Good bye to Urbana

We left Urbana at the beginning of 71, in the month of February. SRL's goodbye present was a fondue pot – they had heard my ecstasy whenever fondues were on the menu at any dinner! Gita bought our staunch bug [she had to recondition the engine some time later, but still sold it for a good price when she, in turn, left Urbana]. Other small items were easy to dispose of in a student community and we did decide to take back our 110 volt small kitchen appliances and bakeware – they served me well over the next decade.
It was still winter, and the threat of snow and hail hung over our heads when we set off from Chicago in the car we were driving to Los Angles under the 'Drive a Car' scheme. How we found out about this scheme is now hazy but apparently it was quite an established practice. A person wants a car sent to a far-off place within the country and does not want to drive it himself/herself and so an agency arranges for it to be driven by someone else, who thus gets free transport across the country. Perhaps variations on the scheme exist, but the one we had handed over the car with a tank full of gas [petrol], and we had to put in whatever was further needed for the trip. We were authrised to get any repairs under 50 $ done and claim reimbursement later, but if more than that, we had to get the permission of the agency who footed the bill, if they felt it was valid. A calculation was made as to how long one could be expected to go on a full driving day and nearly half that time again was added for either unforeseen delays or small detours. So we had ten days in which to do a seven-day trip [assuming one drove at least ten hours daily].
The scheme did not operate from Urbana but from Chicago. So, to arrange the trip, we had to run up to Chicago and prove we had valid driving licences without any accident record on them, be tested for eyesight and agree on the date and destination. We planned to fly out from San Francisco, but there were no vehicle deliveries to that area around that time, only to Los Angles. This was fine with us as we wanted to see a bit of the west coast also before we left the country.
The route we decided upon was via Salt Lake City in Utah State, the Utah and Zion National parks in the same state, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and Los Angeles. We took turns at driving and the one who was the passenger at the time often lay flat on the back seat to rest, if not sleep. I had bought some heavy wool, mammoth needles [sizes 25 and 50!] and used my free time to knit away. I actually finshed a heavy sweater for Ramu and was half way to completing my sweater tunic. What i would have done with these if we had ended up in Rajamundhry or some such overheated place with Ramu being posted there, I don't know!
The first several days went off smoothly and we were able to enjoy the sightseeing, and get a decent night 's rest most days. We did have one scare the second day, as we drove along the near-deserted highway before entering Utah. A car came up the wrong way from a side turn-off and Ramu had to swerve wildly to avoid it. Our car skidded madly on the snow and ice-covered road, and as it stopped, it was facing the wrong way! Luckily, it was late at night and there was absolutely no traffic. Shaken to the core, R righted the car and we went, a trifle slower than normal on such an empty road, even in those conditions.
The great Mormon temple in Salt Lake City is a great building and there were many other architectural beauties in the town. As for the national parks, their breathtaking and unique scenery confronted us at every turn. We were driving to our rest stop in between the Grand Canyon and las Vegas when we realised something was wrong with the car. It would not pick up speed at all. We stopped in a small Arizona town and found one mechanic open. He said he would have to change something and it would cost nearly a hundred bucks. So we put a collect call to the agency, and he explained to them what had happened. We could guess from his replies that they were checking if the problem was our fault, but when reassured, they told him to go ahead and bill them.
We had made up our minds that at Las Vegas, we would together gamble upto 20 $ [!!] - even that was a lot for us! So after dinner, we sailed out to the gambling casinos and tried all the easy machines. We did at some point gain something, but soon we lost all the 20+ we now had, and quite satisfied with our experience, we stopped at that. I must add that somehow I did not care for this garish town. Moreover, the casinos were noisy and smoky, and after the novelty wore off, we had had enough for a lifetime.
The rest of the trip was uneventful and we went from place to place by air, once we dropped the car off. We did see the Redwood trees in yet another national park near LA, and the famous sights in LA – Hollywood, Disneyland, the museums, etc. San Diego was quaint in its difference from LA, and we loved the Sea Life Aquarium. The Bay Area, our last stop on the mainland, was full of interesting sights – the Lawrence Centre for Science in Berkeley, the various museums of SFO, including Ripley's Believe or Not, its Golden Gate Park, its trams, the Crookedest Street on Earth, and Fisherman's Wharf. It was at the Wharf that we first tasted Mexican fare, and fell in love with it. If only this cuisine had spread to the rest of the States even then – our eating out those two and a half years would have been so enjoyable!
Our whirlwind sightseeing next took us to Honolulu, where we did the usual touristy things, and Japan. Our first day out in Tokyo, we set out walking down a crowded street, looking for a restaurant that might serve something vegetarian. Interestingly, the practice was for restaurants to display models of the various dishes they offered, and this way, we could narrow down our choices.
Later, having lost our way back to the hotel, we found the language barrier daunting. Then we spotted a gentleman dressed in very Western style, and asked him the direction. He just bowed, and we politely bowed in return as we had read in the small guide book that we should. He promptly bowed again, and so did we. After the fourth or fifth round, I was straining to stifle my giggles, and I exclaimed,'we will die doing this for ever!' So we decided we should stop bowing, and immediately he did so too! After all this, he was not in the least bit able to understand, let alone, direct us. We gave up asking anyone, and somehow got back to our hotel.
Another very interesting experience was our stay at a Rokoyan or Japanese style lodge in Osaka. The typical mat-covered floors, shoes replaced at the entrance by soft slippers the hosts had provided, rooms separated by paper partitions, and low furniture gave the place a picture book feeling. Not so the live little fish that wiggled as the centre-piece on the tray holding the Japanese style breakfast that we foolhardily ordered. I screamed and almost jumped high enough to touch the ceiling. The next day we retreated to the safe European style breakfast!
Osaka is very modern and its lovely covered market is fantastic – entirely for pedestrians, and even in the still cold spring, the sunlight filtered through the glass paneled roof and kept us warmer than on the streets. We enjoyed the bullet trains from and to Tokyo and Osaka, and could not stop admiring the orderly queues and dignity of the huge crowds on the platform.
The only bit of old Japan that we saw was Kyoto, a short trip from Osaka. Once a capital of the country, it had a lovely Japanese style garden and temple. We unfortunately did not see much of natural beauty other than just before leaving Japan, we had a chance to see the lovely cherry blossoms around the palace in Tokyo.
I think we stopped over at both Hongkong and Singapore on the last leg of our trip, but memories of those places are faint, probably because we have been to them later too, and often. Of course sometimes it has been only to spend time at the airport fort a connection, but of that later.