When You Have to Learn

Eventually all things merge into one and the years of talking about things we were going to learn either happen or don't and a river runs through it, unless we live in Utah and then it's more like a trail of bros and whiskey runs through it.

But really, I've been meaning to learn to drive stick since I was 15. Maybe at 15 I didn't realize how important a skill it would be to my existence, but Dad sold his Silverado that year and I went on with life thinking the life skills I needed were writing college papers and flirting with people I needed things from (that mostly only works in Spain and Italy when you're blonde, but I'm happy to play the card). 

In Argentina my Aussie companion let me drive our manual rental through deserted, flat, rural roads. In college I pretended to learn from my dad, a man as stubborn as I am, but also less patient, and on my uncle's Audi.

Back in January it became clear that I was coming to Italy for Junior World Championships, and I was told that all Italian rentals are manual and that my company has one standard truck to practice on. I vowed to learn on it. Fast-forward two months to the day I wake up at 2pm on a Sunday after my last night of winter bar work and realize I haven't learned a thing, haven't done my laundry, and still have to pack for two weeks of Team Momming 14-20 year old athletes. So, I never learned. I brought an extra coach, not really for the driving, but it allowed me to put off the driving.

On Wednesday, in an Italian village, I tried to drive two girls to the town pool using the old driving knowledge I had. It was downhill there, and not a problem until we stalled in an uphill intersection and I kept trying to get the car into 3rd from a stop, not realizing it wasn't 1st gear. I let one of the girls, a farm girl from Idaho pull it into the parking lot where I stalled around for an hour until two coaches came to collect me and the girls in a van. I had another hour of driving school on hairpin, Italian mountain roads, complete with a reverse out of a dead end street as children ran around the street - at night.

Thursday morning over the breakfast that would fuel a trip to the airport with a coach I asked him "Am I actually ready? Will this really be safe?" and he said "Yes, you'll stall a few times and you'll figure it out."

I stalled first in the town 20 minutes from our village, but that's the fault of the locals crossing the street to go to school.

The real test didn't come until we were still 2 hours from the Milan airport, in the Milan suburbs, and we turned a corner to find bumper-to-bumper traffic for the next two hours until the airport. That's an unexpected way to learn things quick. I had one solid stall on an uphill start, but the large green truck behind me probably didn't even realize it was happening.

Luckily the kids I got to take back from the airport were exhausted from travel and the sweetest, most supportive group I could ask for. I've found this week that 14 and 15 year olds are mean when you're bad at driving. Know why? They've never driven. They think it's easy. Well, yeah, your dad is awesome at driving. Your dad has also been driving as many years as I've been alive. 16 and 17 year olds think you're awesome if you can do it because their first car is probably automatic and they've probably committed a few moving traffic violations of their own. They are the ones that I will drive around in my vehicle.

So, we made it back, and mostly without many blatant errors, other than the time I was coming around a switchback corner in 2nd and couldn't get up the hill so I had to back down it into the hairpin corner, restart on a steep hill from a stop, all while a van came hurtling up the hill towards me. I did it, all because my passengers believed in me.

Plus, I'm hard to miss on the roads and most people seem to be avoiding the crazy blinger in the orange Jeep who can't seem to drive like an Italian to save her life.

I can't wait to get on that train on Thursday for rural northeast Italy.

Reminiscent

I am mostly a smell and taste person. I can catch the slightest whiff of a certain bakery odor and be taken directly to my apartment building in Madrid 4 years ago. Or a toilet and trash can and be immediately in Guatemala. I am transported by the scents that make up who I am as a human, the intricate workings of what it means to be me.

In most areas of life I am a visual learner. Tell me something once and you can be sure that best case scenario I will barely remember that I heard that piece of information at all. More than likely I might have some sort of dream-like inkling that something happened if I only saw it and until I've smelled or tasted an experience, dream on (absolutely no pun intended).

There are a few visuals that take me back, and I often wonder how much of that has to do with the amount of time spent in their presence (see below, or keep reading actually). I think that seems to be the only correlation as I'm often too busy running around and being thrown a thousand experiences at once to realize what is passing through my overactive eye membranes.

So it's no wonder that the visuals that speak to me are based around a few starchy fabrics and porcelain objects. I sat in the presence of a bidet and some over-starched towels in my northern Italian hotel the other day missing a prior life, one of slower schedules and lower water pressure. It spoke to me and reminded me to slow down a little bit, even if only to wash my feet in a butt-washing mechanism or really exfoliate the crap out of my dehydrated back (for which I completely blame Utah).

