Real Words

I just got back from a trip to Las Vegas that didn’t go as planned. I have had my fair share of travel problems in the past - two flat tires in as many days on one short road trip, five planes in 24 hours to get back home from New York once, etc. etc. etc. - so I’m pretty go-with-the-flow when it comes to dealing with the hassles that come up during vacations. But I have to admit that my patience was taxed by this one and by the end of the flight, I was sending frustrated text messages to friends complaining about the seemingly endless delays and problems. One of the text messages that I got back was, “maybe it’ll make for some good writing”. The message made me laugh.

There once was a time when I treasured every little experience because of the way that it could add to my writing. The cheap motel room with the domestic violence issues next door didn’t scare me so much as it gave me fodder for the characters of a short story. The hundreds of miles gone out of the way after a wrong turn on a road trip made me curious about what I was going to see that I hadn’t seen before so that I could have new experiences to write about.

I tried to keep this old attitude in mind as we dealt with the seemingly endless problems that arose during this trip. My ability to do so wavered throughout the ordeal. I’m trying to practice the attitude of “being here now”. I’m trying to be where I am instead of obsessing about the past or worrying about the future. Being stuck in the middle of travel is a terrific way to learn that lesson because there’s really nothing that you have control over other than deciding how you are going to deal with the situation that you are in.

It started with a delayed flight … an hour sitting on the plane, deplaning to sit for an hour, re-planing to get all the way to Vegas only to be told we couldn’t land, rerouting to Phoenix for more than twenty four hours. The interminable phone calls to the hotel and the airlines to get new flights, extend our stay, straighten things out. The calls to my sister who was supposed to meet us at the hotel to see where she was (stuck in the snow) and when we might meet up.

We finally arrived in Vegas thirty hours later than we were supposed to. The problems had only just begun. The hotel didn’t have us as ever having called in so we were considered no-shows and needed to fix our room problem. We eventually did get a really great room and were so exhausted that we went straight to sleep in it. We planned to start enjoying Vegas the next day. But then the power went out in the hotel and it wouldn’t come back on so we had to repack our rooms in the dark and get moved to another hotel. And then move back the next day. And every time, there were problems with our reservation that had to be sorted through, worsened by the fact that we had five people in two rooms under two different names and that the final day of our trip was booked separately from the first few days..

We didn’t expect the flight back to be easy. We already knew what kind of trip it was. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when our flight was delayed and delayed again and then canceled. Back down to the ticket booth to get a new flight on a different airline. Go pick up the baggage (which we paid $15 each time to check in … $120 total for two bags for one trip to Vegas) and re-check it at the new airline. Go back through security and of course this time we’re tagged for special searches so we go to the special line and go through that. Get to the gate just in time to find out that our new flight is delayed. And delayed again.

When I got that text message back from my friend, I thought to myself that I didn’t want to write about this at all - I just wanted it to be done. I’ve been feeling that way about a lot of things lately. But the truth is that I had some really cool moments in the midst of this interminable bad trip. Like when I overheard a conversation between two kids and one asked the other where he was from. The child, maybe eight years old, said very matter-of-factly: “my mom is from Ireland and my dad is from Palestine but I am from America”.

Or when the message about not taking other people’s baggage came on overhead for the five billionth time and I suddenly thought of it in terms of emotional baggage and it made me laugh. Don’t take on anyone else’s baggage. Keep your own baggage in check. It’s good advice. And it’s a reminder that there are moments of laughter in the middle of all kinds of frustrating situations.

And a reminder that the only place we can be is exactly where we are. For a few brief moments on that first plane that failed to land in Vegas, I felt a sense of panic. The pilot said that we didn’t have much fuel and that we would have to reroute to Phoenix and I felt this sense of anxiety swell through me. But then I had the really calming thought that there was absolutely nothing that I could do about the situation. I could be terrified and freak myself out or I could breathe and be calm. Neither approach would change whether or not the plane landed safely in any location where I wanted to be.

There once was a time when I really wanted to be a travel writer. I still think about it now and then - the pleasures of traveling around and seeing new things. But then I remember that most of what there is within travel that’s worth writing about isn’t actually that fun to experience. It’s the bad times, the crazy experiences, the people that you meet that scare you a little bit that all make travel writing really great. So if I’m going to bother to travel, I do think that I should get some writing out of it. And I do think that it’s a great way to practice living in the moment. But I don’t want to make my career out of those experiences which I think is exactly what a travel writer would have to do!