You just have to love the snow. On day before my trip, we woke up to several inches of snow that continued through out the day. Schools, businesses, and (ahem) airports were closed throughout the region. The forecast, freezing rain and ice Tuesday night, with more snow on top of that Wednesday. Excellent!
My flight leaves Dayton at 2:30 PM and I awake to heavy snow and thick ice everywhere. Streets have not been touched. The night before, my mom calls and makes me promise to be at the airport 3 hours early (1.5 to 2 is sufficient for me, but I agreed to 3 so she would stop harping... sorry Mom... ;-) ) Turns out it was a good idea as you will see below (Thanks Mom).
Intending to get to the Airport by 11:30 and with the weather the way it is, I intend to leave around 9:30 AM. After chipping away a good 1/2" of ice from my car, I get in around 8:45 and get the heat going. Denise makes me breakfast and tells me I am insane to try to make to the airport in a level 3 snow emergency. She is right, of course, but I don't want to miss my flight and take the penalties and arrive on a weekend with no one around, etc. So, blithely ignore her pleas of sanity and decide to go forth into the snow.
I want to thank my next door neighbors for helping push my car up the street after leaving my drive way. I was spinning my wheels and going no where (during which time I am relatively sure my wife was looking out the window giggling) until they came to my rescue. The main roads where plowed, but slippery and I had some problems going up some hills until I got to the highway. The highways were snow covered but very light on traffice (being illegal to drive during a Level 3 Snow Emergency).
I eventually made it to the airport at about 12:30 where my flight to DC was, not unexpectedly, delayed due to bad weather in DC. The woman at the ticket counter said going through DC was not a good option and rerouted me onto a flight that left in 30 minutes to Chicago, which got me into Frankfurt an hour later but plenty of time to catch my connection to India. So, I made the flight because I was early thanks to my Mom harping about 3 hours. So, thanks again Mom.
Flight to Chicago was uneventful, as was my long but relatively comfortable flight to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I had like 3.5 hours to kill so I wandered through their central terminal and did some Window shopping. I had my last taste of the west at McDonalds at the airport (where I also found an outlet to recharge my laptop and iPhone) and then I was off to India.
My flight to India was also relatively uneventful. I had some kids crying behind me, but the handy new in ear earphones I bought from Shure, along with the WhiteNoise app on my iPhone did the trick and I actually slept a couple hours on the plane.
The Bangalore airport is very modern and looks like any other big international airport. I cleared customs, got my bag which I was happy to see came through fine, and exited the terminal to find the car that was arranged to pick me up and take me to the hotel. Unfortunately, I could not find a placard with my name on it, so I went and exchanged my money for rupees (300 USD nets you about 13,800 INR) and went to the airport taxi place. They called the hotel who called the driver who came out of the crowd saying he was standing there with my name on the placard which he showed me. Maybe I just missed it, I don't know. I looked three times but who knows. Anyway, I was escorted to the car and at 3:00 AM local time, to the hotel we went.
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