Patience: the capacity to accept or tolerate delay.
…I’m working on it…
Have you ever seen the ETA on your GPS add time? I don’t mean when it adds time because you make a pit stop. I’m talking about it adding minutes to your ETA while you are driving. I didn’t even know this was possible until this trip to Miami. Let’s start from the beginning.
It was the weekend before Christmas and my entire family was together celebrating. I had been talking about how I found a really inexpensive cruise but couldn’t find anyone to go with me in January. I’m no stranger to traveling alone, but a cruise just wasn’t one of those adventures I wanted to do alone. Anyway, at dinner my sister in law, Gabby, asked me if I found anyone to go with me. I told her no unfortunately, I couldn’t find anyone who could get the time off in January.
She raised her hand and said “Um, me! I”ll go.”
“Oh yeah? Do you want to? You might actually be on track out that week!”
The dates matched up, she asked my brother if they could swing it and she could go with me. He laughed and said no. We both said oh well next time and moved on to another conversation.
3 hours later and we’re all watching Home Alone 2 and I get a text message from my brother, who’s sitting a few feet away from me.
It says “Book the cruise. I’m going to surprise her with it. She will love it. I’ll Venmo you the money.”
In my excitement (and let’s be honest, a few drinks later..), I didn’t account for travel time to get to Miami from Wilmington. I just thought, my vacation time starts Jan 13th, the cruise leaves Jan 13, that’s perfect! After about an hour, I text my brother back.
“So, I wasn’t thinking about travel time. And I work the Saturday before the cruise. We are going to have to drive down overnight, will she be ok with that?” This isn’t the first time I’ve overlooked seemingly minor details while booking a trip. We both just laughed it off and said “oh well, we’ll have to make it work”. Maybe my next trip I’ll book before I’ve had a few drinks.
3 weeks flew by. I couldn’t believe how quick the cruise came up. That Saturday I got up and went to work. Phil and Gabby drove down to Wilmington to meet me and by 6PM Gabby and I were on our way to Miami! We decided to switch drivers every 3 hours to keep us both awake. The 1st 9 hours of that drive went by SO fast! We were having so much fun just talking and singing along to the radio. Around 3AM we stopped to fill up and switch drivers. It was Gabby’s turn. The last leg of the trip. We were both doing alright, but definitely starting to feel tired. The next 2 hours went by pretty quickly, around 5am I started to doze off, trying desperately to stay awake so she wasn’t driving in silence. I looked at the GPS which said we had 20 minutes left to go. Awesome! We’ve got this.
I look over at Gabby and burst out laughing. Where Gabby had been just a few minutes before, was now an elderly lady struggling to see over the steering wheel. She had her hands right at 10 and 2, chest about 3 inches from the wheel, squinting to see over the dash. I asked her if she wanted me to drive the last bit, she said no. Then I check the GPS. Wait a minute. It says we have 30 minutes to go. How is that possible? We only had 20 minutes to go 10 minutes ago. I glance over to see how fast we’re going. 45 miles per hour. We’re going 45 MPH in a 70MPH zone on the highway. You’ve got to be kidding me.
“Gabby, really I can drive the last couple minutes. I’m awake.”
“No that’s silly, I’m ok. We’re almost there”
Yeah we’re almost there alright, at this rate we’ll get there in another hour. Just breathe. This WILL be funny in a week. You will laugh about this later.
At this point I’m watching the ETA literally GAIN time. What? How is that possible. No wonder Phil doesn’t let you drive anymore, ya grandma. It literally felt like we were going backwards. In all my life I have NEVER had time added to my ETA. This was a first. And I was literally watching the ETA go from 5:20 to, 5:30, 5:35, 5:45. We pulled into our friends driveway around 6AM. A very delirious looking Gabby, looks over at me and goes, “we’re there!” Despite myself, I burst out laughing. “We made it!”
All said and done Gabby added a very impressive 40 minutes to our ETA in the last hour of driving.
In all seriousness, I can’t thank her enough for being such a trooper with me and driving over night. But also, I’ll drive next time 😉
Until next time,
Keep traveling wanderlust!
The Wanderlust Cookie 