Phone Free For Five Days: A Humourous Travel Blog

So what happens when you leave your cell phone home?  On my way to the airport heading to San Francisco to visit #3, aka Roberta, I went to call my mother to say goodbye and couldn’t find my phone.  After ripping through my two pocketbooks and large shoulder bag 3x – I realized that I don’t have my cell phone!  WTF!   1, 2, 4 and five are staying back in New York and how will I talk to them?  What if they need me?  I melted down a bit, called my mom from Freddy’s phone to give her a very pissy goodbye and then proceeded to torture my husband for the next 30 minutes on the way to JFK.

It was all his fault.  He was waiting in the driveway and putting pressure on me because I was messing with his schedule.  I am always late, and he is always on time.  In my frenzy of getting all my crap together, I must have left my cell phone on the kitchen counter?  I don’t know – because I am not home!  About 5 minutes from the airport, I realize that I am going to have to get over it or I will ruin this rare, quality husband time,  so I giggle to myself and decide to make the best of it and do a blog on traveling to the other side of the country for 5 days without a cell phone.  So how about a humorous travel blog!?

Some Background

I had prewritten a blog on Sunday night knowing I was going away, but I didn’t feel what I had written.  It was going to be titled, #metoo and I had spent a good hour typing it out and could edit it during the week…hopefully less than the 50 revisions it took me for the Easter blog due to my need to be a perfectionist(Virgo). 

Anyway, so today when I was trying to rectify why people, including myself, couldn’t hit the “like” button at the end of each post, I must have hit the wrong button, lost all my blogs and went crazy trying to figure out what the heck I did.  I tried calling WordPress (the blog software you use to create the website), and they are no help and tell you that you have to do chat support online. 

I am finding that this doesn’t work for me,  I like to talk to a person on the other end of the phone when I have a question or a problem.  After not so nicely hanging up the phone on the guy, I called Bluehost  (a host of domains such as mine), and I actually get a live person who tells me how to go back in time and restore my writings from the previous 24 hours.  Ok,  great – I did it!  My posts were back, but I lost the draft of #metoo.

If That Wasn’t Enough

 Meanwhile, all this is happening while I am watching my nine months and two 1/2-year-old grandchildren who have to eat and collectively pooped five times within a few hours and like most children, want lots of attention.  Did I mention how I still have to pack? And vacuum?  There is also the matter of Joey who just wants to know what is for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Can you feel the crazy?

So let’s put it all together – I wasn’t feeling the #metoo when I wrote it, I ended up losing the hour of writing I had already done, left my phone home due to the chaos I call my life but am making the best of a somewhat stressful situation!  It wasn’t meant to be for me to do the #metoo.  Another thing I can tell you about myself is that I am a big believer in “wasn’t meant to be”.  Listen to the messages, God was whispering in my ear and I got the message loud and clear – DON’T DO THE #METOO – write about what happens when you don’t have a phone – this will be way more fun!  I can get back to the other story in a few weeks.

So It Begins

I wasn’t out of the car for 5 minutes and I wanted to google something. We got to JFK to park the car at Jiffy Park and there was a nice man loading our luggage on the bus.  I smiled at him and he smiled back and I just kept looking at him thinking…who does he look like?  Does he keep smiling at me, wondering why is this chick staring at me?  Maybe she thinks I am cute…and meanwhile, I am thinking … what was that guy’s name who played Ray Charles in the movie Ray?  Now this is when you take out your phone and google it, but I couldn’t, so I asked Freddy and he couldn’t think of his name either so I said: “give me your phone”.   

Jamie Foxx played Ray – That is who he looks like!

How would we all survive without google?  It answers all the questions!  I thought the reason my memory is horrible was my heart medication and the fact that I had 5 kids (all Moms know that some of the brains came out in the placenta) and I had 5 placentae come out of me so it made sense.  I now realize I can add google onto the list of why I am losing my memory.  We don’t have to remember anything anymore, we can google all the answers.

So now we are riding on the bus to the airport and there is a woman talking to us about how she missed her plane.   She decided she wasn’t going to worry about it because it’s not worth the stress.  I chime in that I just left my phone home and she tells us how she had just left her phone in a cab in Miami and drove an hour from Palm Beach to get it back and was freaking out about her phone, but she wasn’t stressing missing her plane.  She wishes ME luck when we get off the bus, but I think I got this …CALIFORNIA, HERE WE COME!

Day 2: San Francisco without My Cell Phone (Click on links for answers to questions and more info)

Here we are taking in the beautiful picturesque scenery walking up the coast leading to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Me: “Honey – give me the phone.  I want to take a picture.”

Me: “Honey, take that picture (as I look over his shoulder and tell him to move it this way, move it that way) … never mind, just give me the phone.”

Me: “Wait – I want to get a picture of that view!”

So Freddy says: “Why don’t you just hold my phone?”

Me: “Because I don’t want to. “

Me: “Wait – stop – I want to take a picture!“

Then Freddy wants to know how deep the Sutro Baths are?

Me:  I don’t know – google it.

Him: What do we want to eat for dinner? 

Me: I don’t care – what do you want to eat?

Him: Let’s google all the restaurants and see what’s on the menu…

Me: I can’t, I don’t have a phone,  but you can – then I won’t have to make a decision.  I just don’t want Italian.

Anyone who knows me, will realize that could be a  problem!  Although I like not having to make a decision, the one you make, better be the one I would like … part of growth is being perfectly aware of your faults and part of being smart is making sure everyone around you is trained to know these things and act accordingly.

