Another Word for Adventure
An alternate definition I saw for adventure was:
Travel + Disaster
I’m tempted to downplay the times when a trip seemed so perfect in the planning then did an about-face and began rolling down the long slope toward utter chaos, finally landing like shards of glass in some unasked-for dismal abyss.
Last year around this time I signed up for a regional convention of a service organization I belong to because I hadn’t traveled in over a year and the restlessness was making me a little crazy. Destination: York, PA. Accommodations: a golf resort, but it was early November. And anyway, I don’t play.
The organization was paying for the trip and meals were a part of the itinerary, and I signed up along with two colleagues, a husband and wife team who were also my friends. So, not only was the trip pretty inexpensive, but I wouldn’t even have to take my own car for the three-and-a-half-hour drive which was, considering the underlying uncertainty of any transportation I owned, an added bonus. And I’d be with friends.
A few days before the Friday we were supposed to travel, they realized they’d double-booked themselves and bowed out. My consolation was the fact that the organization would reimburse me for gas, for what sounded like a fairly generous per mile rate. I had bought my used Monte Carlo just that February and it was luxury loaded although it was 17 years old. Heated seats, moon and sun-roof, cruise-control, cool air, a robust heater, a music system and a quiet motor.
A long drive through late autumn colors on a weekend when we’d gain an hour from the time-change—what could go wrong?
A late start on Friday, for one thing–which should have been a given considering all the work I was trying to get finished. I took some of it with me and hit the highway with enough light to make it to the resort before night. I’m a skittish night driver these days, especially in unfamiliar terrain. But the spirit of adventure called and off I went.
Straight into Pennsylvania highway construction. By the time I was nearing York, neon lights were beginning to appear and the evening was just about ready to descend into darkness. I had missed the event’s welcome dinner. As the single lane of cars and trucks crawled at 15 mph, I resolved not to get upset and reminded myself I was on the road again, adventuring.
Thanks to my cell phone GPS I found the correct exit, then did a series of loop-de-loop turns which I’ve come to associate with small Pennsylvania limited-access roads when you miss the jug-handle exit ramps or overshoot the traffic circles—more aptly named “roundabouts” in the UK. I finally got to the golf resort—a compound of quaint looking brick buildings of varying stories, none of which resembled a hotel. I pulled into a parking space on a steep incline—the only space left in the lot—and found someone to ask where the lobby was.
It would involve a confusing series of additional loop-de loops, but I sort of got the gist and got back into my car to drive in the general direction. As soon as I took my foot off the brake, it made a loud “clunk” and all the pressure was gone.
I was 200 miles from home in a town I’d never been to, it was dark, getting late, I was hungry and I had to practically stand straight up on the brake pedal and go as slow as I could to avoid driving over curbs—or shrubs, or people. Somehow I made it to the other side of the compound, saw the Registration sign, found a parking spot, turned off the ignition. grabbed my gear, and decided to deal with the car the next afternoon after the convention’s meetings but a couple of hours before the closing banquet.
I found my room, freshened, tried to breathe away the jitters, and decided to find a place to eat—and more importantly drink–somewhere on the resort’s compound, No more driving until I got those brakes fixed.
A golf resort hotel—there had to be a restaurant on premises. There was, but just the one, as the girl at the front desk gestured and directed me through a series of corridors all the way to what would amount to the next building over or maybe the next–I wasn’t sure.. Or I could use the walkway outside. I’d had my fill of the outside of this place, so I followed her directions which took me over a ramp that ended on the second floor of the adjacent building.
The restaurant was on the other side of it, on the lowest floor. The elevator in front of me said “Pardon our dust—we’re renovating” and told me to take the stairs. Aha—but what that actually meant was I had to take the stairs two flights down and then I’d be on the lowest level and could walk through the doors into the next building and then walk two flights back up to the upper floor of the restaurant.
“I’ll take you there,” one of the restaurant’s waitress, who was coming back from a break, offered when saw me hesitate. So down we went, then up, finally landing in a foyer right outside the restaurant. The floor below it I could see—and hear—was a dark disco with flashing blue and red strobes, loud techno music and a good crowd of gyrating silhouettes livin’ it up on a Friday night.
I walked into the restaurant. And was the only person there. There was an oval bar curling through the midsection of an 80’s modern décor with wicker chairs– just to mix intentions. The bartender looked up and smiled and I asked if the kitchen was open. It was, and a waiter came and seated me, put down a place setting, gave me a menu and took my drink order. A dirty martini, very dirty. I needed those olives to make this journey right again.
I could hear the techno-rap pulsing one floor below and feel the bass.
If it’s one thing that makes any adventure feel like a triumph it’s a better-than-decent dinner at a place you’d never expect to have good service and a mixologist who knew the difference between a dirty and a very dirty martini. Honey-glazed salmon, perfect al dente green beans from a local farm, just the right serving of garlic mashed and a glass of water (for my headache and aspirin) before you have to ask.
I had my second martini at the curvy bar where newlyweds were unable to keep their hands off each other and were having a laugh with an older local and his over-made-up-underdressed sweetie who looked to be about 60 and both definitely not on their first drink of the evening.
The dinner, the drinks, making small talk with strangers, feeling very unencumbered as a solo single and then the fragrance and sweet rustle of brilliant autumn leaves as I took the outside path back to the hotel lobby. Plus the fact that I’d made it here in one piece. Maybe this disaster had had its way with me and had played itself out now for the rest of this road trip.
To be continued.