It’s Saturday afternoon and I'm finally sitting down with a glass of wine in the United Club at DIA to write a post that's 2 weeks overdue.
My time in Colorado is always jam-packed. When I'm not at the office, I fill my time hiking, trying a new restaurant, catching up with friends, or exploring another mountain town. But even among the busyness, I always manage to find time for the blog. Except this last week. This week, I was fielding curveballs.
I’m a very confident traveller in general- but especially so when I come to Colorado. I know the average time it takes to get to and from DIA depending on what time of day it is. I know how long the security lines will usually be. I know what restaurants I need a reservation for, and which ones I can walk right into. I even gave recommendations to hikers at Chautaqua this morning about which trails had the best views or moderate level of intensity.
But even the most avid of us travelers can feel disheveled when a curveball comes our way. And this last week, I realized I've been thrown a lot of them lately.
When I got to Denver last week, I realized I never got a confirmation email from work about my ground transportation like I always do leading up to a trip. So I called the office and learned that the person who usually coordinates my travel details was on vacation, and the temp filling in wasn’t aware of my usual accommodations. They apologized and asked me to expense a cab this time. Regardless of who picks me up, there's always a fleet car waiting for me at the office so I can get around Boulder for the week. But when I got to the office, I learned she hadn't reserved that either.
Long story short, I was stuck without a car, and forced to take a cab or Uber everywhere all week. At first glance, this felt like an annoyance, because I've always had the freedom to drive myself as I please. But it didn't take long for my attitude to adjust.
I spent the week being driven by people who were kind, who shared their stories with me, and who made me feel more connected to humanity than I would have otherwise. On multiple occasions I had the same drivers that I had a day or two before, and they always remembered me. I even had one woman offer to pick me up at 5:55am for yoga the next morning because she knew not many Uber drivers were on the clock and said cabs in the area could be unreliable. I left realizing how much richer my week had been from being forced into conversation with strangers multiple times a day.
And then I started thinking about the other curveballs I've been thrown while traveling lately. How at first glance, all the things that seemed like an annoyance ended up being pretty awesome. Like when I failed to pack for the right season when I went to Paris, but ended up with one of my favorite coats I've ever purchased. Or when we missed our train to Reims for a champagne tour, but ended up talking life at Tuileries and enjoying the best weather we had by far the entire trip.
Curveballs can seem like a giant pain in the ass at first glance. They throw a kink in our plans and seem to set us back. And so naturally, our first reaction is to curse them. But if you can manage to play the tape back and watch it in slow-mo, often times you'll see silver linings that we tend to breeze right over- like the kind driver from Nepal who works late shifts to send his daughter to college at Nebraska, or the beautiful detail of the mountains you're freed up to notice when you're not forced to focus on the road ahead. You'll realize that staying at the office until 7:30pm leaves you laughing and getting to know your co-workers even better, or that your favorite pastry in Paris was one you found because you missed your train.
I want to keep learning to notice the diamonds in the rough. I want to practice flexing my gratitude muscle no matter how inconvenient something may seem. I want to roll with the punches and always trust that something good is buried in whatever circumstance is in front of me. So <insert witty sports metaphor about baseball, because I don't have one> and send some more curveballs this way. I'm ready for them.
