Vern. Have you ever done anything really stupid? I mean REALLY stupid. The kind of OMG moment that makes your
stomach bottom out, leaves you short of breath and then dredges up your entire
vocabulary of four-letter words? Oh,
c’mon. You know what I’m talking about.
Over our journey, we as a family have subconsciously kept
track of a few of those spectacular lapses of reason and/or common sense. The good news is that only three of these
stand out. The bad news is that it was
unanimously agreed that I own all of them.
In the hope of redemption, I have decided to share these incidents. That, and the fact that if I don’t write
about them, Carolyn or Cooper will, and they’ll seem much worse.
Idiotic Act #1 – Fight or Flight
Taken in isolation, this particular brain fart wouldn’t be a
big deal. I mean, everyone forgets to
take restricted items out of their carry-on baggage occasionally. But usually not when there has been a
precedent. Or two.
The first precedent came on day one, back in June 2015. Cooper really wanted to bring his Swiss Army knife
on the trip. He hunted for weeks, and,
after we’d sold almost everything we own and packed up the rest, it hadn’t
turned up. Imagine our surprise when it
was expertly located by security at the Calgary Airport … in Cooper’s own
backpack. Luckily, all was not
lost: good friends bidding us farewell
at the security checkpoint took the knife and mailed it to other friends in
Toronto where we retrieved it a month later.
So I had my warning.
Not enough of one, apparently, to prevent me from forgetting my own
Swiss Army knife in my pack at the airport in the Galapagos Islands. Again, luck was on our side: I realized the mistake immediately after
sending our suitcases through check-in.
It’s a tiny airport, and airline staff kindly walked me through security
where I was able to place the knife in our checked luggage.
I don’t count that minor misdemeanour. My true idiocy emerged at Rio International, where,
accompanied by a feeling of déjà vu, the uncompromising security staff at the
huge airport dug my knife out of my backpack thirty minutes before departure
time. Carolyn was not impressed.
Happily, I pulled off the save. I sprinted back down the escalator where I
found a bookstore and a café that could each spare me a small box. I put the knife in the bookstore box, shredded the café box to use for padding, wrapped the whole thing up in packing tape donated by
a friendly woman at check-in, and checked the knife. It arrived safe and sound in Sao Paulo. I will
NEVER do that again. I hope.
Idiotic Act #2 – Passport Control
We’d decided to spend our last few days in Brazil in the
small resort town of Paraty, a six-hour
bus ride from Rio. The twenty-five minute
cab ride from our hotel put us at the bus station a good half hour before
departure. It was during our leisurely
check-in that I abruptly realized I had left my passport in the scanner at the
hotel, where I’d copied it an hour before.
Carolyn was not impressed.
I did not want to leave my passport at the mercy of hotel
staff, asking for it to be mailed on to Paraty.
Leaving my bags with Carolyn and Coop, I dashed out to the taxi queue
where I found only one cab. But man, did
I find the RIGHT cab. 1) The driver knew the hotel and the exact
address. No looking things up or asking
for directions. 2) He appreciated the
need to make the 50-minute return trip in less than half an hour. 3) We
mutually agreed that bothersome obstacles such as stop signs, no-passing lanes,
and red traffic lights were more of a suggestion than legally binding rules of
the road.
The round-trip, including a mad dash through the hotel lobby
to the computer with the scanner – to the surprise and alarm of some hotel
staff and patrons – took 25 minutes. It
also included a big tip for my life-saving cabbie.
Idiotic Act #3 – Jumping to the Pump
I still don’t know how I managed this one. We were making our way through northwest
Argentina in our rental car, excitedly heading towards Aconcagua National Park,
hoping for a short hike to the base of Aconcagua itself, the highest peak in
South America. As a rule of thumb while
traveling, I like to keep the gas tank above half full. You’re in unfamiliar territory, you never
know when you’ll hit your next gas station, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll
have gas. We weren’t in a big rush, but
when we pulled into the station and nobody emerged to fill our tank, I took it
upon myself. It was only after fueling
up that one of the staff rushed over and explained in rapid Spanish that I had
filled my gasoline-only tank with diesel. Well, shit,
that’s not good. Carolyn was not
impressed. (Neither was I.)
I knew immediately that I couldn’t start the car, or diesel
would get into the fuel line and possibly into the engine. With the help of a couple of service station
staff, we pushed the car into a parking spot and I considered my options,
amongst much (well-deserved) verbal abuse from my wife. The only possibility was to drain the tank
and re-fill it with gasoline. The critical
drawback to this plan was that it was siesta time, and the town mechanic
wouldn’t show for two to three hours. And
of course I’d have to pay the asking price.
To add insult to injury, the garage was less than 200 metres from the
gas station – I could have pushed the car there myself were it not along the
highway.
But there was no real option. Carolyn and Coop shacked up in a nearby
restaurant beneath a ceiling fan, and I waited it out at the station. It was almost five hours from the fatal
fill-up to the time when we were back on the road, $120 poorer. We arrived at Aconcagua too late to hike and
had to content ourselves with a few pictures of the distant summit. I will NEVER do that again.
Today is June 25, 2016, and we are down to the final six
weeks of our trip. This should mean that
there is insufficient time for me to do anything quite as stupid as any of the
above. Wish me luck.
To see pictures from our trip so far, click here
