The pet store
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Years ago, I was in a pet store with one of my daughters who
was probably a young teen at the time.
We were in the checkout line and the register operator had a parakeet,
or some kind of pet bird on his shoulder.
I figured that anyone working in a pet store with a bird on his shoulder
was someone who probably had a good sense of humor. When it was our turn to pay, I casually said,
to no one in particular, “Gee, it looks like that bird has an ugly growth on
its butt”. My daughter thought it was
very funny. The checkout guy was not
amused. The bird was non-committal. Was I
wrong in making this joke? Was I wrong not to double-check the
invoice to see if he charged me for a 1,000 lbs. of elephant dung in addition
to my purchase?
Who cut the cheese?
Sometime around 2008, I believe, I made my first trip to
Romania. I budgeted a week to be there
but was done early. That was nice
because I was hoping to spend a full day as a tourist in the old part of the
city of Medias. I am not a good
business trip tourist. Normally I just
fly in, do my work, and leave on the next available plane. But I had already booked my return flight and
I was happy for the extra day to explore the city.
I spent most of that week traveling with a German fellow,
Peter, who was in Romania to help as an interpreter and as our meeting
facilitator. On our last day together
we stopped in a Romanian food market.
There were dozens of open air booths outside and many more shops inside
the market. This is the kind of place
you see on travel shows where the vendors all wear white aprons and have big
toothless grins that appear when tourists with money stroll by.
I wasn’t buying anything but Peter made a beeline for a
particular cheese shop. He wanted to
bring home a specific kind of goat cheese that this shop sold. We found the shop and after a few moments of
them haggling back and forth she pulls up this grapefruit size ball of white
cheese. Its texture was like stiff cookie
dough and the color was that of cottage cheese.
She sliced off a thumb sized piece for me to sample. I love cheese so I popped it in my mouth with
no thoughts. It had a bland flavor, as
I recall but I vividly remember thinking that the cheese was tainted.
Peter dropped me off at my hotel and I looked forward to
playing tourist all the next day. But my guts had a different agenda. I started to get seriously sick within a few
hours after checking in to my room. I
was either throwing up into the toilet or sitting on it for the next 24
hours. Sometimes I had to make a split
second decision between sitting on or bending over the toilet since things were
happening on both ends simultaneously.
Needless to say it was the sickest I have ever been or ever hope to
be. Every time I would start to throw up
my brain replayed the memory of the cheese lady handing me that sample. I am fortunate that I had the extra travel
day in my schedule so I could use it being sick in my hotel room rather than
being sick on the plane. Gee…let me think…was eating that cheese so
wrong?
The voice of a
terrorist?
A few years ago, I was with a colleague on a multi-day
business trip. We flew to another state,
rented a car, and had several meetings with customers. I am the one who always has to make the trip connections and accommodations, as well
as conduct the actual business with the customer. I made
sure the rent car had a GPS device in it to tell me how to find the various
addresses we were scheduled to visit.
The GPS told us in a cheery Mid-Western American woman’s voice exactly
where to turn and what road to look for.
It was a demanding trip. I was
glad when it was over.
We returned the rent car and I parked it in the return
lot. On a whim, I changed the language
of the GPS device from English to Arabic. I also may
have tweaked up the volume of the device.
So when the next person turned on
the GPS, they would suddenly hear a loud voice blathering on in Arabic. I wish I could have witnessed the reaction of
the next driver when he heard an Arab’s
demanding voice shouting out of the GPS. Many people don’t know it is possible to
change languages, so the Arabic language might stay on the device forever. Changing the language was my little bon
voyage to this stressful outing. Was that so wrong?
A bad taco
It was probably 20 years ago, when a trio of buddies and I
went down to Belize, South America for a four day fishing trip. I believe it was late spring time. The weather down there was hot, as it is year
round and during our trip it was no exception.
We were on the island of Ambergris Kaye, and so it was breezy but still
hot and humid. We were staying in a very
nice condo with great air conditioning, which was quite a contrast to the
outside air temperature.
One morning, after a late night of beer drinking at one of
the outdoor bars, we stumbled into town from our condo to find some
breakfast. It was a short walk down the
beach from the condo to the area where we knew a few eating establishments were
located. The sun was beating down on us
like an infrared oven. I am not going to
admit we were hung over, but as I recall, we did consume a vast quantity of
adult beverages the night before. Our
hike into town was driven by the need for caffeine and food, but there did not
seem to be anything open. We were on
“island” time and the few eating establishments that were in Ambergris Kaye
apparently did not open until mid-day.
Damn. I needed coffee badly.
We kept searching until the aroma of cooking food was in the
air. Picture us, following this
invisible aroma like we were zombies looking for new flesh. We kept walking till we finally found the
source, an outdoor taco stand. The
“restaurant” was just a guy with a hot plate, cooking scrambled eggs and some
kind of meat products. He’d wrapped the
eggs, meat and condiments in soft flour tortillas. I kind of doubt that the Health Dept. has
ever inspected this establishment, but my empty stomach told me to order food,
and NOW.
We each purchased several breakfast tacos and found a quiet
area in the shade to eat. The ocean
breeze felt wonderful. I scarfed down my
first taco but one of my buddies, John, just could not bring himself to eat his. He just did not trust it. He noticed a skinny, half-starved hound dog
walking past us, so John lured the dog over by waving a taco near the ground
toward the dog. I had just starting my
second one when the dog trotted over.
John tossed the starving dog his taco.
The dog quickly ran to it and sniffed it. He looked at John, then looked back at the
taco, and just turned and shuffled off.
That skinny, half-starved mongrel dog just refused to eat something that
I was happily consuming. I looked at the
remains of my second taco and wondered if I had made a horrible mistake. Was
the dog wrong?
In conclusion:
So, there you have a few snippets of my travel experiences
where you the reader can decide if what I did was wrong. If you feel so compelled you can comment on
this blog if you have anything clever to add.
I will pick the best “Was I Wrong?” submittal and send you a
commemorative T-shirt. The Fetching Mrs.
Intrepid Traveler begs me to discard my worst worn out T-shirts annually so I
might as well put one to good use by pawning it off on you instead of a real
prize. Is that so wrong?
