To Girona, and Beyond?
June 23rd 2016, Girona, Spain. A personal empowerment seminar would be taking place and I had my heart set on going there. Alas I would not make it to that fateful conference, but I learned a great many lessons along the way, the least of which: Aim well. Being there might have, in retrospect, been a better goal than going there.
Three months earlier…
It all started when I bought a ticket on more or less a whim to go see Inelia Benz, someone whose philosophies I had been sponging on for the past few months. Her message was personal empowerment and she talked about how we can resolve things by observing them.
T-minus one week… Planning begins.
First I checked transportation options. Plane. Train. Riding my moped-scooter a couple thousand miles. All are doable in theory but impractical and/or expensive. I finally settled on going by car. One that I would have to rent first. Kudos to mileage-free rentals!
Upon telling my parents I was going, they were understandably aghast at this latest exhibition of my exemplary planning skills — perhaps more precisely, my doing it on a whim. But I‘m stubborn and had made my mind up that I was going. So, I went.
Friday, June 22nd, 2016
Electronic Banking & Cars: Read the fine print.
In order to rent a car, one requires a credit card, or else must pay the absurdly high sum of a deposit. Thinking I could use my nifty prepaid credit card for this, and that I might as well use it for the duration of my trip, I promptly transferred most of my easily accessible money to it. That’s when I found out that the rental agency require a credit-card with, you know, actual credit.
So, not having a, you know, *sniff* /credit/ card, I opted to pay the sum required for the deposit. Except, I had just made it impossible for myself to do that… alone.
But what about the prepaid card, you ask? By some miracle of backwards banking technology, credit cards were to be entered into the great and oracular “System”, while direct-debit payments had to be done via a dumb terminal. The Electronic Payments Terminal, it turns out, does not accept *any* kind of credit cards… And cash? Hah! Chuck-Testa that!
Where there’s a will, and kind parents, there’s a way!
At the prospect of waiting several days for the funds I had just moved to my Mastercard to make their ponderous way back to my checking account, I decided it was time to use a lifeline.
*ring* *ring* …. “Hello?”
— Hi! Mom? I’m… stuck at the rental agency and I could use your help…
My parents were understandably reluctant, especially given that they’d just been professing to me the virtue of good planning. After much humming and hawing and a couple of “I told you so!” and suchlike thrown in for good measure, they agreed to loan me the sum of the rental deposit. Phew!
Crisis averted, the plan was back on track! Like a directionally-challenged Fival, I headed south to the border, made my way through Belgium and into Northern France.
Friends for a footfall
During a particular leg of the journey I saw a hitchiker standing by the road and, thinking of the rental agency’s proscription of pets and hitchikers, I naturally invited him along.
During the ride, my guest cheerfully spoke about a festival he’d been to during his travels — at least I’m pretty sure that was his story’s yellow-brick-road.
Although his French was nigh on impossible for me to comprehend, I was glad that he cared to share his story, regardless of whether I might understand it or not.
Travel Tip: Check progress often; Pivot where necessary.
Nearing sundown on my first day of travel, I stopped to check the car’s nav system. My passenger had long since disembarked, and zooming out to check on my progress through France I was astounded to discover that I was still closer to my departure point in The Netherlands, than to my destination!
A genius attempt to save some money by skirting the toll-booths had led me to travel by surface street — zigging and zagging my way through small towns and along country roads.
At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t make it until sometime on Sunday and would miss my conference! The unfortunate thing about genius ideas is that they’re sometimes a little too genius. In terms of distance travelled toward my destination, fuel costs, and dinner at a McDonalds, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that I toll-trolled myself.
Some time in the early morning I decided to stop for a rest. 17 hours of mostly sitting in the same position, interspersed with some car-dancing and the odd tri-pedal shuffle, made a pit-stop well worth the effort.
Saturday, June 23rd, 2016 — Lessons
After my “nap” which lasted quite a bit longer than I would have liked, I stretched to wake myself up and got underway again to find: a gigantic, huge traffic jam. Here I learned something surprising to me: Although the GPS could re-route me again and again, I kept on ending up in the traffic jam. On the highway, in small towns, back country roads, etc. Until, that is, I stopped listening to the GPS and decided to follow my intuition. I found a round-about way that got me a great deal farther than several GPS re-routings had, and faster, to boot!
