mishaps

Here's the traveller's real life section for those of you that want more of the whole picture. I read one of these types of pages before while planning my travel to see if I could learn how to prevent various mishaps from happening but of course, I still had some of my own. Mishaps are inevitable; attitude is what matters.

Ate bad salmon in Atlanta and had the 24hour stomach rejection - food poisioning? Yuk. Slept for a few days straight. Learned to listen to
the old adage "when in doubt, throw it out!" and maybe something about eating salmon in land-locked Georgia isn't right anyways...

Jeep rear window was broken into and my two travel bags were stolen. Well, I get new stuff and insurance money.
But I lost Puerto Rico film and my travel scrapbook from the last year and half with postcards, notes, maps, photos
from friends, and the bracelet that I made on the month long cruise across the pacific. At least I still have my journals,
memories, negatives, serial numbers and health, body, sanity, good friends to come home to, and a renewed outlook
on "stuff". Lightening up is good. So is purging every now and then. Even travel stuff gets old and worn. Jeep's new
window is nice too.

Cut open my finger after my tent spike broke while taking it down after camping in Shenandoah NP, VA.

Swimming in the Delaware Water Gap in New Jersey I slashed open my foot on a sharp rock! ouch!

Small fender bender in Christchurch, New Zealand, in the first 3 hours of driving my rental car on the left side of the road. I "kept left" a little too far and hit a parked car... Only cost $750NZD (about $325 USD) and my pride; got another car and 3150km later all is going well. Driving on the left really isn't that bad!

CHRISTMAS TRAJEDY: Brush fires in and around Sydney have really taken their toll on the lands and psyche of the people here. It has prevented me from
visiting the Blue Mountains and any other National Park around the Sydney area. On the upside, there are spectacular sunsets and the moon is vibrant red.

I gave my friend Erika a bag of stuff to take back to the states with her after a week-long visit in Greece - I was on my way out of Europe to Asia and didn't want to take souveniers, photos, postcards, maps, books, etc that I had collected along the way. Olympic Airlines lost that bag with my stuff in it.
***UPDATE - Olympic Airlines found the bag!!! Yay!! No longer a mishap.

On Crete in a youth hostel in Rethymno I slipped on some wet stairs (I was even wearing shoes!) and rode down the stairs on my butt and elbows. One elbow is pretty black&blue and my back a little sore but it's nothing a few good beach days on Santorini can't take care of.

On Corfu I had a wonderful ocean kayak at the Pink Palace in Agios Gordios and the waves really kicked up on the way back. I rode doubles in a kayak with Brenden from Australia, and we made it with no problem all the way in to the shore, until the final wave pushed us into the rocks and tipped the boat over, running the boat on top of us! I slipped on a slimy rock and bashed my knee. I twas bruised for about a week and is fine now!

Remind me to tell you about what happened in Nice.

I got a bee sting in a really nice town called Oerlikon, outside of Zurich, Switzerland while watching some old men play chess on a board in a park in the rain. The chess pieces were oversiyed and I learned that the Slovek man that was losing ALWAYS loses! Anyway, the sting hurt and became red and swollen, but I put cream on it and I'm fine now.

Well, Sept 11 was a day that everyone will remember! It caused me great pain to see NYC's skyline forever changed and all of those people killed. More than 4 times the number of people were killed in the US on that one day than at Pearl Harbor. The impact on me was more than just the amazement and horror of the death and destruction, it caused me to ask myself if I should abort the trip altogether! Logan airport, crime scenere-opened
on Friday before I was supposed to fly out (Tuesday) and Swiss Air resumed flights, so it would be entirely a personal decision
if I didn't go. I decided that I have to go, to see what there is out there regardless.

Here it is September 7th and I haven't left yet. I guess the mishap is that although moving went as planned, I haven't decided enough about whether to cruise through Asia or travel overland on tours, so I haven't booked my flights yet. I'm weighing round-the-world tickets vs pay as you go tickets vs getting them all separately ahead of time, fully changeable. It's harder than I thought. Here's a good website that I'm using to help plan...

Hertz Rental car got a flat tire after I drove over a nail somewhere in LA.
Had tow truck out to change tire; exchanged car back at LAX; new car had been smoked in too long and we couldn't breathe so exchanged new car again for another new car. Total time lost = 1/2 day. Impact: didn't get to San Diego until 5pm. Positive = sun didn't go down until 8 so we still had 3 good sun-hours on the beach, new car was better than the original, and tow truck showed up exactly when they said it would.

Jennifer got sick while we were in Vegas; the cold/flu thing that starts in your throat and turns into the nose then blowing then coughing throat thing. Impact = Jenn went to bed early several days in a row and I had to lounge hop late at night alone. Positive = it progressed quickly, probably since we sweat it out in the dessert for so many days in temps over 110 degrees.

Hertz rental car didn't have the right set of Never-Lost maps in them, and we couldn't find anything in Las Vegas on it for a day! We had to return the rental car to the airport (AGAIN! NOTICE A TREND HERE?) and exchange it for another one with the correct city. We kept coming up with Co, Ut, Wa, Id, and TX! Total time lost = 30 minutes (the Mandalay Bay is right next to the airport and I got a really good agent at the Customer Service desk unlike LAX...) Positive = we weren't charged at all for the Neverlost system which worked for the entire rest of the trip wonderfully, and our car was upgraded to a full sized Crown Victoria! Whew!

Current Mishap Rate (as of 19/AUG/03)
27 months 16 mishaps ~1mishap every 1.68months