Travel Tribulations

I think by now everyone knows I’m a little accident-prone.  Not major accidents, fortunately, but the embarrassing, really stupid or inconvenient accidents or mishaps – sometimes my fault, sometimes my dumb luck.

So let me tell you about my week.

The college I work for is a part of a consortium of really strong colleges from across the country, and this consortium travels together to host 40-college fairs for high school students and counselors in cities around the country.

This week I was fortunate to be able to represent the college for three stops of the consortium’s May tour.  I flew from Pittsburgh to Orlando, Orlando to Bethesda, drove from Bethesda to Philadelphia and back, and then flew from Baltimore to Pittsburgh.  I’ve been a jet-setter this week, it’s been a little crazy.

It doesn’t help that stupid stuff happens to me.

Surprisingly, everything was really fine on the first leg of the trip – the flight was simple, the rental car pickup was easy, and my GPS got me to the right hotel.  The only challenge was looking for dinner... I wanted a local café so I used Google to find one, and there were these “Nature's Table” café’s apparently all over the place near my hotel.  So I got in the car, plugged in the GPS, and started driving... only to not find any evidence of the café, just an office complex.  So I thought, well maybe this one closed, let’s check the GPS for something else.  GPS told me there was another one less than .5 miles away, so I tried that, figuring sometimes little restaurants will move to a slightly more convenient but close location.  No dice.  I tried it 2 more times (all very close, all leading me to office complexes).  I think maybe Nature’s Table was one of those café’s that exist only in office buildings... which is weird because they even have a Facebook fan page! 

Leaving Orlando, though, I got to the airport 2 hours earlier than the recommended 2 hours early, so I had a lot of time to kill.  No problem, I ended up finishing my book and hanging out.  The plane rolls into BWI at 9:00 at night, without my luggage.  Ugh!  They had 4 hours to get my suitcase on the right plane!  But this is kind of cool – Southwest would either pay me $50 to go get something to eat and stay until the 10:40 plane from Orlando arrived, presumably (but not certainly) carrying my luggage, OR they could give me a little travel toiletries case, send me off to my hotel, and deliver my luggage when it came in.

Since they couldn’t be certain my suitcase was on the late plane, I didn’t want to stay around and get grumpier by the minute, so I left and went to my hotel.  When I got there, there were drunk kids in togas congregating by the hotel elevators... grrreat.  Not.  Lots of drunken noise in my hallway that night, and while they called at 11:30 to tell me my suitcase had arrived and would be delivered overnight, I still had to sleep in the t-shirt I wore all day (actually, as the case may be... two days in a row... I was trying to pack light!).

Now, get this one... here’s the backstory: I bought a new bottle of makeup last week because I used up my old one.  Somehow, between Pittsburgh and Orlando this brand-new glass bottle of liquid makeup got a crack in it – not a leaking crack, but a visible one nevertheless.  This is weird, because I have dropped these bottles many times and they have never so much as chipped, so I thought I’d better put the makeup in a plastic bag in case it was roughed-up on the plane again.

My luggage finally makes it to Baltimore in the morning and I get out my makeup bag, and in the process of removing the makeup bottle from its new protective plastic bag, I fumble and it drops on the floor in slo-mo.  Suddenly the white floor is now the color of Almay Buff 140.  $13 on the bathroom floor in Bethesda, MD.  Great.

So then it was off to Philadelphia the next day, no problems.  Getting ready for the final college fair, I got out my last business jacket to wear and was ironing it when I discovered something weird: brown stains all over the back right shoulder of my navy-and-white jacket!  It took me a few minutes, but I finally got some idea what it might be: a week ago, when I wore it last, I remember walking from my car to the office, slightly late as usual (see: snooze problem), with my umbrella, two shoulder bags, high heels, and my coffee travel mug.  I didn’t have any free hands but I had to adjust one of the bags over my shoulder, so I used my coffee mug hand – with coffee mug still in it – to try to fix the bag.  I remember thinking it felt like my shoulder was wet, but not really finding any evidence of anything when I investigated... probably just rain.

So now it turns out that all day long, I had COFFEE stains on my SHOULDER BLADE.  How RIDICULOUS is that?!  I really hope it will come out in the wash.  Fortunately I had a nice t-shirt-like shirt I could wear instead of the jacket, but it wasn’t how I would have chosen to present myself in that venue.

Is this typical for me or what?

I’m currently sitting in the BWI airport typing this, so there are still about 6 hours to go until I’m safely home, unpacked, and out of ridiculousness’ way.  Again, I was 4 hours early getting here, just because I didn’t have anything else to do and wanted to make sure I got here without traffic problems (see, I do try to work with my challenges), and I hope my luggage makes it home.

Update: I’ve been home for a day now since writing this, and there were no problems whatsoever!