Why isn’t there a pretty picture here?
I was recently on the mainland, and whenever I’ve travelled the 5,000 miles from Honolulu I try to make the most of my trip while I’m there. So I flew to NYC to meet up with a board member of our ministry.
I also made silver status on Delta! First time getting status with an airline and while it may no big deal to a lot of people, I’m pretty excited about it!
WALLET BAND AID
We were eating in a restaurant with our family and my niece had a boo boo and requested a bandaid. No one else had one but I carry a bandaid in my wallet because it takes up almost no room and can save the day. I think I probably saw this on a youtube video or something, but it was also reinforced when my wife cut herself opening something in the car and I had trauma gear that could stop hemorrhaging, but nothing for nicks and scrapes.
Boom! Wallet band aid saved the day! I made sure to replace it with two bandaids when I returned home.
CLEAN CHANGE OF CLOTHES IN CARRYON
My flight was suppose to be from Pittsburgh to Detroit to Newark. And I was suppose to land around 2pm.
While I was on the tarmac in Pittsburgh I got notification that my Newark flight was delayed. When I arrived in Detroit I learned that the flight was cancelled.
I was rerouted to Minneapolis (why am I flying West to go East?) to catch the next flight to Newark. Got to Minneapolis and guess what? Flight to Newark was cancelled.
It was at about this time I was going to give up and grab a hotel so I could get some rest. I was feeling uncharacteristically passive on that travel day which must have been the grace of God because I was just going with the flow. I was happy that my family wasn’t on this leg of the journey with me, because traveling with an infant on that many flights would have been much more difficult.
I also was realizing that I was seriously toying with the idea of paying the extra $70 to fly first class for that trip. And realized that if I had all of these extra flights would have been first class. Womp womp.
My flight ended up being Pittsburgh, to Detroit, to Minneapolis, back to Detroit, finally into La Guardia at midnight. Needless to say, my bag didn’t make it.
I always pack an extra change of clothes in my carryon. In all my travel all over the world this is the first bag that didn’t make it to it’s destination. I was sure glad I had a clean set of clothes to change into when I arrived at my destination after a day full of travel.
My bag did get delivered to me the next day. And it got me thinking a lot about how to most efficiently pack for travel which I will write about soon.
EMERGENCY $20
Then I was trying to figure out how to get from Newark where my friends apartment was to meet him in NYC to grab dinner. I admitted that I was a bit apprehensive about using the public transit, but he gave me really awesome directions. A couple of things threw me off and I ended up getting on the wrong bus, which was cash only even though I had set up the NJ transit app and already paid for a ticket for another bus. Oops.
Boom, my emergency $20 came to the rescue. I think I picked this up from Pastor Rick Rohlin over a decade ago, who I remember saying he always carries an emergency $50.
I once had to use my emergency $50 for gas while on the road at a cash only gas station and the teller said that I should have smaller bills to make sure I could pay for things. So I downgraded my emergency $50 to an emergency $20. Maybe I should just have $50 worth of smaller bills.
These small bits of planning ahead for emergencies made life a bit more comfortable in the midst of chaos.
What do you carry on you that has saved the day? What’s your EDC? (Everyday carry?)
