LONDON DISASTER

A Crazy True Personal Story

SURPRISES…so many surprises. Some sublime. Some surreal. Some sorrowful. So many unusual surprises in my life. No complaints though. It makes life intriguing. Interesting. Here’s one of the surreal ones.

In my college sophomore year, my girlfriend Julie (now my precious beautiful wife), suggested I might want to go to Europe with her for the summer break. Her father was the consul general, stationed in Genoa, Italy and she would be going there after the school term ended. I thought about it for about nineteen seconds and then told her that I was in. Sounded like a blast. This was in sharp and wonderful contrast to my previous summer where I had another surreal type of surprise when I spent a large painful part of my summer in jail, for a crime I didn’t commit (written ever so cleverly, in my story, ‘My Life Behind Bars’).

We ended up going there for two glorious months. Using her parents’ palatial residence in Genoa as our basilica-like base, we toured Rome, Venice, Portofino, Florence and also traveled through Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia and Hungary. As I hadn’t yet matured past my formative years, this time was highly educational for me as well as unimaginably enjoyable. In another story I will detail some of the extraordinary experiences I had there, but that’s another story. Back to this story. Before flying back home, Julie and I took a train to England to enjoy London for the last few days of our trip. That’s when things got interesting.

On our last day in London, I wanted to see Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guard. Julie had already experienced it several times and thus chose to forgo it for other last day activities. We agreed to meet late in the afternoon at our finale event of the trip; a rock festival featuring The Who, at the Wembley soccer field in London. It sounded like a great plan. Little did we know.

Buckingham Palace was mind-blowing. A far contrast to the scruffy houses I lived in back home in Bellingham, Washington. The epic changing of the guards was incredibly unique. Perfectly choreographed movements. Synchronized. No facial gesture. Each guard had absolute control of his body. Apparently, this historical routine had been going on since around 1700. So, as is typical of my bizarre brain, I’m thinking, what does it take to get a reaction from one of these guys? I tried some ear pulling, joke telling, tying their legs together, standing on my head. Incredibly, nothing fazed them. I have to say, they were very good.

The next item on the agenda was The Who rock festival. I was pumped. When I got to Wembley Field, the first thing I noticed was the sharp contrast between the perfect order of the guards at Buckingham Palace and the unruly chaos of the crowd at Wembley Field. I was used to concerts back in the States where everyone was laid back, likely stoned out, totally getting into the music. Here the fans were a little more aggressive. People were throwing things. Getting into fights. Yelling. Overdoses were sporadically happening, evidenced by medics coming in and hauling the unlucky ones away. Just a whole lot of fun. I think a more appropriate name for the rock group should have been, ‘The Why’, as our generation questioned everything, but had no answers for anything.

All of that didn’t bother me as much as the fact that I couldn’t find Julie. I looked everywhere. No Julie. For some reason we thought this would be a nice location to meet, enjoy the concert, then head out to the airport. No way did we expect fifty thousand people to be at the venue, let alone fifty thousand crazy Brits. Although I was appreciating the dramatic musical production of their rock opera, ‘Tommy’, I was primarily focused on locating Julie, as we had a plane to catch. I was starting to get a little worried.

After the grand finale song, belted out by Roger Daltrey, ‘We’re Not Going to Take It’ (a captivating metaphor for something), I decided I had to make my way out of the hysterical crowd and head to the airport, hoping Julie would be there. I jumped on The Tube and anxiously made my way. Because our tickets were for inexpensive chartered flights from Seattle to London, the airline used Gatwick as the airport. This was fortunate, as it wasn’t anything like Heathrow, not many travelers in the airport. It wasn’t long after I arrived that I spotted Julie. Whew!! What a relief. How wonderful. I never got tired of seeing my gorgeous, beautiful girlfriend. Apparently, she had also been at the concert but who could locate anybody in that zoo. Anyway, so great to be back together again. But because I’m so super-intuitive, I could tell that something wasn’t right. The look on her face gave it away.

She informed me of something that could be a bit of an issue. She’d lost her luggage. She had no idea where she had lost it. Just lost it. Somewhere (this is one of the wonderful aspects of her personality that she refuses to give up – she loves losing things and then has to try to find them – kind of a game). Not sure how you can lose your luggage, but that was the situation.

