|
|
Enron Mail |
In Search of Lost Adventure: Issue 4
------------------------------------- - The Gift of a Delay - by Mitchell Stephens My wife is cold. Why is that throwing me? After all, we are soaking wet following a day of floating - in and out of the raft - through the succession of class one, two and three rapids on the Chagres River, the river that feeds the Panama Canal. We've been at it for about six hours now. It's getting late. And the motorboat that was supposed to meet us and whisk us back to the van never showed. So we're paddling, though we know it's too far to paddle. Every once in a while one of the guides tries to get the radio to work. And my wife, who gets a chill at the mere thought of air-conditioning, is naturally, understandably cold and uncomfortable, and a little worried to boot. But her attitude is throwing me. The explanation can be found, I suspect, in something my friend Jeff Scher had said when I told him I was about to undertake this around-the-world journey. "Try to view every delay," he suggested, "as a gift." This seemed, initially, an odd notion. His example - a trip to Philadelphia he and a friend took, during which a flat tire forced them to behold a lovely little town - was interesting but not all that persuasive. Still, I remembered what he said. And delays certainly came. First, the battery on my Toyota gave out in the below-zero temperatures just outside of Kansas City. I needed a jump, and the guy in a beat up Towncar parked next to mine was kind enough to provide one. In return I was asked to give a couple of his acquaintances a lift somewhere. A gift? These were two guys from the Deep South who would then be taking a bus into Kansas City before spending twenty-some hours on another bus to Mississippi (all this in order to see their wives and children on Christmas). I did take the opportunity to meet them as a gift. Then, a half hour past Matamoras, Mexico, my daughter (who had joined me for a stretch) and I learned at a customs check that we were missing the necessary permits and had to go all the way back to the border. A gift? I found myself trying to see it that way. And it is true that we ended up spending the night in a fine hotel in Matamoras and strolling around the nicest part of that town. Twice on this trip I have been stuck in long lines of cars, trucks and buses behind serious accidents on narrow mountain roads. The first time it happened, south of Oaxaca in Mexico, I was delayed for around an hour and a half. While I was waiting, I chatted with some of the gray-haired members of a six-house-trailer caravan, spending three months traveling around Mexico. The second time, north of San Jose in Costa Rica, the delay was more like three hours and I fell into an intense conversation with two Dutch fellows who were almost finished with seven- and five-week tours of Central America. I was getting good at this. Yes, my plans were messed up. No, I didn't have a lot of extra time to waste, trying to drive from New Jersey to Panama. But, remarkably, I could get stuck without feeling put out. At the heart of this newfound enlightenment was a kind of patience (not an easy thing for a New Yorker to muster) plus an openness to whatever the fates held. Jeff's advice turned out to be another way of saying: Keep smiling. Keep your eyes open. Remember that one plan, one schedule, is often as good as another. I believe it is good advice. In fact, I found myself wondering, somewhere along the road, about all the gifts I had missed - because my 1989 Camry has been so reliable, because the trip so far has gone relatively smoothly, because my life so far has gone relatively smoothly. Which is why I am having so much trouble out here on the river. I am deep into my semi-spiritual, view-delay-as-gift mode. Do you see that white hawk! Maybe we'll stop at an Indian village for help. My wife, meanwhile, here only for a short visit and therefore not practiced in such reveries, is shivering. She's had enough. When a boat comes by, she practically forces the guides to flag it down and pay the young men inside to take us back. Impatience, too, can occasionally be a gift. ------------------------- Mitchell Stephens is a professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at New York University and the author of 'the rise of the image the fall of the word'. For more information on his trip see www.ROADthinker.com. Want more? Past issues of Lost Adventure can be found here: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/newsletters/lost_adventure/archive.htm Down to earth, up to the minute travel information: www.lonelyplanet.com ---------------------------------------------------- *** SUBSCRIBE AND UNSUBSCRIBE You are subscribed to Comet as kate.symes@enron.com Unsubscribing is easy, just point your web browser at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/newsletters/lost_adventure/unsubscribe.htm No web access? Get off by sending a blank email to mailto:leave-lost_adventure-113079J@lists.lonelyplanet.com.au Anyone can join up at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/newsletters/unsubscribe/ or by sending a blank email to mailto:join-lost_adventure@lists.lonelyplanet.com.au Need help? Mail a human at mailto:lost_adventure@lonelyplanet.com.au
|