Not off to a good start

 Alicia and I have been looking forward to this trip since 2020 when, barely a month prior to departure, the world decided to put on a pandemic and we were told the border between the US and Canada was closed.

So here we are, in 2025, with all arrangements made, tickets and confirmations all firmly in place and saved to my phone, bags packed, departure timed for early Saturday morning, when the whole thing starts to unravel.

Friday evening we went to watch our granddaughter in a live performance of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. That was the first play of the evening. The second play was mine - let’s call it Shitty Shitty Dang Dang.

You see, after her play ended Alicia and I decided to stop for dinner at a Red Robin restaurant. It was 10 o’clock, but they were open until 11. So we enjoyed a nice meal, then drove the remainder of the trip home, arriving in our driveway about 10:59.

After bringing in the mail and a couple of other chores that cleared the way for an early departure the next morning, I suddenly realized that my phone was not in my pocket.

Must have left it in the car…. Nope, not there. I had left my phone on the table at the restaurant! Did I mention that the phone had our tickets and confirmations on it?

A quick call to the restaurant revealed what I was already fully aware of: It was now 11:05 pm and no employee will answer the phone after closing!

A few choice words that would violate the community standards of social media were uttered, then my focus turned back to controlling what I could control. The early start was off the table. The restaurant didn’t open until 11am. I estimated that the employees would start preparing for business hours about 10 am however, so when they snuck in the back door I wanted to be right behind them.

The plan worked to perfection. Almost. I was able to sneak in the back and get my phone from the manager, who had locked it in her safe. I walked out the back door, excitedly waving my phone at Alicia, who was waiting in the car. I walked down the sidewalk to the end, where the cement took a hard right turn. I did as anyone who was in a hurry would do, cutting the corner with my feet, stepping from the one sidewalk to the other, over the grass in the corner. 

At that precise moment, the sprinkler system turned on and the sprinkler head popped up, just in time for me to strike it with my large foot, snapping the sprinkler head in two. A large volume of water shot skyward, with me passing directly through the line-of-fire of the irrigation bidet.

I was soaked, but the worst part was I had to go back into the kitchen to tell the manager why they had a 1/2” stream of water shooting ten feet in the air.

I guess the best thing that can be said about how this trip has started is that the odds are in our favor that tomorrow will be better.