Usually, I am in a rush. When I am leaving work, I get to the bus stop within 3 minutes of the bus arriving checking by text message as I start to pack up. I need a bus to be between 12 and 17 minutes from reaching my stop for maximum optimization of less waiting time. Less than 12 minutes, and there is a good chance I will seethe bus pull away from my stop 100 yards away¹This happens more often than I like, but only about 1 out of 11 days of commuting.. In the morning, when things are a little foggier, I try to leave the house 9 minutes before the expected departure time from our little park’n’ride to allow for a slightly longer walk²As long as it isn’t raining. Unfortunately, the morning wait is dictated by exactly how I hit the longest light in the county³I would love to say the world, but since I live in the ex-urbs of Virginia, and I am not quite that megolomatic.

Perhaps it is not surprising as this business trip began, I found myself not interesting in making much of a plan. I did research and had a general idea of how I wanted to spend my bonus time on this trip⁴Spoiler alert, it isn’t in Iceland..

I could have gone three different places this past week for work. All of the meetings had a good reason for me to travel to be there. But, I picked the meeting that took place in Cambridge, UK. I can’t say that it is the most important meeting of the week, but I can say it made me happy to be on a train heading to Cambridge. Any of the three meetings would have been good to be at, but I felt drawn to Cambridge.

When I was standing on the platform awaiting my train, I thought part of me probably as always heading to Cambridge at one point or another. First, I have always been something of an Anglophile thinking that there was something wrong with my antecedents that they got kicked out of Scotland⁵I mean, not like they had a choice. They were on the wrong side of a war in the 1600s. When I say “wrong” I mean the side that got sent to the colonies to learn to behave better. History, and my story, make it pretty clear better behavior is relative.. Then, I love academia. There was a point when all I really wanted was to stay in school longer. To study more. To be the best at every subject I explored⁶That did not happen. It took a long time for me to understand it is the process of learning I enjoy so much, and discovering new ideas and contexts to view the world from. Perhaps this is why undergraduate education excites me, and I have no interest in returning to graduate school. Ever. In any subject.

Once, I would have read the previous paragraph, and felt guilty for not wanting to climb the hill everyone else climbs to define success. Once, I would have picked every train and every bus and every hotel for any trip weeks if not months before I departed. Once, I would have bargained with some invisible spirit to forgive me for not being what is expected. By others. And only squeezing a very small idea of what was acceptable to claim for myself whether it be time, or food, or cider, or another glass of wine.

Work was work. The group in Cambridge was fun, but I was pulled in different directions by the other two meetings taking place. As the weekend grew closer, my plan for my bonus days became clearer – I would go to Bath.

Last October this trip had become a possibility. While I was considering if I would go and how many days I would add, I had thought I would go to Bath. I have read many stories set in Bath and the surrounding countryside and cities. As an Anglophile, I wanted to see the places where my stories took place. And so, wanting to be thrifty but travel swiftly, I did end up renting a car. Now, my schedule was to be my own… right up until I actually tried to drive.

It wasn’t that it was a manual transmission. It wasn’t that “me-in-the-middle” means driving on the left in the UK. It wasn’t the round-abouts⁷Ok, it was a little because of the round-abouts. It was perhaps all of those together mixed with a desire to look around instead of looking at the road. So after I got to my hotel for the night ⁸chosen for its low price that I decided hey, maybe I can take the train after all. And that would have been great if only the city of Reading wasn’t hosting a half-marathon on my one day to go to Bath. I tried to catch the bus to the train station, but despite being told by the Reading Bus Website the bus at 9:02 was running, it never showed up.

Maybe I could have driven? Well, I could have, except the roads were closed to the highway  and google maps didn’t know that. After 30 min, I went back to the hotel and counted myself lucky to be able to get back to the hotel.

The train station was a mere 2 miles from my hotel, so I decided to walk. What could possibly go wrong? Alas, the half marathon route, and the many runners, blocked me from getting to the train station. After wandering around Marks and Spencers and then the Flying Tigre⁹Both great stores!, I finally could cross the street between runners and I made it to the station. 

I looked at the station. I started to walk towards it intending to go in, buy a ticket, and at least have a couple of hours in Bath. Yet, almost without realizing what I was doing, I turned around and resumed my wandering around Reading.

Just to be clear, I really do want to make it to Bath someday. It is just, that day was not to come to pass on this trip.

I spend a lot of hours rushing to complete tasks, to help others, to be a mom and an employee and a wife and a friend¹⁰And an Aunt. And I don’t regret those hours at all. It isn’t disappointment I am feeling that I didn’t get to Bath. It is empowerment. On that day in this moment I got to choose which choices mattered to me. I got to choose to go to the pub and have the boring cider and think about a nap and a snack. 

When the first bus didn’t come that morning, I thought about the people on the train to Bath I would never look at ¹¹I might have even talked to one of them.. When I couldn’t make my way to the M4, I thought about the fender bender I wouldn’t cause slowing down too much in the round-about as I left the highway. When I sat in the pub, I thought about the flowers I wouldn’t see and the sun that wasn’t yet shining and the bird droppings I noticed on my coat when I went to the restroom. That day could have gone many different ways, but the way it went was the it was supposed to go for me to be the me I am now.

Wherever I arrive and whenever I arrive and however things progress, it is the journey that shapes the story, not the destination. At least, that thought helps today.