I suppose I could…but I shan’t
Start on a detailed rant
How the vouchers would square us
For a night spent in Paris
Gave us a favorable slant.
Synopsis: I’m a Family Practitioner from Sioux City, Iowa. In 2010 I danced back from the brink of burnout, and honoring a 1 year non-compete clause, traveled and worked in out-of-the-way places in Alaska, Nebraska, Iowa, and New Zealand. I followed 3 years Community Health Center work with further travel and adventures in temporary positions in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Canada, and Alaska. 2019 included hospitalist work in my home town and rural medicine in northern British Columbia. Since the pandemic started, I did 10 months of telemedicine in my basement, followed by 5 months staffing a COVID-19 clinic in southeast Iowa. Since autumn, I’ve done some telemedicine visited family, attended 4 funerals, 12 weeks as a contractor for the Veterans Administration in South Dakota, and a trip to Israel.
Because of travel, some posts are out of order.
Don’t expect another rant about a trip home turned nightmare, despite wrong lines and flights missed and delayed.
If you want, sometime we’ll sit down and talk about the Tel Aviv hotel with no one to call a taxi, and being pulled over by an Israeli soldier with an M16 who starts his interrogation with a smile, perfect American English, and “Hey, guys…”
I want to talk about a trip home delayed, not gone bad, but embracing the adventure.
We missed a connection in Paris. Never mind about the long and wrong lines.
We got vouchers for a hotel, supper and breakfast.
We relaxed in our room before supper, and remembered the trip home from Uruguay when we got the same amenities but arrived at the hotel too late for supper and left too early for breakfast.
We had a simple French evening meal: salad, chicken, potatoes, and an exquisite chocolate tort for dessert. The small, comfortable, stylish hotel room had a TV the size of a wall.
I slept well enough to awaken with morning stiffness, the result of ankylosing spondylitis and the interval since last Enbrel injection.
We had a wonderful breakfast: eggs, potatoes, fruit, croissants, coffee. We set out to the airport, giving ourselves plenty of time for airport and immigration screw-ups.
No matter what you plan, it won’t turn out that way. The bigger the plans, the longer the time frame, the less likely the final result will resemble what you had in mind. When you run into the inevitable, you can squirm, curse, or cry, or you can embrace what will always turn out to be part of the adventure.
We got to the airport much earlier than we needed. There was a short speed bump when my passport wouldn’t scan at one of the many passport scanners, but we found the gate easily. We played Scrabble while drinking cappuccinos and eating croissants paid for by airline vouchers. And when it was time to go to the gate, we went. With the emotional resilience of not being in a hurry. Because we took an extra day. Because we missed a connection. And got in the wrong lines. And got lost in a very confusing airport with bad signage.
But we didn’t hurry.
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