Monday 18 April 2011

Nightmare ending to the perfect day...

I'm posting this out of order because Reagan is too fast for me. And sorry about the novel; this is more of a journal entry than a blog post.

Our perfect day of driving around southern England didn’t really end on a happy note for me. We went to a gas station to fill up the rental car before returning it when we realized the wallet was missing. I had the wallet the whole day, and after having lost the passports in Spain, I was walking on paper-thin ice. We searched the whole car and could not find it anywhere! It could have been anywhere along the 5 hour car route we had taken that day. I was happily surprised to not have received the beating I deserved from Reagan for being a complete airhead. We drove home having agreed to make a phone call to the grocery store and bowling alley that we’d visited that day. Right before going inside I opened the glove box to find our cheeky little wallet hiding there. We both thought the other had checked there. Geniuses.

I then went back to drop off the car. I checked the route right before I went to make sure I didn’t get lost, but I am of course hopeless (note: this is 10:30pm). After a few minutes of driving I take a wrong exit on a roundabout and find myself on an expressway into London (a city where I vowed never to drive) with no exits for 10 miles. After reaching the end of that, I discover that the same expressway is closed on the way back! I made my way through ugly traffic back towards the car rental place, but soon found myself completely lost. I asked a bus driver who was off duty and he pulled out his smart phone to give me directions (I REALLY need one of those). After another 15 minutes of driving, I finally got there… 2 hours later. (The drive should have been 20 minutes.

Don’t worry, it’s not over yet. Because it was 12:30am, there were no shuttles back to the bus terminal from the car rental place. After cussing under my breath a few times for the first time in years (maybe ever, I don’t really remember, and don’t worry, just D and H) I decided to start jogging until I found a bus stop where the bus I need came by. Luckily it only took roughly a mile. 30 minutes later I was home.

While I was running, yelling, and whispering replacement cuss words I had decided that I would tell the woman who had been worried sick that I’d been in an accident or something that I didn’t want to talk about anything. I just wanted to sleep. But while I rode the bus, the whole traumatic experience began to be humorous to me. Reagan and I just talked and laughed about it together when I got home. Sometimes things are so crazy you just have to laugh.

1 comment:

Kate said...

Total nightmare. I would have started crying. But yeah, those experiences are always hilarious after the fact.