Interstate 540

Driving is one of the activities I like most. So, since I arrived here I was looking forward for acquiring an Arkansas driver's licence and to atleast rent a car. I searched many sites on the net to know more about procedures and essentials for getting The Natural State's licence and to my delight I found that any foreign national with valid International Driving Permit can drive a car for a year here in the US. Then the next task was finding a reason to rent a car and due to our New-To-US status I got a reason as well. On last Monday, we booked a cab to visit Social Security Office in nearby town called Fayetteville. We were four. Cab took us to the government office some 25 miles south to Bentonville. As we got down of the cab and walked four steps I saw a notice.. "Closed due to Columbus Day'. How on earth no one told us about this before we left the office! Well, we spent $160 just to go to Fayetteville and coming back. As we had to go back again.. I suggested others that we would rent a car and I will drive. Others were ok with the idea.

I rented a car a day before on Wednesday and drove around Bentonville to get the feel of numerous rules and offcourse right hand drive. Well, it feels bit strange to drive first. But the best thing is cars here are automatic. There is no clutch and no gear! Driver's dream! You can be more relaxed while driving here but at the same time you have to be more vigilant. You are always secondary to rules here and not 'apni marzi ka maalik' like back in India. You have to maintain some minimum speed, you cannot exceed the max speed. If you want to take turn you have to take it from certain places marked for turning. You have to give way to pedestrians and what not. But still I found driving here really easy first because traffic was less and second one can be sure about others as they will also follow the rules.

With the homework done, I took the car out on US Interstate 540 which goes through Bentonville. As soon as I got on it, pictures of Mumbai - Pune Expressway came in front of me. I love our expressway it's big and scenic. This 540 was 2X2 unlike our Expressway which is 3X3 and as more Americans use cars it was crowded. If you are coming from India or any other country which follows Metric system to calculate distance speedometers can give you wrong sense of speed. Looking 70 on the meter can make you feel like you can go little faster but you'are already going with 110kph.

Mid October is peak of fall season here, so trees lined along the freeway were showing how beautiful the nature can be. Some were bit ahead of their time and were full red, some like us going with the herd and were yellow and some of them were like government websites slow to adapt the change and were still green. As a driver you will be in two minds whether to enjoy the colors or look for the exit number. Another example of American planning, there have exits to highway after every mile or two but they have given numbers to those exists, you just have to remember the number and take it as your exit comes. No double minds there.

As we reached the SSN office did our job and were waiting for others to come, the security guard aged some 70odd came to us and said, 'I hope you are having great time in our country. We welcome you here. Enjoy your stay here!' and we replied together 'Yes we are!'