Category Adventure

So times are scary right now. Unless you’ve been under a really big rock, you probably know what I’m talking about.

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Yosemite has so many incredible aspects it’s hard to choose just a few things to see.

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In 1934, a group of Sierra Club volunteers built a rustic, hostel-style retreat for hikers, skiers, and mountain climbers.

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Being the place I grew up, Oakland holds a special place in my heart. However, I’ll admit there’s a lot about it that I don’t know.

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This event was how my list of dumb shit I’ve done began in the first place. Good times… Or in this case, incredibly stressful and stupid times.

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Before you board a plane, read the plane ticket. Just do it. Even if the text is crazy small and upside down.

Lumbering down the corridor in the Edinburgh airport at 6:15 am I sorely regretted not fully reading my plane ticket (dumb move #1). I was a mess. My shoes were untied, belt was half on, and I was sweating like a beer-bellied man trying to run in the summer. I had a pack on my back and front and both were swinging and bumping against me as I “ran”. I had run all the way back to check-in, gotten the stupid blue verified stamp on my boarding pass, and gone back through security all because the woman at the boarding gate wouldn’t let me on the plane without that stamp. The gate was at the end of this corridor.

I turned the last corner and Cam was walking towards me carrying his two packs. He shook his head. I collapsed against the wall letting my bags slip down. The tears I’d been forcing back (it hadn’t been a disaster yet) came down full force (it was now a disaster). I was in full toddler tantrum mode in the middle of an airport hallway. Probably not my best moment. I later realized if I had known Cam was going to wait for me regardless, I could have left my bags with him and run through without them (dumb move #2).

Lumbering down the corridor in the Edinburgh airport at 6:15 am I sorely regretted not fully reading my plane ticket (dumb move #1).

When Cam got to me, I wiped my cheeks and stared up at him. His shoulders hunched as he looked at me. He had bags under his eyes. His brown curly hair frizzed like he’d just gotten out of bed, but I knew he hadn’t slept at all that night. “Have they closed the gate?” I asked. I guessed the answer, but couldn’t help hoping.

“Yeah,” Cam said. “Riccardo and I tried to stop them as long as we could, but they weren’t having any of it.” Cam shook his head. “We can try to go back though.”

I got up, trying to put myself back together, and we walked back to gate 21. Just the one woman who sent me off in the first place was at the counter. The doors behind her were shut. She looked up with a completely straight face. “We’ve already shut the gates, there is absolutely no entry.”

“Is there not anything you can do?” Cam asked. “If not you, then could we maybe speak to your manager and maybe they can do something?”

I later realized if I had known Cam was going to wait for me regardless, I could have left my bags with him and run through without them (dumb move #2).

“No. I am the floor supervisor and even if there was something I could do, the plane as already left. You’ll have to go to the ticket desk and try to get on the next flight to Malaga.”

She was in no mood for trying to help. I assumed she was at the end of working the nightshift so she was just tired and done with people; especially dumb Americans who can’t read their boarding pass. I didn’t blame her. I picked up my things, tears blurring my vision, and started walking away. Cam followed.

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Turned out the next flight from Edinburgh to Malaga was in two days, but we were able to get a flight from Glasgow to Madrid for the next morning without having to buy new tickets. We got a bus to Glasgow, I speed booked a “Wee Bungalow” on AirBnB for the night, and we camped out in Strathclyde’s student union until 2 pm when we could check in. I had wanted to visit Glasgow at some point anyway. Preferably when I had actually planned to go to Glasgow, but beggars can’t be choosers.

For dinner, we went to a restaurant our AirBnB host, Francis, recommended called Piccolo Mondo. She’d never been there, but it was apparently ‘where the young people liked to eat.’ It looked like a mix between a romantic Italian restaurant, a sports pub, and a club. The red carpet and candles said restaurant, the massive TVs playing football said sports pub, and the loud electronic music said club.

“How much you wanna bet Francis recommended this place for the steaks because I’m American?”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s why she recommended it. All you Americans are the same, aren’t you? You love your fast food and steaks.” (Francis had recommended McDonnalds and Burger King first.)

When we got our food Cam said, “just think, if you hadn’t missed the flight, we would never have discovered this restaurant.” Cam took a bite of his haggis.

“I know. You should be thanking me, really. Who wants to follow the plans anyway? Gotta keep you on your toes.” I picked at my pasta trying to avoid the onions. “So I listened to this podcast about adventure writing a couple months ago and the guy said every time he’s in some shitty situation, his first thought is, ‘This is going to make such a good story.'”

Cam laughed. “This is definitely quite a story.”

“Exactly! This entire time, I’ve just been thinking, at least I’m getting a good story.”

Cam nodded. “At this point, you probably have enough material for a book.”

“Oh, I have a full series. It’ll be called Dumb Shit I do.”

