Blonde moments in travel: Boarding the correct train helps, but don’t underestimate good luck

by Iva Skoch on

I was in London this weekend and experienced a definite “travel blonde moment,” or using Urban Dictionary’s lingo “a flash of momentary stupidity” while traveling.

I am sure everyone has embarrassing–or plain stupid–things they have done while traveling. But not everyone has hair color to blame it on. It’s a good crutch, really.

Back to my story. My friend–also a blonde and much blonder than me, in fact–was walking me to the London Bridge train station from where I was to catch the train to Gatwick airport.

Going from London Bridge is a much better way to get to Gatwick than taking the train from Victoria station. It is, also, some 6GBP cheaper and takes just as long! That is, of course, true only if you board the correct train.

Anyway, we are walking, yapping away, she walks me to the platform, I board the train, the doors close. I am waving good-bye to her when I see her face shrivel in sheer terror. I knew. What she wanted to tell me is that I got on the wrong train. I could read it in the lines on her forehead as the train started pulling away.

So, I am standing behind the closed doors of a basically empty train (that should have been a hint, right?) while literally hundreds of people, including pilots and flight attendants, are still waiting on the platform with their luggage (yes, there were definitely hints) and I wonder where I’m actually headed.

I sincerely hope I didn’t just board the express train to Glasgow.
I sit down and try to text people for help because I can’t call from my phone abroad. Where is this train going? (Brighton) Any trains to Gatwick form there? (Of course not; it’s the wrong direction. It would take way too long.)

Finally, the ticket person comes.

“This is not going to Gatwick, is it? I think I boarded the wrong train,” I said sheepishly.

“How? They announce it over and over…There are hundreds of people waiting for the airport train….,” said the uniformed smartass, laughing.

“I know. I had a blonde moment. I wasn’t thinking,” I volunteered, figuring that playing ‘stupid but charming’ was the best strategy, since I didn’t have a ticket for this train and no cash left. I gave all my extra British pounds to my friend before I left. Hopefully, he didn’t plan on charging me extra.

He didn’t. The uniformed smartass informed me politely that I needed to get off at the next stop, some 20 minutes away, wait there for about 20 minutes and get on the next train back to London Bridge. From London Bridge, I should be able to make the 9:40 train which gets me to the airport at 10:20, if everything goes well. Check-in for my flight closes at 10:30. Possibly, maybe, doable.

Thank goodness I actually gave myself plenty of time to get to the airport this time. I don’t typically do that.

Meanwhile, my other friend back in Prague–the only one awake at this ungodly hour before 10am on a Sunday– is taking instructions to check me in online or via phone, which I forgot to do. Checking in remotely for international flights to the US is not as easy as checking in for domestic flights. You have to call and they need to know EVERYTHING: passport number, address, visa number, DNA sequence (OK, not that one, but that’s coming next year, I believe).

Through this whole thing, my male friend, equipped with my passwords, PINs and confirmation codes, pretends to be me (aka a female) on the phone with the airline. And, he – mercifully – succeeds. Good. Even if I am late, I am already checked in.

The next problem: I have a bag to check. What do I do with that if I’m late for proper check-in?

This is where my blonder-than-blonde friend comes in. As I arrived back at London Bridge station an hour later, she was already waiting for me and decided to come with me to the airport with a plan: if they can’t check my bag because I’m late, she will take it home with her and give it to me next time she sees me. Not ideal, but better than not making my flight to New York.

This is the kind of situation when you realize how many unnecessary things one travels with. At the end of the day, there were only a few items in my bag I absolutely couldn’t do without.

The train was 5 minutes late and got us to Gatwick 5 minutes before they were closing check-in. We sprinted through the airport and arrived at the Continental check-in kiosk with exactly one minute to spare.

“Are you on that flight to Newark?” the rep asks.

“Yes,” I reply apologetically.

“No need to rush. It’s been delayed at least an hour.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. There is nothing like being blonde and lucky at the same time.


(Authentic blonde pictures taken in the cafe on the top of The Gherkin building, which is awesome! The problem is that you can only get in if you know someone who works in the building. Hint: Start hanging out with Swiss Re folks.)

Journey Girl and Melburnalia: Theatrics on Flinders Lane

by Kelly Amabile on

Ahhh, the stories I have to share about my recent two-month stay in Melbourne. It’s such a fantastic place. But until I get my arse in gear and bring those tales your way, let me at least suggest one spot you should check out if you’re headed to the Victorian capital in the near future:

fortyfivedownstairs is an art space located on fabulous Flinders Lane in Melbourne’s central business district. The venue features a constant lineup of cool exhibits and theatrical performances. Two of their upcoming productions are travel related, so I felt obliged to let ya know about them straight away:

Beginning October 24, the theater will showcase a one-woman Australian musical called The Journey Girl. Emma Caldwell plays Annie, “an adventurous young Aussie woman attempting to conquer the world with nothing more than a backpack and a map.” Next up is Melburnalia, which debuts on November 1. The play weaves together five short works (by local writers) into a single journey through the diverse suburbs of the city.

