Traveling Light-Hearted

What makes a good traveling companion? In my opinion, the best traveling companions are the ones that help you laugh at all the crazy things that go wrong.

Tuesday, Sarah and I went to O’Hare to pick up my mom. We were laughing so hysterically by the time we arrived at baggage claim that I could barely stand up. My family has this weird disease. When we laugh hard, we lose muscle control. You can’t lie down on the floor in a heap at O’Hare Airport . . . well, not unless you want to be hauled away by the very vigilant security people. After three wrong turns inside of the airport, almost ending up on the runway (slight exaggeration here), and having a security person help us across a street in a “no cross” zone because our disorientation was so apparent . . . we were wiping tears of hilarity. This wasn’t our first weird airport experience.

Sarah and I traveled to London together two years ago. Upon arrival at Heathrow, I set off the security system from the bathroom. See . . . there was this button that I thought was the “flush”, but it was actually a security alert. Security was banging on the bathroom door demanding entrance, alarms were going off, lights were flashing, and I opened the bathroom door to see a look of horror on Sarah’s face. Welcome to London!!

As we left London, the airport was paging us. “Sarah and Julie Kloster, please come to your gate immediately. We are boarding and ready for take off.” Was it our fault the airport restaurant was slow? Racing down the long hallway to our gate, which was of course at the end of the hall, I apparently had an asthma attack. Coughing, wheezing, and eyes streaming with tears, we entered the plane . . . all eyes on the Klosters. Want to find a good way to embarrass your daughter? This one works. We were laughing hysterically!

So Sarah is one of my favorite traveling companions. If we can laugh at ourselves, we can get through almost anything.