“But would you separate them by categories or time?” Cam asked, laughing.

‘Categories.’ I thought for a moment. “It could be a trilogy.” I counted them off with my fingers. “Dumb shit I do mountaineering, dumb shit I do traveling, and dumb shit I do in general.’”

Cam snickered. “Half the travel one would just be on getting to Spain.”

“At this rate, Spain is going to have its own special edition.”

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Fast forward to the Madrid airport (I made the flight this time, we don’t have to talk about it anymore). We had two hours to get from the airport to the train station before the last train of the day left. Now, when you have plans to catch a train in a different country, the logical thing would be to buy tickets ahead of time, right? Well, I didn’t (dumb move #3).

When you have plans to catch a train in a different country, the logical thing would be to buy tickets ahead of time, right? Well, I didn’t (dumb move #3).

One wrong bus incident later, and we’d made it to the station 10 minutes before the train would leave. Would have been fine if we already had tickets, but we couldn’t get the ticket machine to work. It only took contactless and my card is not that advanced. (Turns out you can use Apple Pay as contactless to avoid this issue. Dumb move #4.) So, instead of being on the train, we successfully watched the train station’s LED display board change our train’s status from arrived, to departing, to departed.

Apparently the universe had decided we would be renting a car and doing a 7-hour road trip to Ronda instead. The good news: we still got a whole 8 hours in our AirBnB in Ronda, and we were able to drive up the hill to where we were staying in El Chorro for the rest of the week.

I was trying to save my traveling stories of dumb shit I do for some perfect time or ideal publication but honestly, I think it’s funny, so I want to share it with you.

I’ve noticed that some of my favorite traveling stories to share with people are often the ones I should probably be embarrassed about. But who doesn’t like to laugh at that idiot person who bought a small package of yeast thinking it was butter? I know I do.

While all these could potentially be short stories, for now, they are just a list. Maybe I’ll start writing about each one individually and if I do, I’ll start linking to that full story. On that note, if there’s one where you desperately need to hear the whole story, let me know! Put it in a comment! Send me an email! Write a personalized post card! It’s your choice really.

So without further ramblings,

The Dumb Shit I’ve Done Traveling:

Israel/Euro-trip:

• Somehow losing an entire outfit without realizing it. I still don’t know where I left them.

• Buying sparkling red wine when I wanted normal cheap red wine. On the bright side — I will never forget that frizzante means sparkling or fizzy in Italian.

• Slicing the tip of my thumb while cutting chorizo. I have no excuses for this one other than the chorizo was really good and the knife was really sharp.

• Dropping a hot oven tray on my knee. I was trying to save a pizza, can you blame me? Why anyone trusted me to take a sliding pizza out of the oven is another question.

• Buying a cube of yeast thinking it was a baby cube of butter. It fit in the palm of my hand. It was SO cute. Fun fact though, fresh yeast does not taste cute.

• Almost taking someone else’s bread at a bakery because the woman put it on the counter next to mine. The first time, the lady laughed, and we moved on. The next morning when I accidentally did it again she was not so amused. What can I say, shopping in a language I don’t know is stressful.

• Forgetting to put on sunscreen then going climbing in the sun for four hours. The word for after-sun in French is après-soleil.

Iceland:

• Making a detailed itinerary of my cycling route, then forgetting the itinerary in the pack I left behind.

• Also, conveniently leaving my journal I was going to document the trip with in that pack.

• Not realizing there was a specific bike path and biking on a motorway. In my defense, it hadn’t looked like a motorway at first.

• Buying a can of beans then not having a can opener. Note to self: not all cans are easy open.

• The biggest one for Iceland: Not being much of a cyclist and deciding to do a 6-day bikepacking trip by myself. Who’d have thought that was a bad idea?

Spain:

• My personal favorite: Not reading the fine print on my plane ticket and missing the flight because I hadn’t gotten a visa stamp at the check-in desk.

• Boarding the wrong bus and then missing the last train of the day because I hadn’t bought tickets ahead of time.

• Leaving a bathing suite out to dry at your hostel is a practical thing to do, right? Less practical — forgetting to repack it before leaving the hostel.

Hopefully, this has made you feel better about your traveling incidents. Or maybe you’re a perfect traveler, in which case, hopefully I’ve given you a reason to laugh or be deeply confused at how anyone could travel so much and still make so many mistakes. Maybe both.

Happy traveling!

So long for now, Iceland

It’s been almost a week since I’ve left Iceland and I cannot believe how quickly it all went. It feels like just yesterday I was getting pelted with rain and wind while attempting to cycle up hills… Good times. To sum up, I wanted to do a bit of an overview of the route I ended up doing and since visuals are always helpful:

So, if I had managed to cycle the entire route, I would have travelled approximately 208 miles/335 km and climbed 4,022 ft/ 1,226 meters in six days. Since I did not cycle the entire way, my estimated total is actually something around 142 miles/ 228 km and 2,367 ft/ 721 meters in six days. Slightly less impressive, but I’ll take it. Of course, that does include carrying all the food, camping gear, clothes, and toiletries on the bike and on a bike, that weight adds up.

