Stranded In Scotland

Thistle 1, originally uploaded by Dope on the Slope.

Like Odysseus, I have had my share of travel travails lately.

It all began a couple of Fridays ago when I headed out of the house with Dope Jr. to meet Pipistrelle at the airport. We were on our way to the Isle of Palms near Charleston for our annual vacation with my family. I was scheduled to travel to Edinburgh on business the following Tuesday, so I would only be staying a few days in South Carolina.

The first omen was the gridlock on the BQE. I had allowed plenty of time to get to LaGuardia based on my extensive travel experience, but the traffic was simply at a standstill. Fortunately, the driver knew a decent alternate route and we managed to get to the airport, albeit a little later than I was comfortable with given the fact that we had to get a baby and stroller through security.

Speaking of the stroller, it was at the curb that I first noticed that the right bracket for attaching the car seat to the stroller was missing. That effectively meant the stroller was worthless, but I would have to bring it anyway.

Things brightened up a bit at the beach. We arrived on time, and the weather was spectacular.

The next morning, we got out to the beach bright and early to introduce our little one to the joys of getting sand in your bathing suit. While standing their snapping away photos, I notice a growing pain on my shin just below the knee. I looked down to see a blue-tailed fly (aka horsefly) munching on my flesh. Owwww!!!

At first I thought the pain would be temporary. I was wrong. My entire shin was bright red and inflamed. My bones ached. It was the worst insect bite reaction I had ever had -- that is, until Tuesday morning when I was bitten again on both ankles. Fortunately, the ankle bites did not seem to be reacting as badly as the first bite, which was a good thing since I was headed for Edinburgh that afternoon.

The trip over to Scotland went fairly well. I arrived early Wednesday morning in unusually fine weather for Scotland (sunny and 68 degrees). I made it through customs and hopped on a bus to the train station in the town centre. I had several hours before I needed to head for my lodging since the class I was teaching wasn't until Thursday morning. I found a luggage checking service, and as I was reaching for my travel wallet to pay I found that it wasn't where I thought it was. Frantically, I searched my computer bag and carry-on luggage. Still no wallet. That was bad. Very bad. It had my passport and credit cards. Fortunately, I had withdrawn £200, so I had enough cash to survive for awhile.

I retraced my steps immediately and checked at every conceivable lost property station. My valuables were simply nowhere to be found. In all my years traveling internationally, I had never lost my passport. I would end up being stranded in Scotland until the U.S. consulate could print a new one the following Tuesday.

I resigned myself to my fate, and half-heartedly wandered around the obvious tourist sites until my late afternoon train for Dunfermline, which lay across the Firth of Forth in Fife (say that fast five times).

I grabbed a seat window seat on the train so I could really take in the local scenery. The trip was supposed to take about 40 minutes according to the kind old lady who sold me my ticket. Fifty minutes later, I knew something was seriously wrong. Our traveling speed between stations was getting slower and slower, with frequent stops and the following announcement "We regrit tae inf'rm ye 'at th' train will be a wee bit delayed. We will be movin' alang shortly god willing ."

God was not willing.

We were informed that all train service was suspended, and everyone had to debark at the next station.

There I was luggage and all, standing in some suburb of Edinburgh with no obvious taxi service, no cell phone, and no wallet. Luckily, a bus to Edinburgh came along, and I headed back into the city. I grabbed a cab when I got back to the train station. It was around 9:00 PM. The fare to Dunfermline was £40 ($80), which made a serious dent in my cash reserves. I decided that I would have to get back to the American Express office in Edinburgh the next day, which would be no mean feat since my class ended at 4:30 and their offices close at 5:30.

Finally it was time to settle down and rest up for my session the next morning. I scheduled a 6 AM wake up call so I could have everything set up for the 8 AM class being held in one of the hotel conference rooms. As I was undressing for the evening, I notice my ankles were itching and throbbing. I took off my socks and, to my horror, noticed I had a bright red pebbly rash ringing my ankles to about halfway up my shin. Those damned blue-tailed flies!

I slept fitfully until the the light of day awakened me. I glanced over at the bedside clock -- 7:57 AM!!!  They had forgotten my wake up call!!  Fortunately, a rather large breakfast was served, so folks were still munching and chatting when I dragged into the class room at 8:15.

There were several other minor annoyances (e.g. room key dropping into public toilet), but too list them all would take too long. However, there was one more big surprise waiting for me at home, and it wasn't a roomful of suitors trying to string my bow.

I got home Wednesday afternoon around 2 PM.  I headed downstairs to get some paperwork needed for getting worker's comp insurance for our babysitter. I forgot to mention that we received a letter from the state while we were gone saying we several thousand dollars in fines for not having said insurance, and the fines would continue at $100 per day until the situation was remedied. Wonderful. That's what I get for paying someone on the books. Anyhoo, as I was in the basement gathering the paperwork, I noticed a sound of a babbling brook where there should be no babbling brook. I looked into my "office" area and saw a thumb sized stream of water pouring from an access panel in the ceiling onto the floor, the bookcase, and computer equipment. There was as smaller leak coming out of different access panel. Thinking quickly, I dumped out all of the trash cans and set them under the leaks, and called the plumber. I must have emptied about 70 gallons of water before we shut off the main valve to the building. Unfortunately, no one was available to actually fix the pipe, so the entire building had to go without water for an evening.

The next day, the plumbers found a leak in the apartment above us, claiming that it was a hot water pipe that "appeared to have no function," so they simply plugged it up. I'm still waiting for that one to come back to haunt us, but so far so good.

Well, the drying equipment is finally out of the apartment, and I'm sure the holes in the drywall will be patched withing a couple of weeks or so.  Things seem to be getting back to normal.

I'm sure I'll look back on all this someday and laugh.

I'll have some more pix of Scotland a little later.

Comments

[Dope]

Thanks for the advice Liz. We'll haggle as much as we can.

[Liz D]

Wow... wow. That's a whole lotta bad luck.
Hey, I just handled a workers comp fine case for a client of mine - haggle and they often substantially reduce the fine, especially if you're not in collections yet. Email me if you have any Qs.