Day 1 - Getting there is half the fun

Today is the day we leave. (I've written this on September 12th, but haven't been able to get to a computer until now.) I rode my bike to drop off one last book at the library and to check to make sure we wouldn't return to a two-month fine for any books we'd forgotten. On my way home, I stopped to say goodbye to my folks, and then swung by the PO box to pick up any last minute bills. We just recently set up our Visa with auto-pay for the trip, and, when I checked the statement it looked like the payment dates had been entered incorrectly.

That meant a quick trip to the credit union to check (it was OK after all; that's just the way that auto-pay works), and to make sure that all of our European credit-card and ATM ducks were still neatly lined up and ready to go. (We'll find out when we go to get money, I guess.)

Kathy spent the morning packing, cleaning and double-checking, and, as 2:00 PM approached, I had a chance to print out some last-minute local train schedules (such as the different connections between Venice and Montebelluna, for instance). I also tried, unsuccessfully, to enable you all to comment on our blog, which I almost deleted in the process. (I just figured out how to make them active, so they should work now.)

Right on time at 2:00 PM, Mari-Kristin (our daughter-in-law) showed up at our door, all dressed up fresh from an interview in Irvine, we piled into Kathy's car, and headed up to LAX.

Waiting for Air India

We got to the LAX Bradley International Terminal a little after 3:00 and found a half-dozen people already lined up for Flight 136, Air India, from LAX to Delhi, with one stop (ours) in Frankfurt Germany. The ticket counter wasn't open yet, and another two dozen folks lined up behind us before the staff arrived about 45 minutes later.

The first thing that the staff did was to pass out a little flyer to every one standing in line:

Welcome Aboard: For your safety and comfort, AIR INDIA wishes to remind you that tariff regulations limit you to only ONE HANDCARRY baggage per person. This baggage should not exceed a total dimension of 45 inches and weight of 15 lbs (7 kg) and must fit in the overhead bin or under the seat in front of you.

Passengers NOT complying with this regulation will have their hand-carry baggage intercepted, checked at the gate and assessed the EXCESS BAGGAGE CHARGE of $133.00.

In case hand carry baggage is intercepted, passenger must remove the following items: money, jewelry, electronic devices, medications, important documents, and other valuable items.

For our trip, Kathy bought two "High Sierra" bags. These are standard carry-on-sized wheeled bags that are convertible to a backpack. In addition, they have a smaller, zip-on-and-off day pack that you can carry separately or attached. So, if worse came to worst, we could zip everything together into a single carry-on with no dimension larger than 45 inches, since we were determined not to check any bags.

The problem, though, was the weight. No matter how lightly we packed, there was no way we could get everything below 15 pounds each; fully loaded, each of our packs weight about twice that. Even worse, though, was that Kathy was also bringing another tote-style bag of textbooks for students at the CC Bible School in Siegen, which was our first stop. I was pretty completely freaked out, but Kathy calmly took our packs apart while we were standing in line, and found places for all of the textbooks.

When we got to the ticket line, Kathy just asked the lady, "Can we bring these on board?". She had us stick them both on the scale, and then simply said, "Sure!". I started to point out that the flyer that they gave us said we couldn't have more than 15 lbs each, when Kathy shot me a look, and I realized what I was doing and just shut up.

We got our boarding passes, took off our shoes, emptied our pockets, removed our money-belts, were X-Rayed, wanded and scanned, and passed into the terminal where I'd spend the next three hours still worried about our overweight luggage being intercepted at the gate, getting bumped from the flight, or inexplicably at the last moment finding ourselves on the TSA no-fly list.

Of course none of those things happened. Kathy noticed my fretting and prayed with me. The TSA folk decided (on September 12th) that maybe a flight to India might be some kind of special risk, and so they proceeded to re-XRay and re-wand everyone in the waiting room (with in incidents that I could see). By 6:30 we filed uneventfully onto the half-filled plane.

Flying AI

Flying Air India is certainly different than any other airline we've flown before. It was the least expensive flight we could find, at $ 326.00 each, one-way. This was less than 1/4 the cost of most of the other fares we looked at. It was also one of the nicest airlines we've flown; it wasn't a cut-rate operation by any means.

We were seated just forward of the airplane entrance in row 15 (about 5 rows behind the first-class section). Next two us was a young LA bicyclist name Liz who was going on a biking tour of Croatia with a group of five or six others from LA and Orange counties. The all were lined up behind us with their bikes in large cardboard containers to be checked. Apparently checking the bikes as luggage was completely free on Air India. Liz had some interesting stories about different bike trips she'd taken in Europe which got me really excited (Kathy maybe not so much.)

When we first took off, there was a spectacular sunset, which was really vivid. I tried to take a picture, but it didn't turn out as well as I would have liked. It was really overwhelming in person. That's Malibu and the Santa Monica bay you can see through the window.

The in-flight movies were both American and Indian; you could use your headsets to listen to the soundtrack in several different languages.

The food and the snacks were also quite a bit different than on American or European airlines that we've flown before. Instead of peanuts or pretzels, the snack was a spicy sesame-flour muchie that looked kind of like a crinkle-cut french fry, with a texture like a very dense Cheetos. Of course we had our choice of beverage as well: coffee, tea, coke or Johnny Walker Red whiskey. Straight.

Dinner gave us our first taste of international food: spicy lamb, rice and vegetables, along with a side of yogurt and a very thin, hot, cracker-like flat bread. The meal finished off with a delicious desert: Vermicelli Kheer with Pistachios; and ended with both of us falling fast asleep.