Funniest part of the trip was when I tried to get off my bike on the side of the road, lost my balance, and just tipped over because of how heavy the panniers were. Of course, the whole bike tipped over on top of me too. I inwardly hope some driver passing by did a spit-take or something seeing this cyclist all decked out in waterproof gear randomly tipping over.

Overall though, I’d say it was a success. It was cold, wet, and mentally exhausting, but a success nonetheless. If I had a chance to go back and do it differently, I might have tried to go up the west coast instead, because I heard the weather is sometimes better in that area and it might have been less touristy, but we live and learn.

That’s all for now. Who knows when I’ll get traveling again or where I’ll be going, but hopefully it’ll be soon!

Keeping it chill

As much as adventuring and traveling alone has it’s peaceful and enlightening moments, I have to admit it does have its downsides. For one, I’ve have a lot of time to think about what I’ve left behind in Scotland. The past year, I have made some amazing friends and met people I will never forget. While I hope to stay connected with many of them in this exciting world of technology, it is far from being able to send a quick facebook message and meet up 30 minutes later for a spontaneous sea dip. I miss that. I think it’ll be a long time before I stop missing the community I found in St. Andrews. Traveling alone is such an extreme difference, it’s hard not to miss it even more.

Don’t get me wrong, I love traveling alone – you meet way more new people and get to do exactly what you want without having to compromise. Just today, I’ve met an English guy named Terry who spends 6 months out of every year traveling and a German girl named Carol who also studied English and is now a marketing manager. On the other hand, when I’m by myself in my tent, it’s cold, and the wind is shaking the tent like crazy, it can be hard to remember there’s a world outside the tent where you’re not all alone.

In other news, it took me two hours to cycle just under 10 miles today because of headwind. Some horses looked at me like I was from mars then started running along the fence with me. So far, I’ve had at least seven people say in some way or another either, they’re impressed I’m cycling by myself in Iceland or I’m crazy for cycling by myself in Iceland. I’m inclined to go with the latter.

It’s hard to beat reigning wind

I have to confess that I cheated today (and it’s only the first day!). I got my bike all fitted out from Reykjavik bike tours and as I started cycling, it started raining.

It took me approximately 4 hours to ride 12 miles and I wasn’t even close to where I’d planned to camp for the first night. My waterproof trousers were drenched and when I stood up my shoes made that squashy sound like when you step in mud. I was on flat ground, cycling on the lowest gear, and still struggling because of the headwind. Then add in the hills and I was a goner. The thing that kept me from full tantrum mode though was the little ray of sunlight that created a full rainbow right in front of me.

At the top of a hill I’d been pushing my bike up, a guy with a pickup truck flashed his turn signal and a little further up he pulled over. I struggled back onto my bike and fought my way through the head wind and rain to the truck. Ten minutes drive and one hill later, the guy pointed to the side of the road and said ‘that’s where you’d be 2 hours from now if you’d kept riding.’ We drove another 15 minutes until actually getting to Selfoss.

…And it’s all very amoosing

The picture I have here are leaves from a lupine flower. Someone told me that people call the water droplets that form on them lupine diamonds – I like that something as ordinary as a water droplet can become as precious as a diamond.

What I would like to do with this entry is to spend a lot of time on it. To read through my 23 pages of writing from my trip and put together a really nice, consolidated piece that I can edit and re-edit before sending it off into the world. After finishing that, I’d like to spend more time tweezing out all of the different stories I can find from my trip. However, I only have so much time (one day exactly) until I am whisking myself off to my next four-week adventure filled with magic and children so I wanted to send out at least some sort of tip-of-the-hat to Alaska into the world before I left.

If there is anything I learned on the trip, it is that there will never be enough time to do every tourist attraction or see every single monument. I learned that rushing from one view to the next in hopes of catching the next spectacular sight takes away from anything that could be actually enjoyable. Everyone has seen a picture of a train or a bear; capturing that picture is not worth it if it means you see everything through a camera lens. No amount of people on Facebook envying your trip will make it any more enjoyable for you.

What I love about traveling is when I start to slow down, see the people of the area, and just wander with a smile on my face. I get to meet these incredibly interesting and kind hearted people whose stories I am sure I will remember far longer than I will any grand mountain or animal sighting. It is those moments where I stop and realize how lucky I am to be where I am in the world that make traveling feel like such a treat. The funny thing is, is that those things really do not require traveling – I can meet interesting people everywhere if I am willing to listen and I can always be grateful for where I am on this world. So here’s to hoping I can live like I am traveling a little bit more every day because I am always going somewhere.