Unlucky Travel Experience

When I was first asked to share my unluckiest travel experience I had a few memories come to mind.

I thought about telling the story of when we drove to Orlando this past March and how Gabby got car sick at roughly 10 PM with no notice beforehand causing me to pull over on the side of the road in the middle of no where along a highway with no lights where my mother and I had to use our iPhones as flash lights to try to get the ‘mess‘ under control.

Then I had visions of my one and only trip to Scotland where it was freezing cold outside while we went sightseeing and I had a cold.  Before heading home we ventured back through London where it was raining thus causing my cold to become worse and the whole flight home I thought I was going to die, did I mention the next day was Thanksgiving with family?

Finally there was my trip to Type A Conference in 2010 where my plane had a maintenance issue causing a delay that had a domino effect making me miss my connection which lead to me being in airports for 10 straight hours being extremely late picking the kids up from the sitter on a school night.

Even though all those stories had crappy parts, they were each great trips in their own way.  Plus who hasn’t gotten sick during or after a vacation before?  Who hasn’t experience a flight delay?  And who hasn’t had a child get sick in their vehicle?  It could have been worse, right? That’s how I knew I had to find a better story to tell…

The other day I was talking with a friend about family trips in my past.  I remember taking a family vacation with my grandparents and my two sisters.  My grandparents rented a cabin for us at Galveston Beach which is about a six hour roadtrip if I’m guessing correctly.  I was probably seven or eight years old.  My family enjoyed going crabbing off the pier and my grandmother would cook the crabs at the cabin.  I don’t remember many of the details from the vacation, I don’t even remember ever eating the crab.  However, I do remember one part vividly.

My grandfather had purchased new crabbing nets and he seemed to be proud of them.  He got them out and ready for us to use.  I was so excited.  I stood on the pier after dark watching the waves wash by and seeing all the crabs go under the bridge.  He gave us instructions on how to toss the net in the water.  My sister was ten years older than me and I was eager to go first.  I wanted to throw the net in the ocean and catch the crabs.  I WANTED TO DO IT.  Apparently so did my sister.  I’m sure I remember some arguing between who was going first and then all of a sudden, we both threw the net in.  The whole net.  Both ends.  We caught a lot of crabs, unfortunately we didn’t have either end of the net to pull them up shore.

I’m pretty sure my grandfather was upset.  At my sister of course, after all I was the baby.  Just to think… my sister thought I wasn’t old enough to throw the net in, she felt she needed to be the one to do it.  I must say I did a dang good job of making that net land right on those crabs, it’s not my fault she didn’t hold her end to pull it back up.

Do you have an unlucky travel experience?  I bet you can beat mine!  How about a Random Act of Kindness that you were blessed with during a rough time along one of your journeys?  A super hero of your vacation of sorts..  Right now, TravelGuard has a contest where you submit your story for a chance to win a $10,000 prize!  Contest ends September 5, 2011.

Also I’d love for you to join us this coming Monday evening, August 1st at 8:00 PM CST for a live and follow along by using hashtag #TMOM and #WUT2.  Don’t forget to RSVP for the Twitter party in order to enter for a chance to win some awesome prizes, including a Kindle.

Full Disclosure: This post is part of the TravelingMom campaign, therefore I was compensated for my time spreading the news about the contest.  All opinions and stories in this post are 100% mine and true.  I also do not consider myself the world’s unluckiest traveler and even though I’ve had my fair share of bumpy travel experiences, I love to travel!