Tag Archives: Travel Tribulations

Neckties, Nausea or Nudists

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I have had some wonderful travel experience over the years, but who wants to hear about those?  So, here’s a few of my most memorable for the wrong reasons.

Neckties:  I had the opportunity to travel with my husband on a business trip to Taiwan. Every day we walked 10 yards from the hotel to a waiting bus, then 10 yards from the bus to a  government building and returned late at night to be escorted the 10 yards from the bus to the hotel.    I was never sure if we were guests or prisoners.  I hear it is a beautiful country and, hey, I’ll never forget those great bus drivers.

Nausea:  We took a cruise once to…Good Lord I don’t even know where we went because I spent the entire cruise inside our cabin puking my guts out.

“Whoa!  Did you feel that?” I grabbed my husband’s arm as my knees buckled.

Things went downhill quickly after that.  Yes, I did take Dramamine but, being the delicate flower that I am, I contracted a rare side effect of diplopia so even when I was able to stand up I got nauseous from double vision.

There’s a reason God placed me smack dab in the middle of a giant continent.  I plan to keep my feet planted firmly on the ground from now on, thank you very much.

Nudists:  After the all-inclusive cruise didn’t work out we tried the all-inclusive resort.  We traveled to Jamaica where our hotel’s front desk clerk informed us we’d be staying on the clothing-optional side of the resort.  No problem for someone as flexible as me, right?  Okay, I did stop and pick up a dozen towels along the way to our room.  No way was I going to sit on any of that furniture.  Who knows how many bare butts had been there first!

They showed us to our room and I stepped out on the balcony.  There was a beautiful view of the beach, which was covered in naked people of all shapes and sizes.  At that very moment the heavens opened up and it began to rain – which caused all the naked people of every shape and size – to run for their rooms.

There were body parts jumping and bumping in every direction.  “Ack!  My eyes!  My eyes!” I screamed.

I fell back on the couch which I had not yet draped in towels.  I leapt up and ran to the bathroom to scrub myself from head to toe.

I’ll bet you wish you could travel with me sometime, right?

I’m a Triple Threat

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I am an avid rule-follower and a control freak.  Not a good combination on a normal day.  But send me to the airport to get on a plane and all my addictive triggers kick in.

I have the normal irritations with the people who carry on enormous bags.   They hold up the line of passengers as they spend several minutes trying to jam their suitcase into the overhead bin.  (Wait.  That does irritate everyone else, right?)

But I have to take it a step further.  On one leg of a recent trip, we were on a tiny commuter plane.  The man in the seat across the aisle from us had just such a bag.  He couldn’t cram it into the overhead bin so he tried to shove it under the seat in front of him.  When that didn’t work, he just left it on the floor and put his feet on top of it.

I squeezed my husband’s hand in a vice grip.  “That’s never going to work,” I whisper through gritted teeth.

“Maybe it won’t.”  He shook his hand to return the circulation.  “But it’s not your problem, right?”

He’s technically right.  The man’s bag was not my problem, but it was a problem for my angst ridden personality.

Security screening at the airport is another big trigger for me.

“What?  I have to take my shoes off?”  the woman in front of me asks.  While she unlaces her *thigh-high boots, my Rule Following Alarm starts ticking. [*slight exaggeration]

“What do you mean I can’t carry it through?” she says holding a bottle of water.  “I haven’t even opened it yet.”  My inner Control Freak begs to intervene.

The security guard announces that all jewelry must be removed and I notice that the woman sports a gold chain with a cross on it. I shove my hands in my pockets.  As we inch forward the guard makes the no-jewelry announcement again and points to her necklace.

“This?” she says, lifting the chain off her neck.  “Surely, you don’t want me to take this off.”

I break out in a cold sweat as she pauses to slowly remove her belt.  “What kind of a country do we live in?” she complains.

“A country with rules!” I want to shout.

We are within inches of the x-ray machine when the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.  Right before the woman’s security bin slides on to the conveyor belt she turns it longways.   My fingers itch to reach out and turn the bin the other way so as to keep them the shortest distance apart in order to slide through the process quicker.

This is my third and final issue (yes, family, I said FINAL.)  I’m the Idiot Savant of Organization.  I walk into a room and my brain rearranges every piece of furniture into it’s most logical position.  A trait that has caused me no end of problems.

Oh yes, I’m a Triple Threat.  A Control Freak, Rule Following, Idiot Savant of Organization.

I understand they have officially removed the term “Idiot” from Savant.  But in my case, I think it still applies.