Skip to main content

The trips your remember -- when disaster struck!

 Its funny, because its so very true; a friend reminded me that the only trips we remember are those where something unexpected and unplanned -- or even when disaster struck.  Like all children, my first trips were with my parents, rather later than most, still. Here is a rundown of the funniest;


Mexico 1984:  In those days travel costs were so much higher in Canada than in the US that it was really worth it to drive down to NYC and catch a flight there...the night before our planned departure for NYC (by car) we (my sister, mother and I) saw the news about a major storm arriving that evening; my dad not so concerned, said there would be "no snow because of a high-pressure front".  As the words emerged from his mouth the snow started.  We rushed to finish our bags and leave Montreal...it was fun we ended up sleeping in Albany because the snow was so bad, but we were able to catch our flight in the morning.

The same trip:  New years eve in Mexico City my dad insists that we should go out "to a restaurant in town to celebrate New year (the front desk had told us that "most restaurants were closed for the evening".  We walked for 3 hours "looking for an open restaurant -- nothing!  Eventually returned to the hotel and had dinner there.

Portugal Easter 1986:  Dad forgot there were 31 days in March...so we were short a hotel for a night during the busy season; we found two rooms in homes -- in my parent's room some guy tried to come in through the window -- a local friend of the owner who was too drunk to get home and decided that sleeping in the guest bedroom of his friend's house was a good idea...hahaha.  The worse part, we had been staying in a hunting lodge in the Evora Forest that had vacancies...we could have stayed an extra night

Same trip:  My sister is driving the rent-a-car and gets the car filled up with "gas" for some reason she had stopped in front of the diesel pump and the attendant asked her if she wanted diesel, her not understanding Portuguese said, "fill it up!"  We wasted 3 hours while they cleaned the fuel system.

India 1989:  Both my sister and I were studying in Europe, and my parents decided to spend a month in Inda and we would join them for two weeks.  Flying on those days was interesting, but there the problem is because the plane was late in arriving we were late in leaving and the airport at which we were supposed to land was shut for the night, we flew into Agra a day early the night of the full moon (all hotels were full) we ended sleeping in a "one-star" hotel where the beds were wooden platforms -- after searching for many hours.  Funny enough the next morning breakfast in the garden was just divine and the garden was magnificent -- but nothing worked in the rooms themselves (starting with the shower and the toilets).

These are the events I remember clearly as it was yesterday.  In my life, I visited nearly 75 countries, but the trips that I remember are those were something unexpected occurred.

Bonus:  Years ago working with a team on a project in India (Delhi), two colleagues decided to go to the Taj Mahal in Agra, told them the night before "fly or take the train" the highway to Agra is the most dangerous in the world -- what did they do, they took the bus, which left at 4 am, arrived at noon (may in India...) and left again at 4 pm (where the site closes)  the arrived back at their hotel at 3 am.  When they told us this the next morning over breakfast we were all dumbfounded -- "we had told them not to take the highway... as one of my "Canadian" colleague said:  You can bring the horse to the water, but you cannot force it to drink"

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b) ground beef requires process
Post a Comment
Read more

21st century milk parlour

When we first looked at building our farm in 2018, we made a few money-saving decisions, the most important is that we purchased our milk herd from a retiring farmer and we also purchased his milking parlour equipment.  It was the right decision at the time.  The equipment dates from around 2004/05 and was perfectly serviceable, our installers replaced some tubing but otherwise, the milking parlour was in good shape.  It is a mature technology. Now, we are building a brand new milk parlour because our milking cows are moving from the old farm to the new farm.  So we are looking at brand new equipment this time because, after 20 years of daily service, the old cattle parlour's systems need to be replaced.  Fear not it will not be destroyed instead good chunks will end up on Facebook's marketplace and be sold to other farmers for spare parts or expansion of their current systems. All our cattle are chipped, nothing unusual there, we have sensors throughout the farm, and our milki
Post a Comment
Read more

So we sold surplus electricity one time last summer...(Update)

I guess that we will be buying an additional tank for our methane after all.   Over the past few months, we've had several electricity utilities/distributors which operate in our region come to the farm to "inspect our power plant facilities, to ensure they conform to their requirements".  This is entirely my fault.  Last summer we were accumulating too much methane for our tankage capacity, and so instead of selling the excess gas, that would have cost us some money, we (and I mean me) decided to produce excess electricity and sell it to the grid.  Because of all the rules and regulations, we had to specify our overall capacity and timing for the sale of electricity (our capacity is almost 200 Kw) which is a lot but more importantly, it's available 24/7, because it's gas powered.  It should be noted that the two generators are large because we burn methane and smaller generators are difficult to adapt to burn unconventional gas, plus they are advanced and can &qu
Post a Comment
Read more