Spontaneously In Flow...

"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you can control it." - John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

Bus-ted

 I am one of those people you might reasonably assume plans out each trip in agonizing detail. And out's true that I put together a basic itinerary of dates, plans and any hotel or travel information that is required. But, as the legendary Mr. Steinbeck suggests, the best laid plans are usually the first to be sent to that vast travel bureau in the sky.

The potentials are manifold for hiccups. We've encountered everything from the urgent -- both my wife and I have ended up in the emergency room, and at least one trip was impacted by a call from home saying a family member or pet had gone seriously ill -- to the ridiculous (getting caught for five days in a Philadelphia blizzard).

So part of any significant trip is the need to think on your feet and go with the proverbial flow. As Steinbeck notes, each trip is embedded with its own personality, its own drive. Once you leave the door all bets are off, and you've got to have flexibility (and intestinal fortitude) to weather the changes and just go with it.

The Pause that Refreshes

Sometimes the changes are minor annoyances. Cabs not showing up on time is a frequent one. Let's face it: cab time is not traveler time, no matter how much you'd like to be able to depend upon it. Other minor annoyances include flight delays (which can develop to be a major issue), canceled events, weather patterns. It's all up to the gods of transit and weather to determine if you're getting where you need to get and in what condition.

Other times it's a completely unexpected blunder. I left the printouts of bus tickets from New York to Washington DC sitting on the desk at work. No problem, we thought, we'd simply go to the counter and check in. That's when we discovered that, inexplicably, Greyhound bus terminals do not have the ability to check and print out electronic tickets. This is an astounding failure on their part, and no matter how tremendous the effort of a New York employee -- who really did work hard to find our tickets on her computer -- we were left standing in the terminal for a good half hour as we tried to find "customer service" (who were, also astoundingly, closed for the day). 

Watching the World Go By

Luckily we had options, and raced across town to National Rentacar -- where they generously upgraded the hasty reservation, at no extra cost, from a small sedan to a mammoth SUV -- and we tooled the four hours down the road on our instead of in a crowded bus. Also fortunately, when we did, finally, get hold of Greyhound Customer Service they agreed we'd been in  the terminal ready to go, so they are refunding our tickets. But in this case, being on an inflexible schedule could have had consequences had we not had other options considered and planned for.

DINERO PRIMERO

Snow Joke -- aka "Five Days in Philly"

Getting caught with your proverbial pants down is a realistic scenario on any trip, at any time. A car breaks down. A flight is delayed. You cannot find your tickets. This sort of thing begs an important travel caveat: Stay financially flexible. Don't let the unexpected rattle you. You're on vacation, and if you're doing it right you need to make sure you build in a cash or credit card buffer in the event something changes. Traveling on an empty wallet is a disaster in the making. Assume the unexpected, and budget for it. If you cannot give yourself a little bit of a buffer, you might want to rethink some of your plans.

(The first time I drove across country I was alone. My car broke down in a small town in Alabama, and they wouldn't take a credit card.  Had I not had cash handy it could have been a major issue. As it was I spent nine hours in the hot sun, and to this day have to recognize I was undoubtedly ripped off. But I made it back on the road and safely to my destination. When you're in an unwinnable situation…in a small town and at the mercy of the local auto mechanic…it's best to go with the flow and get back to familiar territory as soon as possible.)

SCHEDULES 

Terminal Waiting

The Airport Adventure

Then there's the trip itself, the portion which Steinbeck was most deliberately discussing. The adventure. The things that you do which determine the personality of your experience. Those little items, completely unplanned and unplannable, which give you a taste for where you are.

An overly planned trip, for example, will detail every meal, every event. I prefer to plan some things and let others come and go as they occur. If you're going to go to dinner at a particularly nice restaurant it may require specifics. Time and date reservations. This is unavoidable. But to set too much of your trip in stone both eliminates an exploration of the chance encounter, the unexpected adventure, the spontaneous -- while at the same time inviting disaster in the form of delays.

Check out the local shopping

I'm a firm believer in getting places ahead of time if you're traveling. I'd rather spend an additional hour in the terminal of an airport than panicking in traffic delays, wondering if I would make it through security in time for my flight. And believe me, Security is one of the biggest unknowns in any itinerary. I've spent more than two hours in Security lines (Miami International in particular), but have also raced almost unimpeded through other airports (Dulles, Vancouver). 

Time for a cup of coffee?

For example, taking into account lines, or queues (such as Security), on any given adventure. Does the destination include the possibility of a long queue to get in. We Once stood in line for more than half an hour, only to be caught a good thirty people from the cutoff when closing time came. We hadn't gotten to the tour -- in this case a museum -- early enough and therefore wasted our time and walked away frustrated.

On another tour we discovered five minutes beforehand that we were in precisely the wrong spot, and had to race across some seven blocks in the summer heat and humidity, even though we'd arrived in the general vicinity a good hour ahead of time. The vast majority of the time I always double check things and make sure we're in the right place == and in this one instance it would have avoided a number of nasty consequences (but that's a story for another time…)

Walkabout

LASTLY

Take the time to enjoy. I know several people -- including myself for many years -- that would discover "free time" and literally go nuts trying to stay occupied. Killing time isn't always easy, particularly when you're looking forward to whatever the plans are, but whether you take a nap, saunter over to the beach and lay in the shade for a while, or find a little shop and tarry a while, it's a far better way to get a feel for a place than simply retreating to your hotel room and watching tv. (Worse if you are in a foreign country and don't really speak the language. Have you ever watched Law and Order in French? I have. Completely incomprehensible, though the "doink-doink" translates well.)

In short, let the trip express its personality freely and completely. Be ready for the unexpected when it occurs, and don't fight the opportunity to spend time spending time. Thinking you can plan so thoroughly that every moment is accounted for inevitably creates a problem at some point -- though there's a fine line between overplaying and underplaying. The key is to find that magical middle ground where you know what the next step is, but you've got plenty of time to have fun if things go right. And if they go wrong, you've got the time and resources to make it right.

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