Houston.....Leaving on a Jet Plane!

Saturday 07th March 2009,

Got up at 3:30 am, the excitement and the anxiety was not letting me sleep. A memorable day was in its making! I was going to re-live my dream again!! A dream seen with open eyes!
Humming the tunes from John Denver “All my backs are packed I am ready to Go…….Leaving on a Jet Plane.” I switched off the lights, locked the doors and went to Deepa’s house. Both of us were ready and waiting for the Jet Plane (The 12-seater SUV we guys had hired for the trip). And at 5:47 there came our Plane, Captain Arnab was the Pilot in charge and Kish the Co-pilot. Vardu, Vaishnavi, Kish’s parents and Arnab’s mom were already on Board!
Deepa and Me sneaked our ways to the last seat and became the back benchers! The back bench since childhood days I must has been a total treat to sit!!
Our captain Arnab announced the departure and we all were set to go!!Very soon we kissed the Dallas Downtown goodbye and hit the I-45 S.

The sun rays were now starting to play hide n seek with the morning clouds and I guess they have some connection with our stomach, as all of us had started feeling hungry.
Thanks to Vardu and Vaishnavi for the Donuts, they did curbed our hunger a lil bit.
Many of us were now getting Nature’s Call ;) and then a few mins later, captain Arnab announced the Breakfast break!
The Breakfast menu consisted mainly of hash browns and Pancakes from McDonalds. We loaded our stomachs light in lieu of the wonderful lunch awaiting us in Meenakshi Temple’s Cafeteria.
Captain Arnab then did the honors of clicking the first pictures of the day and announced the change in sitting plan. We backbenchers moved forward and the parents got our seats!!!

Saturday 07 March, 11 AM
The time finally came when captain Arnab announced our arrival at the first destination: Swaminarayan Akshardhaam Temple in Stafford!
WOW, it is the first word that came to my mind after looking at the temple. Pious, Serene and blissful, the temple simply took our hearts away. It is made out of white marble imported in 33,000 pieces from India and yellow limestone imported from Turkey.(Vardu fetched us this information from one of the temple’s associates).
We were lucky enough to make it to the Aarti and felt the divine pleasure.
I am always amazed to look at two sections of people in any temple. First are the elderly people whose eyes glow at the very sight of temple, and second are the children, who simply love the empty space in the temples and keep on running here and there!
We took a few shots outside the temple trying to lure our co-pilot Kish for some matrimonial pictures.

The time had come to bid this temple farewell and head on to our next destination – Meenakshi temple. There was a change of duty and Captain Arnab handed over the charge to the new captain Kish and co-pilot Deepa.

Saturday 07 March, 1 PM
We reached Meenakshi temple and prayed to all the deities, I had visited this temple last year and had never known would get the privilege to be here again! But thank God and thanks to the group!

We all were now getting the lunch calls from the stomach and headed straight to the famous cafeteria in the Mennakshi Temple.
I didn’t know for sure though whether it was the hunger pangs from my stomach or the butterflies that were making me anxious. The only thought racing in my mind was very soon u’ll make it there and that the time has come! J

The lunch was an awesome platter of south-Indian delicacies like Pongal, Masala Dosa, Puri, Vegetable rice, Lemon Rice, Tamarind Rice, Curd Rice and Idlies. After eating to our content we started feeling sleepy and drank coffee to help us deal it.
Vidya and her husband had also come to visit us at the temple.

And now with the clock hitting 3 o’clock the decision was taken to march ahead! My mind was racing and heart was full of Joy. (Not attempting to define those emotions here as they could cover a separate blog all togetherJ)
There was a change of duty and Kish and Deepa exchanged roles. Captain Deepa announced the departure from Meenakshi temple and headed towards NASA.
There were some construction going on and so there were some road blocks. It’s always said that the last few minutes of reaching your aim are the toughest and I echoed the same feelings. The anxiety and the suspense were killing me!

Saturday 07 March, 4 PM

We finally reached NASA and the first question I had been asking in my previous blog was answered-- What would be my first sight tomorrow –the NASA logo, the US flag, a building etc? I saw a white building first and then the two shuttle planes marking NASA Johnson Space Centre’s entrance.

After getting down I don’t know what happened to me, those few steps from our Jet Plane to the Johnson space center were so difficult and heavy. All my childhood memories, dreams and ambitions were just revisiting my brain. The heart was echoing “I wish…………………”
And then the reality struck me and I went in! The second question I had been asking myself : Would the area inside the Space Centre have changed? I did find a lil bit change but not that much!
The entire gang went for the tram tour but I had opted to stay back and spend some time alone with Me, Myself and NASA J.
I gifted myself with the opportunity of getting lost in my day dreams! And then went off for the Blast Off theater. It was such an amazing experience and I give it 5 on a scale of 5! (As I already said my personal encounter with NASA cannot fit in here so will write it in separate blog and post it soon! J)

I came out of the Blast Off Theatre and the group had returned from the Tram tour and we got reunited to explore more in NASA.
I shopped quite a bit at the Space Trader shop and we guys clicked couple of shots here and there. The NASA photo studio was the next game!! Arnab, Deepa, Kish and me clicked an Astronaut pic together. So now I had three of them as my fellow astronauts!
It feels enthralling to see myself in the Space suit and it is till date the most attractive uniform I would have ever seen!!

( A note of thanks here to Arnab and his mom, Deepa, Kish and his parents, Vardu, and Vaishnavi : Thanks a lots guys: I don’t want to say you made my day , but you made my year J! God Bless you all!)

Saturday 07 March, 7 PM

After spending three hours at my dream destination, it was time now to head back to Dallas. The Captain in charge was Vardu and Co-pilot Vaishnavi.
I must confess this was the time in the day that I felt very very down. It felt as if I am getting separated from an important part of myself.
Luckily for me, everyone decided to play the memory game and I lost track of what I was thinking. But first we decided to get coffee from SB before heading on your journey to Dallas. So we went to a drive thru where in we forgot to order and went straight down to collect the order J Yup That’s us!!!

After coffee, we all were charged to play the memory game.
Oh My Gosh! It still is one of the amazing games and goes wild away from Coffee to Blue Sea from Gandhi to Teresa from Cricket to football, from MTV to u know what.
Not to miss from Lost to “Found” and Chillis to Californication!. We guys had real fun exercising our brains with this game!

Two rounds of this game had us out of our heads and we all decided to play Dumb C next! Woooo what movies to guess from ‘Alice in Wonderland’ that made Deepa exclaim ‘Frantic’ to ‘Everybody says I am fine’. From ‘My name is nobody’ that drove Kish crazy to ‘Armageddon’ and ‘Honey I shrunk the kids’ the simple ones!!

At last we all were exhausted and decided to search for the next IHOP for dinner.
Found one on exit 251(that’s what I remember) and we guys had our dinner!

Sunday 08 March, 12:25 AM

We came out of IHOP and got in for the last lap. There was again a slight change of duty – Pilot Kish and co-pilot myself were struggling our best to stay awake amongst the sleeping gang!! We did trust on a number of our fav songs to help us do that!! Finally we reached back to Dallas and hit the same road names Preston, Campbell, StoneHollow and there it came: Frankford, 4900 Rancho Palisades!

Sunday 08 March, 01:20 AM

Thinking about the adventures of the day, I slept off!!!!!