent!

The lit up horse carriages are a hoot and a half!

These new iPhones do take some good pictures!!

Leaving US airspace over Ponte Vedra Beach

17 years in this city. First time we took the public transport bus (MARTA bus) together. The bus conveniently picks us from from MARTA station and drops us within a couple of minutes of walk from the house.

My efforts in belt tightening by running and diet control all thru the year had an unenviable score card at the end of the year! My belt snapped!!

I will get past the embarrassing parts quickly.

The challenge was – how to fix the problem while on the the road.

The maximalist wife wanted to buy me a new one.

The minimalist me found a new use of Apple charger cords that Apple finally can say “We admit! We had no app for that!!”

You have to be a bit of an airline geek to get this.

Took this shot a few moments back sitting in a flight at La Guardia airport while taxiing to the runway.

Do you see anything unique about the picture?

As I saw the airplanes rolling one by one to the head of the runway, suddenly something in the sequence caught my eye.

There are 5 airplanes in the sequence. Each from a different airline. And those are the top 5 airlines in the USA (by capacity)!!!

How unique is that?

For the data-oriented, measured in ASMs, here is the ranking from May this year.
#1. United Airlines (65.7 billion)
#2. American Airlines (65 billion)
#3. Delta Air Lines (61.3 billion)
#4. Southwest Airlines (38 billion)
#5. JetBlue (16.7 billion)

Note that the ranking order will get interchanged if you go by other metrics like passenger footfalls, miles flown etc etc.

Delta Skyclub in the new Terminal (C) of La Guardia airport is a very attractive one. Some of the decor are world class.

Saw two old typewriters in a couple of glass boxes set up as decoration. Given my penchant for old typewriters, went to investigate. Had a great laugh reading one of the papers. It looks like a resume of a person with all sorts of achievements listed. Those achievements run thru the whole page.

As you can see, somebody gave his/her verdict on the candidate: “He Looked Good On Paper”. Love the touch of humor!

As Raj Sundaramurthy had once pointed out to me… “How else does one make new friends?”

What a great friend we made this evening!

The plan was to calm down after New York driving with an Old Fashioned and a wine. Since it was Sharmila and I at a bar, it obviously meant we were going to formulate some travel plans. In fact, the specific thing that we needed to decide was whether to leave the city the next day or stay back for a day and accordingly make hotel and flight arrangements.

Well, this is me at a bar. So, we did nothing of that.

We spent the whole evening making a new friend in Jenny who was sitting next to us. Heard some of the most fascinating stories of life she has led. Got to know most of her family members too thru her stories!

Sharmila got a taste of what an evening at a bar while I am on the road feels like.

Looking forward to a “generic” (ah! well! “Jenn-Eric”) evening during our next trip to New York!

After 31 years of driving, I had caused an accident. I have gotten hit by other cars before but I had never hit anybody. Not saying I have not scraped a car or two in some tight corners of Boston underground parking here and there… but never hit another car on the road.

Well, the confidence was a bit damaged. Not as much as the front of Sharmila’s car. But impaired none the less.

Gotta say – got some of my confidence back after driving in New York downtown in peak office hours. In the darkest of evenings with constant rains. The visibility, to me, felt like that of the chap out on the lookout tower of the Titanic on that fateful night. Brooklyn was a bear to drive in, by any stretch of imagination!

Got honked only once! Still, I drove like a man possessed. It was going to be…. errr… New York or bust for my driving skills!!

Dropped Natasha and Tuey at their residence (am going to miss those two) and then checked into a hotel.

Finally, got myself an Old Fashioned to calm my nerves down!!!