I’d sooooo love to see both these theatrical explorations, and after living in Melbourne for awhile, the second one sounds especially interesting. If you live there, or will be traveling through town, be sure to check out the lineup at fortyfivedownstairs, and tell us what you think.

Five Famous Forest Fires

by Justin Glow on

Rising temperatures and low humidity levels in Sequoia National Forest in California have done nothing to help firefighters who are currently battling to contain a blaze that has already burned almost 4,000 acres of beautiful forest. Authorities speculate the fire, which is now about 65 percent contained, was started by a camper in the Goldledge Campgrounds on June 3rd.

With camping season in full-force, it’s important to remember how easily a campfire can get out of hand. Who better than Smokey the Bear to lend a hand in teaching us fire safety? Only you can prevent forest fires, after all.

To really drive the point of fire safety home, I’m offering up some worst case scenarios from the past — from the great Michigan Thumb Fire of 1881 to Yellowstone’s largest fire in history, we’ll explore some of the most powerful and deadly forest fires the world has ever seen. Be careful out there!

Michigan, 1881. The state of Michigan is separated into two peninsulas: the upper and lower. The “thumb” of the lower peninsula (which resembles a mitten) hosted a number of fires in the early 1880s, the most violent and widespread of them being the great Thumb Fire. On September 5, 1881, the culmination of a severe drought, hurricane-strength winds, and the logging industry’s dried up leftovers, a scorching fire broke out somewhere in Tuscola County and spread over one million square acres (just over 1,500 square miles) in less than 24 hours. Almost 300 people were killed and over 5,000 were left homeless. Damage was estimated at $2.5-million (over $50-million according to this inflation calculator). The American Red Cross, which was founded a few months earlier in May of 1881, responded to the blaze which marked the organization’s first major disaster response.

Yellowstone National Park, 1988. What started as a single lightning strike in the United State’s first and oldest national park on June 22 turned into Yellowstone’s largest fire in recorded history. The fire was allowed to burn and spread naturally under the controversial “natural burn” policy which allows fires to continue burning as long as they were original sparked by non-human forces. Unfortunately, the summer of 1988 was “one of the driest and windiest since the park was established in 1872,” and before the winter snows fell and doused the flames, almost 800,000 acres were gone. Visitors to the park today can find seedlings growing amongst the charred remains. The National Park Services’s website for Yellowstone offers visitors the chance to be a fire spotter with their Mt. Washburn Fire LookOut Webcam. Though currently down for maintenance, the camera is located in a “glass house” on top of Mt. Washburn with panoramic views of the entire area. The fire lookout isn’t open to the public, but the same gorgeous, panoramic views can be seen from the top of the mountain anyway, making the 3 mile hike to the top one of the most popular trails in the park.

Georgia and Florida, 2007. On April 16, 2007, high winds blew through Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge — “one of the oldest and most well preserved freshwater areas in America” — causing a tree to fall on a power line, showering sparks on the drought-ridden land. By mid-May, this fast-moving wildfire quickly became not only Georgia’s largest fire in recorded history, but Florida’s as well. “As of today [Monday, June 11], there are 115 wildfires in Florida on 130,466 acres,” writes the Sun-Herald. The folks at NASA say that many of the extremely hot and erratic-behaving fires have been contained, but “smoldering and creeping fire will probably continue until heavy rain-possibly a hurricane-drenches the area.” To put it into prospective, the smoke from these fires is so immense that it has drifted hundreds of miles north and been spotted as far as North Carolina.

Victoria, Australia, 1983. Seventy-five people, including seventeen firefighters, died in what is known as Australia’s deadliest bushfire in history: the Ash Wednesday fires. The blaze was so massive and so incredibly strong that firefighters were unable to contain even small portions of it, and the fire only stopped spreading when it eventually hit the Southern ocean. “More than 3,700 buildings were destroyed, including 84 commercial, and about 1,000 farms,” according to the Australian government. Leading up to the fire, Victoria — known for it’s extremely dry climate — had been under a severe drought for over 10 months. Along with rainfall, the relative humidity was also extremely low which made vegetation brittle and powerfully flammable, and in under 24 hours, over 520,000 hectares (1.2-million acres) across two states were gone.

Colorado, 2002. Terry Lynn Barton, a U.S. Forest Service worker in Colorado, tried to burn a handful of letters from her estranged husband, but ran into a few problems. First, she set fire to love lost in an area where campfires had been outlawed due to drought — something a U.S. Forest Service worker, someone who enforces the no-fire ban, ought to know. This lead to the largest wildfire in Colorado state history — now known as the “Hayman Fires” — burning through 210 square miles of Pike National Forest, killing five firefighters, and causing nearly $40-million in damages. She was later indited on charges of “willfully and maliciously destroying U.S. property and causing personal injury by setting a blaze that has grown into a wildfire of historic proportions,” and authorities believe the love letter story covered up other reasons for deliberately
starting the blaze. She eventually pleaded guilty to arson, and is now serving 12 years in jail.