How My Big Travel Mistake Cost Me Hours – What Would You Have Done?
I’ve previously described how I travel less during my current life season than before – and that was before the pandemic started. A nice benefit of traveling less is I make fewer blunders.  We’re starting to travel more now, though, particularly on road trips. We’ve been on a few as a family during the pandemic, and I took a solo one over a long weekend recently. Not too far into my solo trip, I faced my biggest travel mistake in recent memory. Here’s what happened and how I overcame it.
A Great Start
After seeing my two little ones off to school on a recent Friday, I fit my jog and morning coffee in. I prepped my all-in-one car kit, checked tires, and iced my cooler. I hugged and kissed the wife goodbye and was on my way. About two hours in, I congratulated myself on the great time I was making on the drive. As I zoned in and out of a podcast, my wife called. In a concerned tone, I was greeted with this:
Wife:Â “Benjy, I’m in the den looking at a black Tumi bag on the rug.”
Me: (Colorful language directed at myself. I’ll leave it at that.)
I had left my freaking bag at home, just over two hours away.
Many Possible Solutions
Instantaneously and simultaneously, several different possible solutions went through my head. They were:
- Plow ahead and buy new stuff at my destination.
- Turn around and go back to the house to get my bag.
- Request that my wife grab the bag, drive toward me, and I turn around and drive toward her.
The Most Optimal Solution
Which did I pick? Option #3, primarily thanks to my wife’s generosity and flexibility. But why? I didn’t want to spend my time and money at my destination buying clothes, toiletries and a cell phone charger. You may say that this solution led me to unnecessary gas expenses and car depreciation. Long story short, I have Speedway gift cards that I need to burn ASAP (all Speedway locations are closing for good soon in my area), so I wasn’t concerned about a gas “expense.” Sure, I can’t ignore car depreciation, but what can I not stand more? Buying yet another phone charger and unnecessary (in the long run) clothing and toiletries or some deprecation of our vehicles?
Resolution
What I failed to heavily weigh in the decision is the fun of two different vehicles moving toward each other with varied speeds, uneven traffic patterns, and a (so far) unidentified location to meet. The wife and I talked every fifteen minutes or so to update each other on our respective locations. We settled on a restaurant parking lot we were each familiar with. My wife arrived about five minutes after I did. I sheepishly smiled. In response, I simply got her patented “You Owe Me” look. We reminded each other to be careful and went our separate ways. I ended up getting to my destination about two and a half hours later than planned. My wife was back home well in advance of our little ones’ school release.
My Big Travel Mistake – Conclusion
It could have been much worse, and I have my wife to thank for that. She noticed I left my bag at home and was generous enough with her time to meet me. I would’ve been able to make it work even if I arrived at my destination without my bag, but it was nice to get it taken care of on the front end of the trip. If you were in my situation, what would you have done?
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I once left my CPAP machine at home. My wife was traveling with me and panic set in very fast. We were going to be away for 5 days so not having it wasn’t an option.
Thankfully I’ve given a coworker (my best friend) a key to our house and he was able to overnight my cpap machine to my destination.
It certainly wasn’t cheap but no other option and not a good idea to sleep without it. I didn’t realize I had left it behind until 3 hours into a 4.5 hour flight.
Thankfully he lives only 30 minutes away from my house and was able to get there and get it before the FedEx next day cutoff hit.
Also thankful for inflight messaging otherwise it would definitely have been too late if I had to wait until we landed at our destination to use cellular service.
2808 Heavy,
Wow, sounds like it was a stressful first couple days of the trip. I’m glad it worked out!
Really, you didn’t give us a lot of details, or I missed them. Was it a two day trip away from home, or a week? What was in your bag that you needed, like were you wearing a t shirt and your suit was in your bag? Were there other things besides your phone charger of importance?
If it was just a couple days and just regular old cloths, I’d just buy new stuff. Everybody needs new stuff all the time, so who cares if you buy them a couple months ahead if time. But, if whatever was in your bag was of grave importance, as I’m guessing it was, 2 extra hours is nothing on a road trip, I recently was on a road trip, and it should have been 4 hours. Thanks to a fire, there was a 2 1/2 hour delay. Oh well. When it’s a delay, you blame the situation, and in your case , you blamed yourself. Poop happens. That’s life. Enjoy it and don’t even stress you made a bad decision. You made it based on what you thought best at the time, I’ll bet there was good reason. If it was a bad reason, oh well, thems the breaks. Don’t sweat it.
Frank k,
Yeah, not a huge deal overall. Thanks for reading!
Did you need specialized items or clothing on the long weekend trip? If not, I probably would have ordered a couple new clothing basics via Amazon Prime next-day delivery to me at my hotel. I would have chosen duplicate copies of clothing I already own, so there would be no doubt of fit. And it would get used eventually, no waste. A spare phone charger is easy to find at a pharmacy, along with some toiletries, if I couldn’t make due with my car charger. A pharmacy stop and an Amazon order is 10 minutes, versus five person-hours in cars, and 300 extra miles on the vehicles.
EricF,
You laid out an excellent contingency plan that is optimal for many. Lots of people enjoy Amazon Prime, but I quit on that a few years ago. Regardless, it would have taken me longer than 10 minutes and unnecessary spending, especially taking into account my destination. Even still, I’d choose the extra hours of a relatively easy drive and negligible car depreciation over those other things. Nonsensical for others? Maybe. The most pleasurable option for me? Yes.
IMO most people underestimate the marginal cost of driving extra miles, which is probably $.25 – $.50 per mile. And I think about the environmental impact more than I used to. But if you enjoyed it more than replacing the items, sounds reasonable.
I think your option is what I would have done also. While you can’t get the time back both of you lost the hassle of buying everything you need and you are bound to forget something is a headache. The benefit of a loving spouse with the flexibility is what makes it work.
Tim,
My wife’s great – I think I’ll stick with her. 😉 Thanks for reading!
I had a similiar experience like that once, except my whole family was traveling and there was no one home! We were flying to Asia and when I wanted to check in I realized I had left my back pack with all our passports at home!!! OMG what do I do??? It was 10PM and there was not enough time to drive home and back without missing our flight. I had to think fast. I desperately called one of my neighbors and thankfully he answered his phone. I told him about our dire predictament. Thankfully he agreed to help out. I gave him the code to get into our garage, then where our hidden key was, and then what our house alarm code was. He then drove half way to meet us and we made our flight. You can rest assured, that after that hair raising incident, I triple check to make sure we all have our travel documents and bags before leaving the house.
JacobG,
As I read, I was waiting for the part where you instructed your neighbor to break through a kitchen window. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that. I’m glad it all worked out!
I’ve never done that, but I used to have a reoccurring nightmare that I had left my luggage at the hotel in Hawaii and flown home without it.
I hadn’t thought about that in a while. Hopefully that doesn’t revive the nightmare.
Carl,
Quite a traveler’s nightmare, indeed. Although if that happened in real life, you could easily rationalize a second trip back to Hawaii right after the first.