Ep20. Falling Apart
Stuff always falls apart while traveling. Plans change, health declines. Items disintegrate… Relationships fade… It doesn’t always happen, but it’s usually inevitable, no matter where you are, as nothing is made to last forever.
This episode will talk about just that… Things falling apart.
- My adventure pants biting the dust in Alaska
- Renting a car (and breaking down) in Bulgaria
- Relationships falling apart in Zagreb, Croatia.
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Transcript:
****falling apart
Open: “(Tape from Matthew and me- stuff that’s falling apart…let’s start with physically.)”
That’s Matthew and me.. Sitting in an ER- talking about all the things that have fallen apart during our Balkan trip.
<Physical stuff….
Stuff always falls apart while traveling. Plans change, health declines. Items disintegrate… Relationships fade… It doesn’t always happen, but it’s usually inevitable, no matter where you are, as nothing is made to last forever.
This episode will talk about just that… Things falling apart.
Which brings us to Act 1. Adventure pants.
Before I started traveling I knew that I needed to have quick-dry pants… Something that wouldn’t mold or be wet while I was sitting on buses for countless hours. I did a lot of research and eventually bought these pants off Amazon. ……And this trip is when they finally bit the dust. After 3 years of traveling together, I felt like one of my closest friends had up and disappeared out of my life.
I felt like I had to write a stellar review… .or obituary. Telling the world how well these pants served my life.
TIGHTEN!*
Here is the haiku review- read by Kit Burroughs.
*Dear Adventure Pants,
Beige, cheap and quick dry
I needed adventure pants
So I purchased you
8 pockets total
Great length, roomy, and stylish
You are so perfect.
My most favorite part
Was the pocket for passports
It fit perfectly.
By Costa Rica,
My jeans disintegrated
But you carried on
30 months of use
You survived so many hikes
And this was your last.
It’s my fault. Dear pants,
I was way too hard on you
I wore you out. (Ha)
Colon, panama
Up Colombian mountains
To Galapagos
Machu Picchu trail
Colca canyon to see birds
Then over to Oz
Through the hot outback
Wytomo caves, New Zealand
Then to Singapore
Through South East Asia
And yoga in India
Dear god it was hot!
Then the Philippines!
Paired up, we survived Haiyan!
And delivered rice
My visa ran out.
We rode elephants in Pai
Came home for Xmas.
You dealt with my weight
In both extremes- up and down.
You never complained.
On to Africa!
Game drives in the setting sun!
Up and down Kili!
I returned back home
And took a crazy road trip
Where I flipped my car
You were with me then
Tied up with tubes and IVs
In the hospital
We took it easy
Getting freelance work sometimes
And bussing tables
And then, Alaska.
In all its beauty and light
The great wilderness.
Our last adventure!
Glacial water polar plunge!
Now I say: goodbye.
(Music fade out.)
Act 2: Bulgarian Car Rental
Renting a car in Bulgaria was easy! Some adventure friends and I make our way to this car rental place. It was more like someone’s apartment, really. Stained flooring and couches that reeked of cigarettes- the way that everything does in Bulgaria.
We meet the owner of the car-rental. It looks like he hasn’t bathed in the last fiscal quarter.
We hand over 200 euros as a deposit and sign a sheet of paper… seriously… not a contract- just a sheet of paper. And then we were handed the keys to a slightly aged volvo.
We turn it on… it emits white smoke out the tail pipe… but we were quickly assured that this is normal and we will be able to go anywhere in the great country of Bulgaria. This is Dan.
We called the unbathed car-rental guy and he said he would send someone. Dan texted a mechanic friend of his to see what the problem could be. This is him reading off the texts.
So…..we wait…
I had some holes in my backpack that needed stiching up.
We wait…
Other people posted some pictures to facebook and twitter.
We wait…
The engine was still sizzling.
We wait…
Finally, an hour later, a fiat going in the other direction stops… and lets out a man. OUR SAVIOR! The fiat keeps going- I assume to look for a place to turn around.
Our savior was holding 2 water bottles and a fanny-pack.
That was it.
No tow-truck, no other provisions… just 2 bottles of water.
He dumps one into the coolant tank. Nothing happens.
He tries to turn on the car.
Nothing happens.
He dumps half of the other one on the engine…
It’s still sizzling.
The savior instructs us to push the manual car to jump it…
We do, but nothing happens.
Finally, the fiat comes around.
