We never go on vacation. We only go on adventures. What happens if the plane is late or they don’t have your hotel room? That would ruin your vacation, but an adventure’s always an adventure! Dorothy Oberto, Mrs. Oh Boy! Oberto!, in the Seattle Times
This past weekend C2, my sister-in-law, and I drove to Montana for a wedding. Late flights weren’t a concern, but we stayed in hotels. As Suzanne Sugerbaker said, one of them was a lot more Mo than Ho. The first one, though, was a lovely two-bedroom, two-bathroom suite on the shores of Lake Coeur d’Alene and is part of a time-share organization that my brother and sister-in-law belong to. After C2 had taken her shower I turned on the water at about 10:00 AM and waited until it was nice and hot. For about 30 seconds, it turns out. After determining that the cold water taking my breath away was not due to operator error, from the bathroom I inquired if these places ran out of hot water. Fully clothed and standing next to the bathtub (in the master suite), which she’d filled with warm water, my sister-in-law replied with a sheepish “yes.”
Not having hot water for a shower is pretty far down the catastrophe index, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant. My legs burned for two days after shaving in cold water and I washed my hair in the sink, with cold water. I’m not a fan of cold water, but then I remembered Mrs. Oberto’s words and decided that running out of hot water was just part of the adventure. I was clean, my hair was clean. Like magic, my attitude adjusted almost in spite of myself.
We left Coeur d’Alene with plenty of time to make the 4:00 wedding. We drove through Kellogg, Idaho to see the Dave Smith Motors phenomenon and stopped to eat lunch (according to our friendly and chatty waitress, the next day anyone could ski for free, courtesy of Dave Smith). From there we relied on the GPS time estimate and directions. For an hour we were focused on the reported ETA: 3:40, and at one point cheered when we shaved off a minute. We’d hoped to be there by 3:30, but 9 minutes later was close enough, especially since no one knew we were coming. The GPS took us over the river to a part of the town I’d never been to. Which is not a surprise, given that I’ve been there only twice before, each time for about an hour. We were back to 3:40. No church in sight, but it’s a small place. Surely there’s no church back here? It’s 3:50. If the GPS is wrong, we have no idea where we are and we’ll never make the wedding on time. At 3:58 we see the church. Whew! I’d hate to come all this way and miss the wedding. At 3:59 we turn into the parking lot, at which time C2 says, “Wait, is there a time change?” She’d looked at her cell phone, which said 4:59.
We laughed so hard we couldn’t stand up straight. Now we know that the GPS unit is so busy pinging satellites for our position on the road that it can’t be bothered to ask if we’ve traversed a time zone.
Once again I recalled Mrs. Oberto’s words, we drove half a block down the road to help set up for the reception, and enjoyed ourselves for the next few hours. No more vacations for me. From now on, it’s adventures only.