Give Me the Bags.

I never know what a given day might bring in my life. I've always been a planner and I do still make some great lists, but the chances that these lists make it to game time or when the actual doing happens are often slim, at least in winter and especially at events.

Back in early February I loaded up my pickup (rental), grabbed everything the team could possibly need or want, and drove West to Mammoth, California for a halfpipe and slopestyle contest. I met the teams as they came together from camps in Colorado and contests in Europe. As often happens in winter, flights proved a challenge to getting everyone to the first day of practice, but most figured out a way to get there, even if late. 

On that Monday night I learned that the halfpipe snowboard team had finally arrived in Reno, but their bags had not. They'd been rerouted out of Amsterdam on KLM to Chicago instead of Seattle. They were put on an American Airlines flight Chicago to Reno and made it. Their bags may or may not have gone to Seattle, may have been lost by KLM in Amsterdam, but when I called Delta (affiliated with KLM) they said the bags were no longer in their possession. I called our favorite Delta guy in Utah who put a flag on the one bag we really needed, the snowboard of an athlete, but he told me the bag was probably in the air and we wouldn't know its location until it landed. The plan was that the athlete's board would be stopped, based on the flag, and the coaches' bags would be put on a United flight from Reno to San Francisco to Mammoth, arriving once the practice we needed the athlete's board for was already over. 

So I waited. I called the Reno baggage desk and told them to call me AS SOON AS the bag arrived in Reno, which we were told first "it definitely will be coming to Reno". Upon further inspection and more calls with Janet The Bag Lady (saved in my phone and the coach's as such), it was changed to be "probably arriving in Reno at 6:30pm Tuesday". So at 7:00 I frantically paced the base lodge in Mammoth, figuring out who would be the one to drive to Reno if it arrived that night or what the next options would be.

At 7:20 my phone rang, Janet was off for the day but her replacement was happy to ask if I was "Mrs. Josey" ("Sure! Yes! That's me!") and tell me the bag had arrived. The baggage office would close at 10pm and with a 3 hour drive I couldn't make it that evening, so I planned to be there when the office opened Wednesday morning.

Wednesday I was on the road at 6:00, enjoying a beautiful sunrise and some great satellite radio when I was pulled over for the first time in my life and got my first speeding ticket from the ugliest cop I've ever seen who kept talking to me about his life and what my dreams and goals are. "Well, to get to the airport, honestly. Practice is at 2 and I need this snowboard". When I finally shook the goon, I was in Reno before the office opened, so I spent 15 minutes in Trader Joe's lapping the free coffee stand and filling my cart with the essentials: 2 6-packs, a case of wine, and cinnamon. 

The baggage claim office wasn't open so I went to check in at the opposite end of the airport where the rudest Alaskan Airlines attendant passed me off to American and the conversation was less-than optimistic: "Hi, I was just at the baggage claim office and they're not open but I was told they opened now" "Well, yes 10:00. Or...[looking at flight schedule on computer] definitely by 11:20" "Ok, or how about NOW? Like I was told?" "Yes, they should be there soon, or by 11:30." 

Back at the baggage office I found an employee in the ticket office, and my name written (Mrs. Josey in most cases) in notes all over the desk. She was new and didn't know where the bag was but did confirm that she heard about my bag. We walked back down (at the opposite end) to the check-in desk. As we pulled up, three women were maneuvering a cart with 3 black bags and the priceless green US Team bag perched on top...!! 

"THAT'S IT! All those are mine! I'll take them all! And that wax table!" They told me they only had my name on the one bag so we would have to get some confirmation numbers... I called the coach and it only took another half hour before I was sprinting through the airport alone, pushing a baggage card with 3 board bags to load them alone into my truck and then try to lift the wax table into the truck alone (easier said than done). No speeding tickets on the way back, but 3 hours later, as the halfpipe crew headed up the hill to practice, at 2:00 on the dot, I rolled into the hotel, threw the green bag out of the truck, graciously took the bottle of wine they gave me as thanks (since they still didn't know about the speeding ticket and that wine wasn't really equal to my troubles) and all went on their way. 

And somehow, mostly because of the madness of my life, I still haven't opened that wine...