Okay, that is just what I tell myself when I do stupid things that result in way more time and effort than are necessary. It is also what I tell myself when my crippling frugality rears its ugly head, causing me to make an idiotic decision amounting to mass personal inconvenience.
The worst instance of this took place soon after I moved to New York. My first job paid approximately one dollar. Well, one dollar in pre-Recession New York money. I was so close to the poverty-line that my friend working on her Master's in Social Work alerted me to the fact I could probably qualify for food stamps based on my socioeconomic standing. I told her that unless I could use food stamps at Happy Hour, I wasn't going to resort to that.
So, due to this and the fact that airfare is not free, when my first friend got married that June, paying for a flight home for the wedding was a major expenditure in my budget. When I looked at flights online, it was about $100 cheaper to fly out of Philly than one of the NYC airports. Having had a friend fly into Philly to take advantage of a free Southwest flight (pre-La Guardio route days), I knew it was a possibility (albeit inconvenient), but $100 seemed like enough money to be worth it.
Because I'm a genius (and was possibly drunk from one of my typical Happy Hour outings when I was far cooler and more social than I am now), I went ahead and booked the flight from Philly to Dallas - scheduled to leave super early on a Friday and return late on a Sunday - without bothering to check the NJ Transit tain schedule.
Like I said, I'm a genius.
Turns out there was no way I could get to or from Philly on the cheap train I had planned on due to the timing. I was forced to pony up over $150 on a roundtrip Amtrak ticket just to be able to make use of my non-refundable plane ticket.
Yeah, F.M.L.
Oh, that hassle and extra cost would have been enough penance, but no, oh no. The entire weekend was a swirling tornado of fun and excitement, but the entire time in the back of my mind I secretly worried about having to take an 11 p.m. train out of the sketch-tastic Philly train station alone.
But luckily things got worse, which was awesome since I love learning life lessons the hard way! I got to the train station just in time to learn that our train was broken down in Washington D.C. hours away. There was a zero percent chance of me getting home any other way, and I was thus forced to do my least favorite thing ever: waiting.
I talked to my mom and then The BFF on the phone until it was their respective bedtimes. Must have been nice. I could barely keep my tired eyes open, one of the most painful struggles when all you want to do is pass out. Since I didn't know when exactly the train would be arriving, I couldn't set an alarm to wake me up. But I knew there was no way I could stay awake.
Thank God I did, though, because I passed out, and the next thing I remember, the guy was awkwardly trying to wake me up. I shuffled my arm-full of belongings down to the track to board.
And, while I 'minded the gap' as I went through the door, I watched in slow-motion horror as my beloved travel pillow - my last semblance of comfort - fell through the six-inch crack.
The hour-and-a-half train ride was spent in uncomfortable misery. I finally got home before 3 a.m. Monday morning.
I'll be honest, that was a pretty traumatizing incident for me. I mean, I had done it to myself. After that I was careful to book more convenient travel arrangements for about a year, when a once-in-a-lifetime Hawaii trip fell into my lap. The perfect storm for an adult spring break came to be through a free place to stay on the North Shore, 6 extra vacation days to use up, and my tax rebate.
Except, when I booked my flight through Atlanta, I somehow missed '24 hours of travel' notice. Apparently they expected me to land in the ATL at 11 p.m. then fly out the next morning.
At that point, I realized I could pay for a few short hours in a hotel or inconvenience local family to drive all the way to fetch me only to turn around to dump me back off. Plus I justified that I'm young and agile, or something. How many years of this sort of crap do I have left?
So I roughed it one night in the airport. I survived. It was slightly creepy, and super annoying when the cleaning crew showed up and started chattering away at 5 a.m., but oh well.
Those memories haunt me as I now wait for my future. Am I going to shell out the funds for my non-airline-comped hotel room? Or am I going to grasp at my youth and curl up in a chair hoping to hop on the next flight out?
Guess we'll see after I have a few a few dranks at the airport bar with my new friends (who are all in college and whining about missing spring break - again, FML).
Oh traveling, what a fickle mistress you are.
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