Rick and I took a little trip east this last week, to Montreal and our nation’s capital. We flew to La Belle Province and after a couple of days there, rented a car to drive the two hours to Ottawa. On the last night in Ottawa, after supper with a friend, we drove back to the hotel and talked about what a good holiday it had been: the weather was hot but not unbearably so – we enjoyed a Friday night in a park close to Notre Dame listening to a busker and Saturday night walking home from a jazz club along Rue de St. Catherine among the young and hip of Montreal; both cities were very walkable and we (hopefully) worked off all the poutine/smoked meat/seafood calories we over-ingested; and really, all of our loose plans had fallen into place.

But talking about how good something has been before it’s over is like saying “shutout” at the end of the 2nd period of a hockey game. Cue the proverbial fat lady.

As we exited our rental, Rick looked askance at the trunk of the car, which didn’t look exactly closed. And when he popped it open, the latching pin came loose and the realization dawned on us that we could not travel in this car with a trunk that would no longer close. Hmmmm. After the initial pseudopanic – someone (probably me) bemoaned the fact that we didn’t have a bungee cord handy – Rick macguyvered it closed and then we went to our room to call the rental car’s after-hours help line. When I finally got a real person on the line – we’ll call her “Shelby” – which is the fake name she gave me so I couldn’t complain about her later – she said there was no problem, she would send someone to tow the car and amend our rental agreement to switch out to a new car. The only catch was we would have to get ourselves to the rental car place in the morning – the day we had planned to sleep in a bit. Oh well. An hour later the tow truck showed up and we sent our VW Lemon (I mean seriously? Have you ever had a trunk latch pin fall out before?) off to the lemonade stand.

Rising early, we decided that the 30-minute walk to the rental car depot that “Shelby” sent us to (assuring us that they had plenty of cars) was better than taking a taxi. Or for fighting for a reimbursement later. And really, it was so much better. A bit cooler weather but no rain and we got more steps on the Fitbit.

But then we got to the depot where they informed us that: 1) they could not view the agreement online from that particular location; 2) that they, in fact, did not have any cars available; and 3) that we would have had better luck with probably any other location, including the one DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM OUR HOTEL.

And so, we walked back. The service at the new location was excellent but guess what? There were no notes on our rental agreement from “Shelby”. [Do you think it had anything to do with the fact that when I found out that she was from Calgary and I, confessing we were from Edmonton, made some offhand comment about the upcoming Battle of Alberta that was about to commence?] Our new best-car-rental-friend, however, believed our story, tracked down the towed car and gave us a new rental with a full tank of gas.

Years ago, I read – and loved – the book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. Part of the book chronicles his Pacific to Atlantic bike trip. Sounds pretty cool, right? Biking with friends for a good cause, seeing the sights, building up your quads, getting a stellar tan. But also: flat tires, torrential rainstorms, bicycle butt, and a lot of asking “What was I thinking?” And much as I thought that that bike trip was cool for him, all that yucky stuff would be too much for me. It was more about avoiding the bad than gambling for the good.

Now, granted, sometimes EVERYTHING goes wrong and then you wonder if traveling is really worth it, but most of the time it doesn’t go all wrong. Sure, we’ve drowned a cell phone, been stuck on Splash Mountain, had trouble at the American border, forgot Simon at the bathroom in Disneyland, had a wheel come flying off our holiday trailer in an epic manner, thought our car was on fire, and I once got instant food poisoning from eating one peanut dusted with ghost pepper. But those things were just sprinkled in with all the other really good and great things we did, like a good spice. (But seriously, don’t mess with that ghost pepper.)

Long story short, it’s all worth it. I mean, you could stay at home and still have all kinds of things go wrong, right? Or you could think about all the fun you had on your last vacation while waiting for Air Canada to deliver your luggage to Vermilion because it didn’t make it on your connecting flight. Which is what we’re doing right now while watching the first game of the Battle of Alberta.

I hope we beat “Shelby”. Just sayin.