US Road Trip - day 7

Oct 13, 2005

My next destination was Atlanta, Georgia - a really long trip from Baltimore. Devi had already bought me some opera tickets to watch with her and the opera would start at 8:00 P.M. By the time I started from a well fed breakfast from Amit's place it was 7:00 A.M. I was already running about an hour late from my schedule. I called up Meghana on the way and told her I would be passing vis Richmond, Virginia and so could meet her. She was thrilled and we decided to meet up for lunch at an Indian place near her office. It had been about 4 yrs since I met her and was looking forward to do so. There was a huge traffic jam on the way once again and it was about 1:00 P.M when I met her in Richmond at her Office. We then went for lunch together. I wanted to meet Sameer too but that was going to be hard given my tight schedule. After lunch I started got back on the road and took 85S to Atlanta.

The drive was quite uneventful until I reached Atlanta. I had called Devi on the way and we decided to meet at the Opera itself since going to her house and then driving to the opera would delay things a bit. Finding the opera house turned to be a herculean task. I got lost and it took me a good half an hour to get back on track to the opera with Devi's help. We hadn't missed too much and here I saw the first opera of my life. The opera itself was in Italian but there was sub-titles in English. I really enjoyed the evening.

After the opera I followed Devi to her apartment and we had a long chat about life, universe and everything. She cooked some nice food for us and we ate. I had a good nights sleep. The next day would be the longest drive of the trip - to college station to meet Ramya and Kalyanakrishnan. A trip I had been looking forward to since some time.