When Travel Plans Go Awry
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218 – November/December, 2023
By Kory Kumar
No matter if you are traveling to a horse show, or just through life, there is always that level of unexpected that just seems to happen. And those unexpected moments don’t discriminate. Everyone has a travel blooper story, and horse people are no exception.
Travel Like No Other
Take Amateur Christina Shanahan, for example. She has had many exciting travel adventures in her lifetime, and her most memorable ones occurred over her thirty-year military career in the United States Navy.
As a young Naval Officer, she received deployment orders for Operation Enduring Freedom. She explains, “I drove to Jacksonville, North Carolina to report for duty. Upon arrival, the processing Gunny Sergeant was very confused why two other nurses and I were there.” The ladies had, in fact, gone to the wrong Jacksonville. They had been ordered to report to Jacksonville, Florida, not Jacksonville, North Carolina.
Christina goes on to share, “Being the nice ladies that we were, and trying to save the government money, all three of us decided to rent a car and drive from North Carolina to Florida. We rented an electric blue convertible and hit the road!”
Picture, if you will, an entire Naval company quietly standing in formation, while an electric blue convertible with three young nurses comes screeching into the base! “We were coming in hot!” Christina laughs. “The three of us got into so much trouble! Many years later, when I was an Admiral, people were still telling this story!”
Christina also met her husband of thirty years on a crazy travel trip. “One Sunday, I was told to go to Kentucky the next morning and do an investigation of a VA hospital that was having some issues,” she explains. “I quickly packed my stuff and got myself to the airport.”
Shortly after her arrival at the terminal, Christina learn-ed that the flight had been double-book-ed, so seating was very limited. As she boarded the plane, the pilot told her to sit wherever she could. “I saw this man sitting in an aisle seat with all these legal books and papers spread out. I asked him if the seat next to him was taken. He looked me up and down and grumped at me,” she says.
Instead of standing up, or moving out of the way, the grumpy man simply placed his tray table in the upright position, forcing his future wife to climb over the top of him–in her tight Naval uniform skirt–to get to the window seat next to him. “I was so mad at him!” she laughs. “He kept trying to talk to me, and I ignored him. Eventually though, I relaxed and started to talk to him,” she remembers. Before the end of the flight, they exchanged business cards, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The Story of a Mini Goldendoodle
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218 – November/December, 2023
