Travel fails just happen sometimes. Even if you’ve planned. Even if you think you’ve covered all the bases. Luckily, we’ve never had anything truly catastrophic happen. Generally we are able to regroup and carry on. The fail becomes one of our family legends like the whole Santa Monica incident. Here’s my grossest travel fail:

Direct Hit

When I was in college, my family went to England one summer. We didn’t have all the seats together, so I was sitting next to a mom with a baby. Like many parents, she gave her child a bottle during take-off to help keep his ears clear. As we were still gaining altitude, she decided it was time to burp him and put him up on her shoulder right next to me. More than just a burp came out though, and I was drenched in baby barf. I mean, I’ve gotten off Splash Mountain dryer than that. It was all down my shoulder, on my hair, the front of my shirt, the back of my shirt, and soaking into the seat and my waistband. A definite travel fail, I’d say.

I remember looking over at the flight attendant in her backward-facing seat. Her eyes were round. “Ummmm…..you can’t get up yet.” So I sat there for another 10 minutes trying not to notice the smell. At least it was mostly just the formula that he’d drunk just a few minutes earlier, but still. The mom was apologetic, of course, but she didn’t really realize how bad that baby had gotten me. The kid didn’t look sorry, but he had his own problems to worry about.

Regrouping

So how did I recover from that given that all my baggage had been checked and was completely inaccessible for the next 9 hours? When the seat belt sign went off, I was out of my seat like a rocket. I washed off as well as I could in the plane’s tiny bathroom. My own shirt went into a plastic bag the flight attendant provided, and my mom gave me the v-neck knit cardigan she was wearing over her blouse. The v-neck was too low to be presentable without a shirt under it, but the flight attendant also found a couple safety pins to alter the neckline, so I was good.

Luckily, there was another available seat on the plane, and the flight attendant moved me to it. She also gave me a bottle of sparkling wine as a thank-you for being a good sport. I wasn’t actually old enough to drink, so my mom took it through customs for me, and we broke it out a couple years later when I got engaged.

Lessons Learned

1. Flight attendants will do their best for you.

2. Overreacting wouldn’t have helped. There was nothing anyone could do about the fact that I was sitting there in barf for 10 minutes. It was gross, but not dangerous. The mom didn’t need to feel any worse, because she clearly had her hands full already. Because I was chill about it, I ended up in a quieter location, and I got a bottle of sparkling wine. I’ll bet that mom was glad to have the empty seat next to her too. The rest of the trip was great.

3. My mom is awesome. She pretty much literally gave me the shirt off her back.

4. You should always have back-up-clothes in your carry-on.

Of course we’ve had plenty of other travel fails since then. However, I’m pretty sure we’ve avoided some or at least recovered faster because we keep learning along the way.

What’s your worst travel fail? Please be sure to scroll down to leave a question or comment below.

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