Travel: The Good, The Bad and The Unexpected
From the outside, it probably looks like we have a pretty extraordinary life.
We wake up in beautiful places. We ride trains through the countryside. We explore historic cities, discover great restaurants, and take photographs of places most people only dream about visiting.
You see those moments on Facebook.
What you don't see is everything that happens before the photograph is taken.
You don't see the night sitting in a dark house with no electricity, wondering whether a tree is going to fall on your home.
You don't see the uncertainty of wondering whether a long-planned journey will even happen.
You don't see the exhaustion of being 75 years old and spending nearly 26 hours getting from home to a small town in Scotland.
And you certainly don't see the moment when you realize that the luggage containing two months of your life has disappeared somewhere between London and Leeds.
That's the part of travel that rarely makes it onto Facebook.
Our dear friend Sharyn recently texted us that she was a little envious of our travels. I understood. Looking at the Rock & Barb Travel page, our life probably does look pretty glamorous.
But the truth is that the photographs tell only the beautiful half of the story.
The other half is the part I'd like to tell you about.
A week before we were scheduled to leave for Europe, our little hometown in Northwest Indiana was hit by a tornado. Winds reached 80 mph, with gusts approaching 120.
Our house survived.
But a 30-foot evergreen in our backyard was left leaning at about a 70-degree angle. A 40-foot tree beside our front room had developed a slight tilt toward the house.
And then the power went out.
For seven days.
Suddenly, instead of thinking about Europe, we were thinking about our house, the trees, the food in the refrigerator and when the electricity might come back.
Our departure date was getting closer. Canceling the trip would have meant losing thousands of dollars.
So we made a difficult decision.
Barb and her sister Nancy would leave as planned.
I stayed behind.
Someone needed to be there when the electricity finally came back to reset the alarms, cameras, routers and lights and make sure everything at home was secure.
A few days later, I joined them.
It wasn't the way we had imagined beginning our adventure.
But that's the thing about travel.
You don't get to choose everything that happens to you. You only get to choose how you deal with it.
Then came the journey itself.
Packing for a two-month trip is an exercise in compromise. What do you take? What do you leave behind? How do you stay within airline restrictions while carrying everything you need?
Then you have to actually move all that stuff.
Two suitcases. A carry-on. Trains. Stations. Airports.
I'm in pretty good shape.
But I'm also 75.
After an eight-hour flight, hours of airports and waiting, and traveling through Paris and London, I arrived in Falkirk, Scotland having been awake and moving for roughly 26 hours.
Pretty glamorous, aye?
Falkirk became our base for exploring Edinburgh. We would take the train into the city and return at night.
Until one day, a fire alarm went off at the train station.
The station emptied.
Crowds spilled into the streets.
The next day, all those people needed to get somewhere.
Our train was packed beyond anything we'd experienced. Passengers from multiple trains were squeezed onto one.
I stood for much of the five-hour journey.
And then we discovered that my luggage and Nancy's luggage were missing.
Two months of clothing and essentials...gone.
All I had was what I was wearing, along with my computer, tablet and chargers.
(That was my "Just frickin' shoot me" moment.)
Fortunately, I'd put Samsung AirTags in our luggage.
They showed us exactly where the bags were.
Leeds.
Our train hadn't gone through Leeds.
Our luggage had somehow gotten there without us.
The next day, Barb and I boarded another train. This time heading to Leeds.
The AirTags led us to the lost luggage department.
After some searching, there they were.
Our bags.
Our clothes.
Our stuff.
Everything we'd thought might be gone.
(That was my Hallelujah moment.)
All of this happened during the first ten days of our journey.
And almost none of it appeared on Facebook.
You saw the photographs from the other side of those moments.
That's the strange thing about social media.
We see someone's adventure, but rarely see the uncertainty that comes with it.
We see the destination, but not always the journey.
I've always said:
"The best part of travel is being there. The worst part of travel is getting there."
After this trip, I think I understand that saying a little better.
Travel isn't glamorous all the time.
Neither is life.
There are moments when you're exhausted, frustrated, worried or wondering what could possibly go wrong next.
And then, sometimes, you find your luggage.
The sun comes out.
You walk down an unfamiliar street.
You discover a beautiful building around a corner.
You sit down for a meal with someone you love.
And suddenly, you're reminded why you came.
Maybe that's what travel really is.
Not a collection of perfect moments.
But a collection of real moments.: the wonderful ones; the difficult ones; and everything in between.
The photographs may show the beauty.
But the struggles are part of the story, too.
And honestly, we wouldn't trade the story for anything.