If we remember that travel can involve delays, we are more likely to enjoy ourselves. Delays are part of the process. This weekend my daughter and I took a car trip. We were just a few minutes behind a ten car pile-up. Those few minutes added up to a three hour delay in arriving at our destination. The good news is that we were not involved in the accident, that type of delay is much worse. Of course, we could have left a bit sooner and been ahead of the accident, arriving earlier than expected. We knew we would eventually get where we were going so we just relaxed, sang songs, and waited.
When my daughter was young, we took a trip to London and Paris. Delayed for a full day and night in Minneapolis, we spent time at the Mall of America. The President happened to be there and we saw his cavalcade with lights flashing and flags waving. The biggest disappointment to our daughter was that she never saw any small apples. She thought we were in Mini-Apples-Es.
One Christmas Eve, hoping to get home and wake up in my own bed for Christmas morning, I spent 32 hours in my car waiting for the roads to open due to a huge snow storm. What could have been a disaster actually turned out to be the world’s largest Christmas party. People moved from car to car trading food to create their own feasts. Unfortunately, what I had was fruit cake, not much of a tradable commodity, but people felt sorry for me and pitched in potato chips and peanut butter sandwiches. One of the gas stations on the next off-ramp kept their bathroom opened and stocked with toilet paper and paper towels. With thousands of stranded motorists, it was amazing how clean everything stayed, the Christmas spirit kept everyone doing their part.
Remember the air traffic controller strike? That was the year I went to Europe for the first time, on $20.00 a day. After a summer away, I was ready to return home but ended up stuck in London for a week. At first, there was no point in even going to the airport since flights heading to the United States were cancelled. I was really low on cash, having not planned on the extra time abroad, and some college girls took me in. I cooked and cleaned for them, in lieu of rent. They were quite happy to have me stay. When we learned that flights had resumed, I headed to Heathrow with less than a dollar in my pocket and a stand-by ticket. The first night I was not able to get on a flight so I slept on the floor of the airport with crowds of others in the same situation. Someone held an exercise class and someone else held a yoga class to keep us all from being stiff and tired. By the next day I was pretty hungry, even in my youth there was no airport food for under a dollar. Sitting on the floor with three girls from Germany, on their way to visit California, we were approached by an older business man. He said he had an expense account and wanted to be sure he spent his entire allowance. He claimed they would lower his allowance next time if he didn’t max out what he was supposed to spend. Would the four of us join him for dinner? We said yes! We had a great dinner, plenty of left-overs for the next day, and he was able to catch his first class flight home having spent his allowance. Thinking back, I am guessing he was a dad of girls our age, and was being protective.
The next day I was able to get a flight. It taxied to the end of the runway and stopped. Engine trouble! We were shuttled to a hotel, the nicest hotel I stayed in my entire trip, and were fed a great lunch, dinner, and breakfast the next day, all courtesy of the airlines. On the way back to the airport I mentioned to the person sitting next to me how great the hotel was. A man in the seat behind me said it was the worst hotel he had stayed in his entire trip. He said he was from a place I had probably never heard of – Fallon, Nevada. I told him I had heard of it, and that I was from Incline Village, at Lake Tahoe. Incline has a reputation for being a wealthy community. He decided I must be someone important on a trip where I purposely stayed in cheap places.
They say it is the journey and not the destination that matters. I do believe they are right. If we only appreciated the destination, every delay would be a hardship. When we appreciate the journey, we may get to be in a snowy Christmas party with strangers or on a hunt for small apples in a city half way across the country.