WRITING PROMPT RESPONSE

Missing Keys, a Flat Tire, and a Lizard

Travel Mishaps

It’s the mishaps that make it fun, and bring you the surprise. — Anna Wintour

Upcoming Travel

I am preparing for my first international travel experience post-vaccination. There are several extra steps required now than were required pre-covid. Hopefully, all is well and we will be in the air in less than 24 hours.

One of the last things on my to-do list was to finish my writing plan for the trip. I have drafts ready to send, some scheduled to post, and time set aside for writing while I am away. I am always on the lookout for experiences that will become stories. Just as I was finishing up my writing plan, I came across the World Traveler’s Blog prompt — Travel Mishaps. I thought, oh, no…no mishaps! I hope I don’t have any experiences to write about for this prompt.

Just to help the universe to help me, I decided to write about some of my past mishaps so I won’t need to look for any on this trip!

Random Mishaps

I have the usual stories of lost luggage, some that got delivered just hours before the return flight and some never to be seen again. I have arrived late and slept through layovers to miss flights. I once showed up at the hotel I booked for the second night of my vacation on the first night of my vacation. The two hotels were over an hour away from each other. My travel has been interrupted by blizzards, a hurricane, and a pandemic. I once had to return my rental car and re-rent it 2 hours later because of mechanical airplane issues. All of these experiences started out as a bit of frustration and then were resolved and mostly forgotten.

Here are three of my travel mishaps that are my favorite to revisit. They still make me laugh.

An Almost Missed Flight in Alaska

We just returned from a twilight fishing trip. There were many fish tales to be told. We lost track of time and were running on a tight timeline to catch our flight. My son, my husband, and I were packing our car with the help of our family. We took one more quick walk-through check and said our goodbyes. We then discovered, nobody had the car keys.

The hunt was on. Everyone was searching. Then, we found them sitting right on the front seat. The doors were locked. How did this happen? In the hustle and bustle of getting packed up, it is hard to tell. Nobody claimed to placing the keys there or locking the doors. We will never know.

I contacted Roadside Service. They were unsure how long it would take for them to arrive and we continued to lose cell service so we couldn’t set it up. We were already late leaving for the airport. A franticness began to set in.

Somehow we discovered a fire station nearby. Firemen to the rescue. They were finishing up a practice drill so they still had their fire pants and suspenders on with sleeveless T-shirts. We still laugh at how happy my sister was that those men in uniforms showed up. She was even happier they were really only in half of their uniforms.

They had a tool to unlock the door. It only took them about twenty minutes and we made it to the airport on time.

In reality, that mishap was relatively quick, but there was so much panic, blaming, searching, catastrophizing, and attempted problem-solving that it seemed like forever. It was enough time to provide us with many stories to reminisce and laugh about for several years.

Road Trip

My husband had the great idea to take a 16-hour road trip with seven family members and friends. The ages of our group ranged from 15 to 71. I convinced my husband that seven people and their luggage wouldn’t fit in a seven-seat rental vehicle for 16 hours, so, we traveled in a 13 passenger van. My husband and his friend wanted to leave in the evening and drive through the night.

I was sleeping. I was awakened by my husband asking for our rental receipt. That puzzled me. We had a flat tire. We were on the turnpike at a rest stop and it was 3 a.m.

I called the rental company’s emergency line. They didn’t have a record that we rented the van. So, that was worrisome. We had given them our location. Would they send police to recover the “unrented” or “stolen” vehicle? Would I be able to prove that we rented the vehicle that night if they did? I wasn’t sure about any of this, but I knew they were not sending help.

Next, I tried to call my roadside service. Unfortunately, because we were on the turnpike, they were not allowed to provide service on the state-owned road. We were directed to contact the state police to get connected to specific state-recommended service providers. We worried for a moment about contacting the police based on the trouble with the rental company, but we reached out and they sent help.

The whole ordeal added about three hours to our trip as if 16-hours wasn’t already long enough. We still laugh at how we traveled the rest of the trip thinking we may be “wanted” for traveling in this vehicle without a properly documented rental agreement.

The Lizard and Broken Glassware

The vision of this story makes me laugh as soon as I bring it back to my mind. My husband and I were staying on a tropical island for a few days in a five-star resort. We don’t usually stay in five-star resorts but we were only staying for a few days, so we decided to try it. We expected luxury, not a lizard.

My husband grew up in the Caribbean. The only thing in life that I know he is afraid of is lizards. On our usual vacations, he is often startled, high stepping, or taking a little jog each time he sees one. Even the little ones.

One evening we returned to our luxury room. I went to get a glass from our mini-bar and saw a small lizard on the shelf near the glasses. I am not afraid of lizards from a distance, but up that close, I was not super happy. I jumped back.

I said to my husband, “I know you are scared, but you need to GET IT!”

He jumped up on the bed. He said, “You Get it!”

“YOU are the husband, YOU Get it,” I shouted.

In a second, my husband was over at the mini-bar. Glass flew in every direction. He quickly trapped the lizard in a glass wrapped in a towel and swiftly made his way out the door.

Whew. That was wild. We didn’t sleep great that night. We still laugh about it. We also still pull a towel across the bottom of our door each time we come in or out of our hotel rooms in the Caribbean.

Recent Travel

I went on my planned international trip. We were again in the Caribbean. A lizard appeared to live in the hallway outside our room. We frequently saw him at night on the ceiling a couple of doors down. My husband developed a ritual of darting across the hall from the elevator and getting the door open, us in, and the door closed in a matter of seconds. Maybe the lizard heard from his lizard friend in the past that we don’t like lizard visitors in our room. He never came any closer.

I wanted to take a picture of him for this story but, my husband was not up for it and I was sticking to the plan, no mishaps this time.

Final Thoughts

I am glad I wrote this story as a draft before I left so I wouldn’t have a blank page waiting for a mishap! I am sure there will be more to come and I will take them as part of the fun and surprise.

Thanks for reading! I hope everyone enjoys mishap-free travel or is at least able to find the humor in their mishaps.

Thanks to Glad Doggett and The World Traveler’s Blog for editing services and for the prompt: Travel Mishaps #unplannedadventures

Sign up for our newsletter to stay informed with up-to-date curations from our editors:👇