Return to World Trip, Take Two

Cumulative Miles Traveled: 5927
Current Location: San Francisco
Current Mood: Excited, Sad, Curious

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Day 24 of Project World Tour and I am right back where I started. Again. I made it as far south as Los Angeles on Friday. I was supposed to go back to Antigua for the final day of Holy Week festivities, then head to Roatan, Honduras for some diving, snorkeling and general doing of nothing, something I am very quickly becoming good at. But it wasn't meant to be.

There are some things in life that happen for a reason. There are some things in life that seem to happen for no reason at all. There are some things in life that happen because you make them happen. Sometimes it's hard to tell which of the above an event or non-event falls under. Lately my attitude is to not fight against things that happen and just let things fall where they may. In my real life I am an anal retentive planner who loves to make lists and plan things down to the teeny tiny details. But perhaps because I am in complete vacation mode and thus for once in my life ok with just going with the flow or perhaps because I was recently in Latin America where nothing is predictable, lately I'm enjoying just letting things happen and seeing where it takes me.

And that brings me to how I am in San Francisco, once again. How at the end of Day 24 of my trip, I've spent 15 days abroad and 9 days at home (well technically 7, since I spent 2 days in that exotic locale known as Los Angeles). The plan was to fly down to Burbank early Friday afternoon, spend the evening in Pasadena, then get me to LAX in time for my 11:45 pm flight back to Guatemala. We boarded our 4:15 pm flight to Burbank on time. Were told there were some mechanical issues. I fell asleep. An hour later they announced that bad news, the mechanical problem could not be fixed and the flight was being canceled (in both El Hombre's and my history of flying, that has never happened previously). We were told to deplane and get in line to be rebooked on one of the next two flights. We waited standby for the next flight. Pretty much everyone seemed to get on it...except us. So then we got rebooked on the next flight at 8:15. Except it got delayed to 8:45. Then didn't take off until closer to 9 pm. Then for some reason spent a few minutes taxiing in Burbank instead of going directly to the gate. My luggage took a while to come out. Finally loaded up the rental car and raced to LAX. Except there was a stalled car that backed us up for a few minutes. Got caught at a red light. In any case...we arrived at LAX at 11:02 pm. The ticketing agent told me that they had just closed the flight and I would not be able to get on.

Well so what can you do...we did everything possible to get me to LAX on time but it just wasn't to be. Since I missed my flight to Guatemala, I also missed my flight to Roatan from Guatemala. I looked into flying directly to Roatan but prices were in the several thousands. After looking at a variety of flight options, the only one that made sense was to return to SF and fly directly to Costa Rica at the end of the week, cutting out Roatan. So here I am again, in the most beautiful city in the world. Tomorrow morning I'm returning to my travels (for real this time, God willing).

But it's kind of interesting to look back on the chain of events that occurred that caused me to miss my flight, as well as the chain of events that followed because I missed my flight. In order for me to miss my 11:45 pm flight, about 20 things had to go wrong because there was quite a bit of time between my flight to LA and my flight to Guatemala. If any one of the many obstacles had not occurred, I probably would have made my flight. All of those little factors added a few minutes here, a few minutes there...which caused me to just miss my flight.

And because I missed my flight and was stuck in LA for the weekend, I ended up meeting El Hombre's entire family. My grandmother was departing for Seoul for a month on Tuesday so since we were on a roll I figured El Hombre might as well meet her before she took off. And things worked out well because she needed a ride to the airport and no one else was available to take her, so I'm glad I was here to drive her because otherwise she would have had to take BART and I hate the idea of my grandmother having to take BART by herself with heavy luggage. My Visa card also expires this month and I had been wondering how I was going to get my new card while traveling (the only other credit card I have is American Express, which is a pain in the arse to use in some countries because they either don't take it or charge a ridiculous surcharge) but my new card just happened to arrive yesterday. Maybe these are all stupid and insignificant things, but in any case these events wouldn't have occurred if I had caught my flight to Guatemala.

It's hard to tell if things happen for a reason, or if things happen because they happen and we shouldn't attach any significance to them. I think eventually, time tells. So I'm excited about meeting up with T and P in Costa Rica for a week of surfing and yoga. I'm sad about leaving El Hombre and most likely not seeing him for 6 weeks. And I'm curious to see how things pan out.