Travel.. It Doesn't Always Go as Planned

For 2019, this is the understatement of the year! In the first two months of the year, I had taken three trips, and none of them went the way I wanted them to. Some were minor incidents, while others were completely derailed. Let me explain…

My first trip of the year was a long weekend in Florida. The week leading up to the trip I got sick. Not the end of the world, but the piercing pain in my ear while on the plane caused me to not be able to hear out of my right ear for the entire weekend and resulted in me being heavily medicated.

Directly after Florida, my second trip was to Oslo, Norway for a week. The plan was to fly to JFK from Florida and then transfer to a direct red eye flight to Norway. This was going to be my first time flying business class and I was so excited!

And then my Norway flight got canceled… My travel ended up taking 25 hours door to door and I missed a day in the Oslo office. Oh and I didn’t get to fly business class any more.. whomp whomp. (I know, I’m turning into such a travel snob.) I already have a hard time adjusting to time changes, but add on 25 hours of travel with little to no sleep and let’s just say it took me much longer to adjust.

And that brings me to trip #3 - my annual mother/daughter ski trip to Vermont. My mom and I look forward to this trip every year. We have a day where we go shopping, we have our favorite restaurants that we eat at every night, and we love the hotel we stay at (you can find my post on this trip from last year here). Not to mention this is the one weekend every year where I get to really go skiing… mostly because my parents are the only people in my life who ski.

On the second day of our trip, my mom and I were three hours into skiing and she fell. I was behind her on the trail and saw the fall happen - it was a silly fall and I started laughing. And then I saw her leg twist in a way that it shouldn’t have and immediately stopped laughing. It ended up being worse than we thought - it took five people (myself and four ski patrolmen) to get her on the rescue sled. We discovered in the mountain clinic that she had broken both her tibia and fibula bones in five places and would need surgery. Seven hours, a 45 minute ambulance ride, and me running around with my head cut off later, she was admitted to the hospital. The next morning she had surgery and I spent the night in the hospital room with her. I was emotionally and physically drained. This was the first time I had to take care of one of my parents and it was not fun! I was constantly worried and trying to make the whole situation as calm and easy as possible. We were three hours from either of our homes so I wasn’t familiar with the area and had to figure everything out on my own - where to stay, eat, who to contact, etc. And then I had to drive straight to NJ (leaving my mother behind in Vermont) for a work conference. To say I was a zombie would be another understatement.

Moral of the story - I have learned that despite my really good travel track record, trips are not always going to end up the way you wanted them to, but that doesn’t make them a failure. Sure I only got to ski for three hours in Vermont (when I had three days of skiing planned), but I also spent a night in the hospital watching the Oscars with my mom while drinking the bottle of wine I snuck in. That’s something I will always remember.

2.5 weeks later, my mom is still recovering but doing well… and I went to Mexico for a much needed vacation and everything went smoothly (more to come on that later).

What about you? When has a trip been a total failure for you?

xoxo - Kim