Keep Calm, Don't Sleep, and Catch a Flight Next Time
This wasn’t supposed to happen. I haven’t slept in two days and my best friend is passed out at the table across from me. It’s completely quiet in front of this Dunkin Donuts.
At 2:00am.
On Monday morning.
At Newark Airport.
In New Jersey.
You’re probably wondering how I got here.
Look at us. So young. So happy. So unprepared for what was about to happen.
We’ve all been there.
You have plans. Big plans! VACATION PLANS! The best kind of plans.
Maybe you’re a travel novice or maybe you’re a lean, mean travel machine. It doesn’t matter.
Monkey-wrenches don’t discriminate.
If you’re my dad, it’s a postponed flight in Providence that forced him and my stepmother to catch a last-minute ride to Boston so that they didn’t lose a whole day of their vacation. If you’re my best friend, it’s a stolen wallet just hours after she touched down in one of the oldest cities in the world.
If you’re me, it’s a late-night bus from NYC to Boston getting cancelled at 11:00pm with no guarantee of getting back home before your shift starts at 7:00am the next day.
It’s hard to keep calm in situations where everything seems to be working against you.
I had just started my new job in Boston, and my birthday was coming up, so one of my best friends took me to New York to see Anastasia on Broadway before it closed. We took a 1:00am bus down, snapped photos at sunrise on the Brooklyn Bridge, and found some of the best vegan food in the city. The day was picture-perfect (literally).
In other words, too good to be true.
This photo accurately sums up my mood from 10:00pm to 7:00am.
Around 9:30pm, we got to the Port Authority (which I’m pretty sure we’ve already established is never a good idea) for our 10:00pm bus. To make a long story extremely short, we waited over 90 minutes for the bus line to cancel our bus, and tell us that there were no guarantees we would even get on the first bus the next morning.
Fun.
My best friend and I both started to panic. As someone with high-functioning anxiety, alarms immediately started going off in my head. There were things on fire. The little people that live in my brain (think Spongebob-style) were running in circles with their hands in the air.
Basically, I was totally fine (read: a mess).
My best friend wasn’t in a much better state of mind, so we did what young adults do best.
We called adultier adults.
Our parents essentially told us to do whatever it took to get home on time. A quick search told us that we could catch a 5:00am flight out of New Jersey that would get me back into Boston in time for my shift. I was going to be on Day 3 without sleep, but I could do it.
(I do NOT recommend, nor do I approve, going more than 50 hours without sleep. It’s a bad idea. Don’t do it. Ever.)
And now, one $60 Uber ride later, we’re full circle. At 2:00am in front of a Dunkin Donuts in Newark Airport.
Honestly, we all look great, but the true winner of this photo is that man's mustache. This is not up for debate.
I actually had to wait a while to write this post. The whole debacle took place back in April, and here I sit in August finally typing it out. It was easy to get angry. It was easy to say that the bus line sucked and that I’d never use them again. It was easy to only focus on the negative in the early morning hours and the days after.
What wasn’t easy was still recognizing that I had a great trip despite it.
My bus being cancelled didn’t delete the photos from my camera or the feeling of pure joy I experienced when my best friend surprised me with tenth row seats to a Broadway show. It didn’t erase the nervous laughter in Central Station at 5:00am or the serenity of a hole-in-the-wall cafe by The High Line.
It’s easy to let a small imperfection ruin the big picture.
Is that the last time something like this will happen to me? No, absolutely not. There will always be cancelled flights, and stolen wallets, and missed connections. And granted, since I had this revelation, I haven’t had a chance to put it into practice. But I’m certainly going to try when the time inevitably comes.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t directly slam the bus line that put us in the unfortunate situation of being stranded in a city that wasn’t our own, and I’m going to uphold that promise. Mainly because I still use the service to visit friends in harder-to-get-to places, but also because there’s enough negativity as it is in our society at the moment. Here at Home Is Where The Suitcase Is, I refuse to contribute to it further.