In Search of Lost Adventure: Issue 4
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- The Gift of a Delay -
by Mitchell Stephens


My wife is cold. Why is that throwing me?

After all, we are soaking wet following a day of floating - in and out of
the raft - through the succession of class one, two and three rapids on
the Chagres River, the river that feeds the Panama Canal. We've been at it
for about six hours now. It's getting late. And the motorboat that was
supposed to meet us and whisk us back to the van never showed. So we're
paddling, though we know it's too far to paddle. Every once in a while one
of the guides tries to get the radio to work. And my wife, who gets a
chill at the mere thought of air-conditioning, is naturally,
understandably cold and uncomfortable, and a little worried to boot.

But her attitude is throwing me.

The explanation can be found, I suspect, in something my friend Jeff Scher
had said when I told him I was about to undertake this around-the-world
journey. "Try to view every delay," he suggested, "as a gift."

This seemed, initially, an odd notion. His example - a trip to
Philadelphia he and a friend took, during which a flat tire forced them to
behold a lovely little town - was interesting but not all that persuasive.
Still, I remembered what he said. And delays certainly came.

First, the battery on my Toyota gave out in the below-zero temperatures
just outside of Kansas City. I needed a jump, and the guy in a beat up
Towncar parked next to mine was kind enough to provide one. In return I
was asked to give a couple of his acquaintances a lift somewhere. A gift?
These were two guys from the Deep South who would then be taking a bus
into Kansas City before spending twenty-some hours on another bus to
Mississippi (all this in order to see their wives and children on
Christmas). I did take the opportunity to meet them as a gift.

Then, a half hour past Matamoras, Mexico, my daughter (who had joined me
for a stretch) and I learned at a customs check that we were missing the
necessary permits and had to go all the way back to the border. A gift? I
found myself trying to see it that way. And it is true that we ended up
spending the night in a fine hotel in Matamoras and strolling around the
nicest part of that town.

Twice on this trip I have been stuck in long lines of cars, trucks and
buses behind serious accidents on narrow mountain roads. The first time it
happened, south of Oaxaca in Mexico, I was delayed for around an hour and
a half. While I was waiting, I chatted with some of the gray-haired
members of a six-house-trailer caravan, spending three months traveling
around Mexico. The second time, north of San Jose in Costa Rica, the delay
was more like three hours and I fell into an intense conversation with two
Dutch fellows who were almost finished with seven- and five-week tours of
Central America.

I was getting good at this. Yes, my plans were messed up. No, I didn't
have a lot of extra time to waste, trying to drive from New Jersey to
Panama. But, remarkably, I could get stuck without feeling put out.

At the heart of this newfound enlightenment was a kind of patience (not an
easy thing for a New Yorker to muster) plus an openness to whatever the
fates held. Jeff's advice turned out to be another way of saying: Keep
smiling. Keep your eyes open. Remember that one plan, one schedule, is
often as good as another. I believe it is good advice.

In fact, I found myself wondering, somewhere along the road, about all the
gifts I had missed - because my 1989 Camry has been so reliable, because
the trip so far has gone relatively smoothly, because my life so far has
gone relatively smoothly.

Which is why I am having so much trouble out here on the river. I am deep
into my semi-spiritual, view-delay-as-gift mode. Do you see that white
hawk! Maybe we'll stop at an Indian village for help. My wife, meanwhile,
here only for a short visit and therefore not practiced in such reveries,
is shivering. She's had enough.

When a boat comes by, she practically forces the guides to flag it down
and pay the young men inside to take us back. Impatience, too, can
occasionally be a gift.

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Mitchell Stephens is a professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at
New York University and the author of 'the rise of the image the fall of
the word'. For more information on his trip see www.ROADthinker.com.

Want more? Past issues of Lost Adventure can be found here:
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/newsletters/lost_adventure/archive.htm

Down to earth, up to the minute travel information: www.lonelyplanet.com
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