Episode 10: World Travels

I’ve always been envious of well-traveled people. I imagined them to be part of this special club that I wasn’t invited to because as a kid my parents were always broke and as an adult I’d always been broke. I had this friend growing up whose Dad had a travel agency. While they spent their vacations in places like the Dominican Republic, we spent our vacations at my step dad’s lake house in Pottsville, PA. Don’t get me wrong, we had a blast water skiing and fishing and playing lawn darts, but Pottsville isn’t exactly the Caribbean.

When I graduated from college (well, almost graduated) I worked at this awful advertising agency for possibly the most evil person on the planet. After a few months, the “real world” and I mutually decided to break up…neither of us was ready for that type of long-term commitment.

I had the rest of my life to work in an office, right?

After a short stint working in a restaurant, a couple of the girls I’d met on the job and I decided to drive across the country and live in Jackson Hole, WY for the summer. I know, so very Gen X of us, right?

Is this my chance to see the world…well, the Western States, anyway?

One sunny day in the late spring of 1997 I set out for Jackson Hole, WY with $600 in my pocket and a girl I barely knew. (The other girl stole someone’s boyfriend just before we left and decided to drive with him instead). We were in Amarillo, TX waiting out a tornado warning at the Camelot Inn — a fleabag motel with an empty pink swimming pool that was shaped like King Arthur’s shield — when we got the call from the boyfriend stealer asking if we minded spending the summer in Tahoe instead of Jackson Hole.

Why not?

We made it to Tahoe, I spent my last $300 to rent a room in a condo the boyfriend stealer had found, and the only job I could find was working a retail gig at some lame-ass clothing store making 7 bucks an hour. I took the job, but spent weeks trying to find a waitressing gig. I either wasn’t pretty enough or didn’t know the right people to get one of the few in supply/high in demand restaurant jobs, or both, so I decided to pull the plug on my big adventure. I wasn’t going to spend my summer in Lake Tahoe in an air conditioned clothing store.

Besides, Lake Tahoe was filled with a bunch of barefoot Trustafarians, so I didn’t fit in anyway.

I called my Dad and he sent me a couple hundred bucks so I could fly home.

Unfortunately, the travel bug didn’t die with my big adventure, so a few weeks later I got a job on some rich guy’s private yacht cleaning toilets and ironing sheets. I thought I’d at least get to see the Caribbean. No such luck.

Another long story short: I worked on the yacht for three months before we set out on our first Caribbean adventure. Just before Christmas of 1997, we were headed to St. Marten for a three month stay.

I’ll even get a stamp in my passport.

Unfortunately, I worked for the boat’s chef, another crazy bitch, but this one was of the alcoholic sort. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been a stranger to a bottle of wine, but this girl started drinking at noon and polished off at least three bottles before passing out around 8 PM. Every day.

The night before we were scheduled to “go out to sea” the chef had even more to drink than usual. One minute she was telling me that it was the anniversary of her mother’s death and the next minute she was lunging toward me, mouth open and tongue waggin’, expecting a kiss — a big, sloppy wet one by the looks of it.

Not enough wine in the world, Honey.

I promptly called this guy I’d casually been seeing and he drove all night from Daytona Beach to Ft. Lauderdale to rescue me.

I retired my dreams of traveling the world and focused my energy for the next couple of years cycling through a series of really ridiculous relationships. And then I met Rob, we had a kid, got married, had another kid and my dreams of traveling came out of retirement when we moved to China.

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I can’t wait to go to Thailand with you — Stay tuned…The Price of Tea