The problem was that it wasn’t just her luggage. Losing a suitcase; no big deal. But she had her ticket, passport and all her money ‘safely’ packed in it. As she was sharing this news, it was starting to dawn on us how serious this could be. Our plane was leaving in just a couple hours. She didn’t have her ticket, but far more importantly she didn’t have her passport (which was a diplomatic passport because of her father’s work as the Consul General). Julie was understandably starting to freak out a bit. The scenario of her being stranded in London with no money and no passport was a bit daunting. Of course, cell phones hadn’t even germinated as an idea yet.

But then a highly evolved idea occurred to us. The most logical likely location of her luggage was The Tube (London’s subway). Therefore, based on our highly esteemed strategic thinking, it’s probably in the Tube’s Lost and Found department. Therefore, it makes sense to go to wherever the Lost and Found is and check if it’s there. Great plan (were we intelligent humans or what). We’ll grab a taxi. One little hiccup was that we didn’t have much time and had even less money. Not having any really great options, however, we decided to hail a cab.

When the taxi pulled up to us, we told him about wanting to go to the Tube headquarters but we, unfortunately, had only a couple dollars. “Would you be nice to us Sir, a couple down-and-out college students, who are facing a very serious crisis?” He looked at us like we were a couple of imbeciles (which we were). I watched him as he considered whether to help these college kids or not. Finally, he acquiesced and gruffly said, “Get in!”, which we gladly did. As our time was limited, he drove like a maniac to get us there (wherever ‘there’ was).

While he patiently waited outside the Tube headquarters, we jumped out and dashed into the office, hoping beyond hope that Julie’s suitcase would be there. The lady there was kind and understanding when we told her our story. She brought out several suitcases (I guess other people lose them as well) but none of them were Julie’s. She even double checked for us but no dice. And no suitcase. No ticket. No passport. And no money.

The atmosphere was a bit on the gloomy side as we headed back to the airport in defeat. Our great plan went down in flames. So, what to do now? Not only was this difficult for Julie but it was for me as well. Was I to go ahead and fly home without her, leaving her to fare on her own. Or should I stay as well, and then both of us are stuck without any money. When we got back to the airport, we were getting close to our scheduled departure time. This was a daunting dilemma. A disaster. We were distraught. Julie encouraged me to fly back but I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her with no money or ID. But then…

We got another epic brainstorm. Maybe we should call her father. Another highly evolved idea. The only obstacle (there’s always an obstacle it seems) was that we had literally no money left, and the phone system wasn’t set up for collect calls. Not being deterred, we got on the phone anyway and explained to the operator our desperate situation. There was several moments of silence and then the operator said, “Oh f__ it, I’ll go ahead and put you through.” I didn’t think American telephone operators ever swore on the phone but, what the heck, we were certainly happy for his kind help.

Fortunately, Julie’s father answered the phone. Since part of his job was to help Americans when they had problems abroad, he had some insight into a possible solution. Hallelujah for that! His advice was for Julie to try to convince customs and the airline that she was an American citizen, had lost her passport and ticket and would sign an affidavit to that effect. With that advice she and I went to the officials with our story. She told them she would be happy to sign an affidavit. They looked skeptical. They drilled her with questions about America, about presidents and such. She got stumped on, “What’s Abraham Lincoln’s middle name?” Other than that, she passed with flying colors, as they finally decided that she was not a huge risk to America and once there she could provide additional documentation confirming her testimony. Whew! What a day!

Once we were seated on the plane flying over the Atlantic, we were finally able to look at each other, take a deep breathe, and …. smile.

Epilogue. A few years later, while flying through London, Julie’s parents, for the fun of it, decided to check the Lost and Found at the Tube. The unimaginable happened. Julie’s ill-fated suitcase, including her passport and other personal items, was there, just waiting for someone to pick it up. How bizarre was that. Still there after all those years. Looking for reunification with Julie. I now look back and say, “Thank you God for all that You have brought us through and how we can look back and laugh!!”

Another epilogue. I’ll be honest. This is an apt metaphor for my life. I was in the Tube. Back and forth with no direction known. No end in sight. Ended up in the Lost and Found. Lost. Until Somebody found me. Rescued me. Jesus. He found me. And I found Him. He transformed my life from darkness to light. Please take a little encouragement from me. Don’t procrastinate. Come to Him. Surrender to Him.

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