Day 2- I am gonna work till I retire

I had a good meeting in the morning with my customers. It has been raining since morning and before setting out of Bedford Duane and me had a luncheon meeting with our former buyer of this company in Bedford. He had retired since I came last time and we thought it will be good to catch up with him. Speaking to him during lunch I enquired about how he spends his day - and he said he walks till 1 pm every day and at times 19 miles. I found this crazy way to spend your time. I have been always talking that I am going to retire pretty early in my career but seeing him I felt this might be a bad decision. I now understand how important it is to keep on working - may be not always at work but things which will keep me creatively busy. So I am now decided that I am not gonna stop working early as I had planned out and am sure I would keep working at LNM for much longer than I thought I will do. Its pretty important to keep yourself busy and I know I will be the last one to keep walking.

Well, I am at my hotel room in Bristol. It has been a long day with this more than 6 hrs of driving. We crossed 4 states - Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and then Virginia. This trip is going to take me into nine US states and then Canada. As I had mentioned earlier it was lousy weather when I started the day- raining and raining but as we reached into Virginia - it became bright and sunny. Duane had a surprise visit for me in Bristol. I went to see the stadium where they have the NASCAR races. A huge stadium which accommodates 1,00,000 people and it was great to be in there after having seen all this on TV. Duane and me had the whole stadium to us and I could hear the echo of 100000 people roaring in my ears. It was a great experience to be there and I thank Duane for this. I have taken some good pictures there but some body has made a mess of the card reader in my laptop and I am unable to upload this now. But I will share this as soon as I get a replacement. One of the best things for some one in a marketing job is that it allows you to see great places and meet exciting people. The last one month has really rekindled the spark within and I am enjoying it. But travelling on US roads is so monotonous with no holes or bad roads. Miles and Miles of great expressways and its great that Duane keeps on driving wonderfully on these roads - I would have gone to sleep as there's no excitement like we have back home - no rickshaws or cows coming , no human gay walking in the middle. Add to that I have Duane on my side for five long days. Hope I had Keera driving me around :-) Catch you tomorrow as we travel from here to Kentucky.

DAY 1 - I made my Mark

I have reached Hotel Hamilton Inn at Bedford some time back at 8.30 Pm after the shortest drive of this trip in four hours from Towanda. I last stayed in this hotel in September 2004. This is the place from where I made one of the most expensive calls on my cell phone, negotiating a land deal for the plot where LNM is located today. I am sure this hotel is lucky for me and this place is going to bring me luck in my all important meeting tomorrow. I started my long business trip within US today. I reached RLD's home yesterday night from New Jersey. It was raining badly yesterday afternoon. My drive with RLD to his home was in rains. The whole drive within PA state is beautiful but unfortunately as it was raining couldnt enjoy the beauty. This place is nothing less than you think about switzerland. I have seen this place in all seasons and its beautiful wether theres snow or in autumn when its all colorful. I enjoyed a full Indian meal at RLD's home which was quiet refreshing eating at home after some days. After a good morning meeting at Towanda I went out for lunch with Duane and Dave at Weighbridge cafe in Towanda. Weighbridge cafe is a railway station converted to a cafe in Towanda. Towanda is a small town in PA with around a population of 3000 people. Searching Google on Towanda an interesting fact I found out was it has more female population than male - they can export few of them to India - with sharp decline of female population in India. The weighbridge cafe has a wall where there are signatures of people from different parts of the world. Surprisingly there was no one from India signed on at this place. I thought let me make my mark - I took a ladder from the hostess and put in my name, town and country details with todays date stamped on it. Any one coming here sometime can see "i was here" on the wall from me. The drive from Towanda to Bedford is very scenic but unfortunately my camera was in my bag and I missed out on some good views. But Duane told me that we will cross similar good scenic views more and I am gonna keep my camera with me tomorrow as I drive from here to Bristol - almost 6 hrs. Good about driving with Duane is he lets me take my small naps inbetween where as Teppo in Finland would give the car a big jerk to wake me up - Its fun travelling with these guys.