So I had just gotten married, and we were headed off for our honeymoon. We were going to Portugal, and we lived about two and a half hours from the airport. We had stopped at my mother-in-law’s where we would leave our car and my wife’s brother would take us to the airport.
We were about to head out for the airport, and my wife’s brother said, “You got everything? Coats? Bags? Passports?”
When he mentioned passports, my wife’s suddenly went pale.
“Oh my God! I left my passport on the table back home.”
So, yeah. Sudden change of plans. Non-refundable tickets and all that. We didn’t have time to go home, get the passport and make the plane.
Talk about panic, too! Well, I hopped on the phone, and called everyone to see if we could leave without a passport, but we couldn’t. So finally, I had to call the airline with our sad story. They were very nice, and found a place for us on the next flight out. We called the car rental agency and the hotel in Lisbon to change our reservations.
Then we went home to get her passport.
Later on my mother-in-law said that I was such a good husband, because I never yelled at my wife once. I didn’t even get angry.
*****************************************************
Then there was this summer. We had an 7 hour trip to make the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. You need a reservation to get a spot on the ferry, and we had made our reservation some six months in advance. So we had to get there on time.
I decided we should leave ten hours for the trip, because I knew traffic in CT could get pretty snarled up on a Saturday. So we packed up, and set off at seven in the morning.
Two hours later, in the middle of the New Jersey Turnpike, my engine just shut down. No power. I managed to pull over and I tried to turn the engine on and off. It’s a hybrid, so it went on, the gas engine never started. We were next to an exit, and somehow I managed to drive up just past the toll booths on electric power alone.
I don’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t bought a smart phone a few weeks before. We were able to find a car dealer, a tow truck, and line up a rental van (just in case). Soon, the bad news came. Our car wasn’t going to get fixed. They had no idea what was wrong with it.
We rented the van, switched all our belongings, including a bike rack which was advertised as the fastest installing bike rack ever (good thing). We took off, and we had lost “only” a little over the three hours of lead time we had for ferry departure. Of course you have to be there a half hour in advance, so we were really a half hour behind.
We drove without stopping, watching the GPS on my phone to see where the hold-ups were and how long they were, so we could either try to go around them or wait. Knowing how long they were was really helpful in reducing anxiety. We knew when the roads were all green and we could fly. All the time, I was thinking about what we could do if we missed the ferry.
We were flying through Rhode Island, and getting time checks every five minutes or so. The GPS gave us an estimated time of arrival. We had caught up to ferry departure time. Good, I thought. Now let’s see if we can get up to time to board the ferry—I figured if we got there 15 minutes before, we might get on. Slowly we made up time, and unbelievably, we actually got there five minutes before they started boarding.
I think the phone saved our vacation, and is well worth the investment. I can’t believe we were able to breakdown, get towed to the dealer, have the car diagnosed, get a rental car, transfer our belongings and go exactly the right amount of speeding to get there in time for our ferry.
It turned out our inverter had broken. Something this dealer had never seen before. It was a very expensive repair which, fortunately, was covered under warranty.
Composing members:
0
Composing members:
0