Day 3: Without My Cell Phone

On our way to Napa Valley:

Him: “What wineries are we going to?”

Me: ” I don’t know; the places are on my phone at home.  Maybe we should have googled which wineries were affected by the fire since we are going there today.”

Me: “Honey, take a picture of that.”

Me: “That is such a nice view, take a picture!”

Later on, while driving to Napa from Sausalito, Freddy says;

“Phone is about to go dead.”

Usually, that would be no big deal,  except that we were using google maps because we have no idea how to get to Napa Valley.  At the time we had 29 more miles to go, we were sitting in tons of traffic and battery is at 10%  … this is when having another phone or at least a charger comes in handy, but what the heck, lets live dangerously!   Besides, there is nothing like a good game of chicken!  This is the scary stuff you deal with when you only have one phone.

Today’s Google questions in Sausalito and Calistoga:

“Who is Lady Jane again?” 

“What’s the weather? When is it supposed to rain?“

“Where are we going for dinner?“

“What do they have on the menu?“

“What time are they open until?“

I don’t know – you are going to have to google it – I don’t have my phone.

That night at dinner – it’s just us, and we are sitting at a table outside a restaurant called Evangeline’s, and my husband is looking at his phone telling me:

“It isn’t supposed to rain until 6 tomorrow”

“There is only supposed to be an inch of snow when we fly in on Saturday …”

“What was the name of that Vineyard,  Mount …. ?”

“I have a vitamin with what is that spice I was telling you about?  Let me google it …”

Me: ” You haven’t gotten off your phone since we got here, dear.”

It only took three days, and I have created a google/phone monster!  Me … I am feeling free!!

Day 4: The Wineries

I went to two wineries, so I am going to try to remember the fun as best I can, but it may be difficult with the wine fog I am experiencing.  The day kinda went like this :

“Take a picture, look at that view.”

“Wait, look at that view, let’s take a picture with the mountain in the background.” 

“Let’s take one with the vineyard.”

“Let’s take one with the mountain and the vineyard.” 

“Come sit over here and take another selfie.”

“Let’s do it again without glasses.” 

“Taste this wine, taste that wine, how about this one, this one is great, maybe one more” …. and repeat that 10 more times!

Then we get to the end of the tour at Sterling Vineyard and are shopping for gifts to bring home…

All me: “Google that wine and see how much it costs.”

“Google that wine and see if it got good reviews – tasted good to me but what do I know.”

“Now google that wine, I don’t know which one I want to buy.”

“How much does that one cost? Is it a good deal?  I want to figure out which one to buy.”

Meanwhile, Freddy is looking at me like I am out of my mind!  One bottle cost $55 and another $65 and I know what he is thinking … where is the $20 one?  His head is saying … oh crap, my wife is going to pay all this money for a couple of bottles of wine.   But he also knows he can’t say no because they are gifts for the babysitting daughter without whom, we would not have had this adventure.  My very laid back husband is happy with Carlo Rossi, so I know he is struggling inside and sweating this out.

When we get to the register with three bottles, he was speechless, and the little beads of sweat were gathering, and then I ripped out MY debit card.  I could hear the  ‘Phew‘ and see the flicker of relief that he dodged that bullet!  I am buying all three wines we googled and am paying to ship them home.

We are all set to go, and I am feeling accomplished when we realize they forgot to add in shipping and have to cancel the transaction.  No big deal, except when they tried to redo it, my debit card was declined, and the lady says to me,  you will probably get an alert on your phone right now verifying that this charge was made because you are in another state and they want to make sure this is you …

Me: Well, my phone is probably on my kitchen counter in New York so that won’t work. Give me your credit card honey – I guess you are paying.”  😳😩

This is what happens when they give you too many wines “to taste.”

Now we get to the next Vineyard, and it’s a castle!  We haven’t even walked up the drawbridge and my hubby knows what is going to happen and says,

“You are going to have to start deleting some of these pictures my storage is getting full.”

and I say: “that’s why I have 5000 pictures on my phone – because I take all the pictures. It’s your turn!”

A little while later and a few more glasses of wine, he asks:

Where are we going for dinner tonight?

You know what my answer was, I don’t think I have to repeat myself.

More google questions:

Did Tiger Woods make the cut for Masters? …who cares

How many people make the cut?

Who sings these boots are made for walking?

What other songs did Hall and Oates sing besides Maneater?

Last day google questions:

Is it going to rain all day?

Why is the Golden Gate Bridge an orangey-red color and not yellow or gold? Did the fires jump the water or are those trees just wet?

Who was in the movie The Presidio?

and countless others I can’t remember…

All-in-all, I got through the week unscathed.  We had some scary moments there, but I am a survivor!  The fact is that I would have used the phone to google menus and fun facts and to take pictures.  I didn’t actually need to talk to anyone, which is the reason I think we have phones?

My recommendation is to leave the phone home on purpose and cut yourself off from the world. We also didn’t watch any TV (this was done purposely), so I wasn’t privy to the usual bad news, and my email is on my phone – so no emails either!  Of the 232 emails I didn’t get, I only really needed to read 5, and all of them waited until I got back.

It wasn’t meant for me to have my cell phone.  The children I left in New York survived and I got to spend some quality time with Roberta and my husband, two things that I needed.  God knew that for me to do that, I needed to lose all the distractions, and the rest of the world would go on without me for five days – go figure!

A great quote I saw while away:

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory”   by Dr. Seuss.

I wish all of you a lot of moments today and every day.  I had some great ones this week.

Do you want to read another different kind of travel blog? Read about our trip to Italy!

Thanks so much for visiting with me!