“Get chains bitch!”
Positive intent and an adventures
That’s the love of my life, my little five foot Romanian queen. We’re heading up a steep, snow-covered hill in Chamonix, France after a long day of skiing and snow.
The person in front of us can’t get up the mountains because they don’t have snow chains on their tires.
Now here’s the best part - that was us a few hours ago. I got scammed at the car rental in Geneva.
“I need snow chains” I tell the lady at the counter.
“No, you have snow tires” is her reply.
“But we’re going up big mountains” I say.
“Doesn’t matter” is her reply.
After 21 hours of travel and only 3 hours of sleep I acquiesce.
I’d live to regret this decision.
See, over the last 48 hours I’ve gotten maybe 5 hours of total sleep.
We had to hit the ground running - ski passes for the kids but the ski camp starts on Sunday and if you don’t start with it, you have to wait a whole week.
So onward and upward.
When I was flying to France I wrote in my journal my intention for the trip. It was twofold:
Assume positive intent.
Go on an adventure.
I got both. The positive intent was that this would be an experience we could look back on fondly one day. A story to tell the grand kids.
And what an adventures!
God you should’ve seen us trying to go up the hill to get to our cabin before we got our snow tires.
We had 5 cars on either side yelling and honking and cursing and screaming at us… in French!
So we reluctantly backed off the hill on search for chains. Try finding snow chains at 5:30pm on a Sunday for an oversized Peugeot.
We hit station after station.
We had to improvise and put on chains that aren’t technically a fit for the car. But we got a gas station clerk to assist us. I see he smokes so I bribe him by buying him 6 packs of cigarettes - which is like €100(!). So worth it.
Because he spent like an hour fitting them. And they worked!
Since it’s Sunday I’ve committed an article to you so damn it, you get one.
And the lesson here is…
be careful what you wish for? Nah.
Is it to always be prepared but accept things as they come? Not quite.
The lesson here brothers and sisters is this…
“Get snow chains bitch!”