They both look at the volvo’s engine. Then they look at the fiat’s engine.
The English-speakers try to look manly and useful.
Or hopeful….
Or a mix of both.
Our Savior comes up to us and asks for scissors. We don’t have any. He finds a first-aid kit and takes out the little kid-safe scissors and proceeds to cut the seat-belts out of the busted volvo, tie them together- and then tie the whole thing to the fiat.
We pile into the fiat, he put the volvo in neutral and we make-shift-towed the car off the highway and into a run-down gas station at the next exit.
I was overhearing this woman at the gym complaining about her car that broke down over the weekend. “We had to wait over an hour for AAA!” she moaned.
I couldn’t help but think the following:
A) bitch! You had AAA! You had a cell phone that worked! You had people you could call! AND! Your car was probably fixed with the seat-belts intact! What ‘chu complaining bout, willis?
B) I used to be like this woman… When unexpected hiccups of my day happened I would have a panic attack and all of a sudden my whole life was occupied by this BIG HUGE TERRIBLE THING. WOAH IS ME!
But I found that I gained experience with every crappy hiccup- that made me never surprised or caught off guard for anything that could potentially happen.
Getting stranded on the side of the road in Bulgaria by a rental car? It’s a great scene for a even better story.
Act 3: broken relationships.
Traveling with someone is like taking the fast-track of a relationship. You, very quickly, go through all these tests of getting to know someone… Like…
-How do they deal with stress?
-What is their tolerance of food?
-What really matters to them?
-What makes them frustrated?
-How much do they laugh?
You can, typically, learn all this within a week of traveling with someone.
But what happens when you realize that you’re too different? That you don’t line up as people? What happens when you realize that the relationship needs to end, but you need or want to do it in a peaceful way? (As opposed to the ever-so-popular-drama-facebook bashing- way?)
There’s a whole place that’s dedicated to this idea.
Zagreb is the capital of Croatia, by the way. And this museum is filled with objects and stories from failed relationships.
Let’s listen to one from Zagreb, Croatia:
“A range of air sickness bags as a memento of a long-distance relationship. One Croatia Airlines, one Lufthansa, one Hapag Lloyd Express and three GermanWings. I think I still have those illustrated safety instructions as well, showing what to do when the airplane begins to fall apart. I have never found any instructions on what to do when a relationship begins to fall apart, but at least I’ve still got these bags.”
I asked Lana what happens when people exit. What is the overall mood.
Here’s another story about Red Shoes from Paris, France
“We met at work 20 years ago. I fell in love with him as soon as I saw him and never stopped. During that time he met a girl and got a child and I myself had two children. We were great friends and what was bound to happen indeed happened! … He left his wife and I was already separated from the father of my children. We experienced a powerful story full of travelling and intense moments, he found some sort of freedom in my company, but as Catherine Ringer put it so well, “les histoires d’Amour finissent mal en généraaaal”… He got these shoes for me at a sex shop in Pigalle…”
So- Confession: My relationship ended RIGHT before I went to this museum. Like the night before… And after going through, I couldn’t help but be overtaken with the desire to donate my own object, with my own story. A way of letting go in a healthy way. Apparently, I’m not alone. I asked Lana what that process was like.
———
So look… Crap is going to happen no matter where you are in the world and that’s a great thing! We tend to protect ourselves too much from bad experiences, when, in reality, those are the ones that help us grow the most.
With out shoving myself into the world and experiencing all sorts of weird, bizarre un-predicted things, I would still be the panic-stricken shy girl that sat behind a desk and worried about everything. Instead of the uber-cool girl you are currently listening to!
How do you curb anxiety? If it’s by reading travel stories I have heaps of them. Go to LNLurie.com. If you have stories of your own- leave a review on iTunes or email me at LN.Lurie@yahoo.com.
Thanks to James Gralian and Robin Giantassio-malle for being my sound boards, Marianne and James Thurland for reading the broken ship stories, Thank you Lana with brokenships.com, Thanks Dan and Nick for being Bulgarian adventure pals, and Thanks Matthew for putting up with me for as long as you did…
Speaking of which…
When I was in Madison this past winter I decided to practice every day. This piece, which is the hardest piece known to any bassoonist, is Bach’s Prelude in G. It’s also my warm-up piece- which I can never ever ever play right. One day, after some coaxing from Matthew, I did. And if I had to donate something to the museum of broken relationships, it would be this recording.