What prompted the sharing of this anecdote was an exercise I did with one of my Spanish tutors. He was using a book of exercises that included an anecdote that about a person going to Paris on vacation, arriving at the airport only to realize they had forgotten their passport, causing them to miss their flight. Due to the delay the rest of their trip plans fell through too.
The idea being to relate a similar anecdote so I orally told him one about the time we arrived for a domestic flight at STL airport, and Señora had misplaced her driver’s license. Fortunately, after much ado, they let us on the flight. We had a friend get Robin’s passport from the house and overnight it to us in New Orleans for the return flight. C’est la vie..laissez les bon temps roule.
Since he also wanted me to practice my writing he assigned me to write another anecdote for my “homework”. The Spanish version is at the bottom for a couple of you nerds. Here is the same story in English, but it is not a translation.
Trip of Adventure
For various reasons that are not important to the arc of this story, my ex’s mother gifted her a membership in a national network of RV parks. We did not own a RV, but many of the parks also had trailers, cabins, etc for rent. They were generally much cheaper than the hotels in the various places that we visited. So from that point of view it was a bargain. However, I am not remembering what it cost to maintain the membership active, so I cannot factor that into the calculus. We used the membership frequently to go to Branson, a few times to Florida and other destinations. It would not surprise me if she still had the membership.
One time we decided what we needed to do was take a trip to Memphis, TN – land of barbecue, blues and Elvis – for a few days with our friend Dee. My ex made the reservations, and when the day arrived we three set off from Ft. Smith for Memphis, a trip of roughly five hours. I was driving, my ex had grabbed the navigator’s seat, and Dee was reigning in the back seat.
You need to know that this happened in the last century, in a time before cell phones, before GPS. We relied on such thing as paper maps and written directions to navigate from point A to point B. As we neared Memphis, my ex pulled out her book that included listings for all the RV parks in the national system, and proceeded to give me instructions on how to get to the park. I listened closely and we arrived there in a timely manner and without incidence, only to find the park closed. In fact the RV park was out of business. She had given me perfect directions to the wrong park. The park we should have gone to was on the page across from the one she was reading directions from. It was getting late, and now we were more than 90 miles from the right park, an hour or two more of travel.
Upset was not the word for what I was. There was definitely smoke bellowing from my ears , and I was shooting darts in the direction of my ex. From my point of view, I was holding my tongue… more or less. To have verbalized my feeling would have set off a maelstrom from my ex’s direction, plus Dee was in the back seat. There was no need for her to witness a fervent discussion.
We had reversed direction and were headed to the correct park, but I was still fuming. This had gone on for 20 or 30 minutes, when someone, I remember it as being Dee, but it might have been my ex said, “Remember, it’s not a trip, it’s an adventure.” This defused the tension and we went on to have a good time in Memphis.
AND we took from this incidence a catch phrase to use whenever problems popped up during traveling, as they always do, “Remember, it is an adventure.” Fact is that after 35 or so years I am still using this catch phrase when the situation warrants it.
And so it went once upon a time on this grand adventure we call life.
As promised for the nerdy few, my Spanish homework version.
Un viaje de aventura
Durante mi primer matrimonio, mi ex esposa recibió un regalo de su madre, una membrecía nacional en un sistema de parques para RVs (vehículos de recreación / casas rodantes). No teníamos un RV, pero muchos de los parques tenían tráileres estacionario, cabañas, etc. para rentar. Normalmente eran mucho más baroto que los hoteles en cualquiera lugar que visitaríamos. Lo usábamos para hacer viajes a varios lugares cuando vivíamos en el estado de Arkansas.
Una vez decidimos hacer un viaje a Memphis, Tennessee con nuestra amiga, Dee por unos días. Mi ex esposa hizo una reserva cerca de esta ciudad en uno de los parques del sistema.
Yo conducía y mi ex esposa daba indicaciones. Dee estaba en el asiento trasero. Después de cinco horas de viajar estábamos cerca de la ciudad de Memphis. Mi ex esposa abrió el libro con los varios parques en el sistema para darme indicaciones para llegar al parque. Recuerda que era el tiempo antes de celulares y GPS. Le escuché con mucha atención a sus instrucciones y llegamos al parque que fue una hora, más o menos de Memphis. El parque estaba cerrado y había estado cerrado por mucho tiempo. Mi ex esposa me dio instrucciones para llegar al parque equivocado, a un parque que no ya funcionaba. Ahora estábamos 90 millas del parque correcto, entre hora y media o dos horas más de viajar, y ya era tarde.
Yo era tan enojado que era casi imposible hablar. Quería gritarle a mi ex esposa, pero esto nunca, nunca tuvo un buen resultado. Y también, nuestra amiga estaba en el asiento trasero. Después de veinte o treinta minutos de mí lanzando dardos con mis ojos en la dirección de mi ex esposa, alguien dijo: recuerda, no es un viaje, es una aventura. En mi memoria era Dee, pero posible fuera mi ex esposa. Lo bueno fue que después de estas palabras, la tensión huyó, y el resto del viaje fue bueno.
Después de este incidente cada vez teníamos un problema, pequeño o grande, durante un viaje decíamos: recuerda, es una aventura. No es raro tener problemas durante un viaje y por eso es un buen dicho.
Cool