The Getaway – Part 1 – Coming together of The Plan(tm)
If you’ve been reading my blog or know me, you probably know that I have a rather regular set of vacation times – ie, a week’s break once every three months or so. This time, however it was slightly different, and it had been about 5 months since I had taken a break. Let’s go back in time for a bit, however.
This getaway, was supposed to be a short 1 day trip to Guruvayur to attend wedding of fellow Rubyite. Since the wedding day was a mid-weekday ( ie Wednesday), Jay proposed an extension to this trip, and suggested a weekend getaway to Trivandrum and Varkala ( … I think). All the planning and tickets were done well over two months ago, thanks to Steve’s quick execution. Unfortunately, as always, nothing went according to plan. Come last week, I called up Jay to confirm about the trip and he hesitated slightly about the Guruvayur plan, let alone the Varkala/TVM plan. Then I hear that of the 6 people who were supposed to come to Guruvayur, 4 cancelled owing to their work and other personal commitments *sigh*. Which left Steve and me as confirmed for the Gurvayur trip. Since it had been quite some time since I took a break, I decided to utilize this opportunity and convert this into an extended getaway & make it into a Mangalore trip. Deepti then suggests coming down to Cochin from Guruvayur for the weekend. Since I more or less had decided to take the long break, thought to myself Cochin trip would be a good idea and nice departure from the traditional Mangalore trip. Dev, Ashmi & Ankit also said that they would be available for the trip, and The Plan(tm) was on. With a slight glitch.
You see, the original time table was like -
Wednesday – Leave for Guruvayur from Chennai
Thursday – Wedding. Leave for Cochin.
Friday, Saturday – Cochin, leave for Mangalore.
Deepti then reminded me that Ankit & the rest of the gang would be coming on Saturday morning, and me leaving on Saturday night would mean that I would miss a lot of The Plan(tm). *facepalm*. So I proceeded to cancel the Saturday tickets and booked a ticket from Kochi to Mangalore for Sunday night. (In hindsight, if I had gone with the original timetable, I’d have missed pretty much everything. More on that later).
Fast forward to Wednesday. I stepped out of my room to go for some shopping, and the mood was ominous, dark clouds everywhere. I booked a call taxi to the railway station, since I didn’t want to take any chances of me/my bag/laptop getting wet en route to the train station. Our train was supposed to depart at 19:45, and I reached at the train station at 18:30. Was waiting for Steve at the waiting room, and this bugger was nowhere to be seen. I grab a burger and some ice tea to spend some time, wait till 19:15, and call up Steve, and he says he’s on his way and asks me to go ahead with boarding the train. 15 minutes later, Steve calls and asks which platform, is the train on? I reply back its on No 5, and ask him where’s he, and he replies - “on my way”. WITH 15 minutes to go!
Finally, with just under 5 minutes for the scheduled departure, Steve finally gets on the train and we were off to Thrissur.
/cont.