“Stupid” Guardian Angel

No, I’m not calling my Guardian Angel “stupid” …

Since yesterday though, I’ve been pondering the whole guardian angel thing.  I got to wondering whether we have multiple guardian angels:  one to protect you from natural disasters, one for safety in dangerous places, etc. etc.  Well, I think I was protected yesterday by the one who keeps me out of trouble when I do something really stupid!

After finishing up yesterday’s blog post, I started in on chores.  I put a pork tenderloin into its marinade, did some dishes, and took Frank for a walk so he could take care of business. I then started getting everything ready to break camp today, when a thought suddenly popped into my head, “Check your reservation”.

Now, those of you that know me? You’re aware that I’ve been sort of anal about this trip.  I’ve got reservations planned for almost another year and have been maintaining everything on a huge spreadsheet.  Columns are, “campground,” “city,” “start date,” “end date,” “number of nights,” “drive time,” “mileage,”  (yeah, I’m even tracking mileage to budget gas).  And that doesn’t even get into the part of the spreadsheet that keeps track of campsite fees and deposits and other monetary stuff.

So I opened the sheet and for today’s date, it showed “Otter Creek Campground, Saylorsville PA, 3 hours, 100 miles”.  What’s to check?

I started to put it away and the thought came again – “Check it”.  So I opened Bing maps and put in “Otter  Creek Campground, Saylorsville, PA. It came back with a point on the map up in the Poconos, like I expected.  But … the spot on the map said, “Otter Lake Resort.”  And the town it was near was “Saylorsburg”, not Saylorsville!

I’m thinking, “Saylorsburg, Saylorsville. Whatever.”  You know, it was just a typo when I entered stuff into the spreadsheet, right?  But the word “resort” stuck out to me.

A lot of the Thousand Trails campsites call themselves resorts, but this is an off-week coming up for Frank and me.  Under our plan, we have to vacate Thousand Trails facilities for a week if we’ve stayed at one for longer than 4 nights.  And given our budget, we sure as hell aren’t staying in resorts on our off-weeks!  I needed to look into this a bit more.

I went to Hotmail to see if I had received an email confirmation (which I have on most, but not all of our reservations).  Yep, I had a confirm from Otter Creek. Not Otter Lake. And when I opened it, the address wasn’t Saylorsburg. Or Saylorsville. Or even “Saylorbuymeadrink”!  It was Airville.  Huh?

When I went back to the map and changed the town to Airville, sure as hell, Otter Creek Campground in Airville showed up … about 35 miles to the southwest of our current campsite!

Now I don’t check all my reservations.  As anal as I’ve been about that damned spreadsheet, I don’t check ’em all the time.  Pretty stupid, right?  If I hadn’t this time, I would have driven three hours out of the way and would have had to backtrack four hours to get to the right campsite!  The only thing I could think of is that I had websites for both places open after I made my reservation and copied info from the wrong place into the spreadsheet.  And I have no explanation for how Saylorsburg morphed into Saylorsville.

So, I think Sean, my Guardian  Angel against stupidity, was working overtime yesterday.  I can picture him talking to the other angels while they were sitting in the waiting room, or the bar, or working out at the gym … whatever it is they’re doing in the down-time waiting for their beepers to go off:

“I’m telling you,  no way Durant’s going to Boston.  he’s going to sign a two year contract with an opt-out after one ye… hold on, it’s my beeper …  yeah, gotta go to work.  Jeff, check your reservation.”

(pause)

“No that’s not right.  Jeff check the name. That’s not right.”

(pause)

(Aside to the other angels) “Can you believe this guy????  Why do I get ‘Guardian Angel for stupidity’? I mean, why couldn’t I have gotten ‘Guardian Angel for Eating Bad Sushi’ like Vinnie over there? I mean this guy doesn’t even eat sushi! Why are you even here, bustin’ my balls all the time, Vinnie! … HEY! PULL OUT YOUR EMAIL!!!!”

(pause)

“Okay. Mission accomplished!  So, like I was saying, Durant and Boston ain’t happening …”

There was this one time, years ago. I was in a hurry, had stuff on my mind. I was backing out of the garage – sheered the side view mirror right off the car.  I’m wondering now if that happened because Sean got into an argument over jurisdiction with Max, my guardian angel for car accidents. I mean, technically, it was an accident involving my car … but it was a pretty stupid thing to do … and while they were getting into it, WHAM!  Off goes the mirror!  These are things that go on in my head …

My third cup of coffee for the morning is finished.  Time to start packing for Airville. Not Saylorsville … I mean, Saylorsburg … I mean, Otter Creek.

(Oh yeah … thank you, Sean. Much appreciated.)