The WackyTravels of Heather and Bob

To the US and back

December 8th, 2007

Just a few days ago we landed in bangalore, 2 suitcases lighter than when we left SFO, but back in Bangalore in one piece. We were visiting in the US for 2 days longer than 2 weeks and managed to keep ourselves nice and busy. We attended 3 thanksgiving celebrations: one with family, one with friends and another with family. We ate a bunch of pizza (I really wanted pizza), I drove my car (oh, the car, I love the car), we went to Las Vegas, I went gokarting and we even saw a handful of our friends.

Our thanksgiving trips were more or less uneventful. No turkeys exploded. It didn’t snow 5′. It was just 3 days in a row of good company and good eating.

The Sunday after thanksgiving we hung out with our friends Paul and Pam and their two kids Trevor and Stella. Besides hanging out and catching up the mission for this visit was capturing a photo for their christmas card this year. Unfortunately I didn’t do very well scoring a photo with the two kids in it for use in the card, but I did score this one of Stella. I rank it near the top of the ~100,000 photos I’ve taken during my lifetime.

Our Vegas trip had a few blog-worthy events. We ate dinner at this place called Delmonico Steakhouse, a restaurant run by Emeril (yes, bam! Emeril). It was the most amount of money I’ve ever spent on food. Think a month of food for a family of 3. Livin’ the life baby. But the food was good. The night before we went and saw Penn and Teller. We discovered Penn and Teller while living in Ukraine; we found their Showtime show on my favorite TV website and started watching. Visiting Vegas we took up the opportunity to catch the live version.

The blog-worthy portion of Penn and Teller comes during one of the early acts when the comedic duo decide they need a volunteer from the audience. I’ll write a sentence here that has little bearing to the overall story to give you a chance to guess where I’m leading. Did you get it? Got it? You’re right: Heather was selected as the volunteer. I tried typing up the story of what happened but it’s just not nearly as funny as if I simply tell you about it the next time I see you. So ask.

On our final weekend of the trip we headed down to Portola Valley for my cousin Jon’s wedding. Thankfully not being on photo detail I just hung out and chatted with family. I took a few pictures of folks after the ceremony but otherwise didn’t take any pictures, mostly on purpose. Here are some photos that I chose to upload.

After all of that we went back to SFO, 5 suit cases in hand, and reluctantly boarded the airplane destined for Frankfurt. We flew business class, not because Cisco cares about its employees and pays to fly them business class, but because I dumped a bunch of frequent flyer miles and upgraded us. Business class on long, international flights is worth every penny. We got to Frankfurt and hung out in the lounge to score some free food before heading down to the gate for Bangalore. You don’t actually need to know your gate number to find your flight, just walk through Frankfurt until you find a gate that is filled with people that have mustaches. That’s your flight.

Entry Filed under: California,India