Lesson: Trust thine irrational heart.
As it turned out, much of the traffic jam was due to one of the toll-booths in the south of France having somehow completely failed with all its gadgetry, leaving thousands upon thousands of tourists, holiday makers and general French people waiting at gates which had to be manually operated in between being repaired. Once past that it was smooth sailing.
Lesson: Plan for unexpected hindrances.
One of the most memorable parts of the trip began when my phone rang somewhere near Montpellier, close to France’s southern border. A friend of mine was calling to ask if I wanted to come over, and ended instead ended up being my travelling companion and virtual escort into Spain.
Lesson: Life’s about who we share it with.
I finally made it to Girona with an hour or so to despair! That is to say that I arrived roughly an hour and a half after the end of the conference. Though I was disappointed, I was also stoked to be in a Spanish city, reminiscent of Southern California. I didn’t get what I thought I wanted, but the journey there provided what I needed, ultimately fulfilling what I thought I was looking for at the conference anyway — a sense of personal empowerment.
Lesson: Follow through, but drop expectations about the outcome.
Sunday, June 24th 2016 —On The Road Again
Warning: Contents may be hot!
Waking up to blazing heat after a night of drinking with James, my AirBnB host, I said a quick goodbye and headed to a shop in front of where I’d parked to fetch some snackies for the first leg of the road home. The shopkeepers wished me well on my way as I began the trek back to Northern Europe.
Car-Friends Again!
Approaching Lyon, I stopped at a gas station and on the way out noticed a couple more hitchhikers looking for a ride. This time, two Polish girls on their way to eastern Germany. Some smalltalk later and we were navigating the streets of Lyon — trying to get to the other side like the proverbial chicken whose motives are controversial among schoolchildren. The wonderful thing about having two girls in the back navigating is that it’s much more fun than listening to a GPS voice telling you to “Look at the moooooon!!!” while you miss your exit.
Hours passed, scenery changed and yet there we were, three strangers sharing a path together. Darkness fell and with it a silence but for the sound of tyres on pavement. A couple times we stopped at rest stops to pee and stretch. On one such a stop, we sat for a while on the ground outside just enjoying the stillness of the night air.
Monday, June 25th 2016 — Oops, yay, oops… oh cool!
Entering Germany in the wee hours of early twilight I had an intuition to drop the girls at a particular rest stop. Ignoring this, wanting to “go the extra mile” and such turned out to be a not-so-good idea. Nevertheless I brought the girls further along to a truck stop which was just opening. We went inside for some refreshments, then parted company.
AutoBahn!
So the cool thing about travelling back via Germany is, obviously, the AutoBahn. See, in most European countries, the speed limit is somewhere between 100 and 130 kilometers per hour. In parts of Germany, the speed limit is: How fast are you willing and able to go? And I did :) I made the discovery that the small Ford I had rented could top out at about 170 going downhill.
At a certain point I realised that, being in Germany still, I would not be able to get the car back to the rental agency on time. So, I called. Bluetooth systems go… ring…ring…
“Uh, hi! So I’ve got this car that I rented from you guys for the weekend, and well, I was wondering if I might have it an extra day.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but if you rented it until Monday, it needs to be back on Monday.”
“Yeah, about that…”
After hearing that I was in Germany, they agreed to let me keep the car another day. Not like they really had a choice, unless they wanted to send a harrier jet to come pick me up, but I figured calling would be polite.
In the end, getting back into The Netherlands only took another couple hours and the drive was mostly uneventful. I went home, unpacked, and then returned the car the next day.
Figuring I’d like to share about my trip I started writing an article. And stopped. And then started again. And then stopped again. Well… Now here I am, at it again. I suppose this is the last lesson here, since it’s now the 7th of November, 2019. From deciding to go on the trip, to publishing this has taken three years and eight months. The lesson?
Sometimes you’re just late.
