What We Can Control

Sometimes things do not go the way we want them to go.

That's simply part of travel . . . it's also part of life.

On a trip to Chicago last year, I had all sorts of good stuff planned out, including baseball. I had a ticket to a Cubs game at Wrigley (which, by the way, was incredible). Tickets to the only White Sox game going on during our stay were incredibly expensive on Stubhub, as it was the home opener. I did not want to pay the prices that were offered on Stubhub. So I thought that surely I could buy a ticket from someone outside the gates for much cheaper. I have done that at a number of sporting events. And I figured I would definitely be able to do it there.

Wrong.

The tickets being offered outside the gates were much more expensive than what I could have gotten a ticket for on Stubhub. If I really wanted to get inside the gates of U.S. Cellular Field, the home of the White Sox, I should have just paid the prices that were being offered on Stubhub. Instead, this is as close as I got to the action that day:

I was deflated, defeated, and just, overall, unhappy. My plan simply did not work out. And I was left out in the cold (literally, it was freezing).

At that point, I had two options: either get mad about it and let it ruin my day or move on and enjoy Chicago through another avenue. Admittedly, I did a little bit of both. I stewed around for a while, muttering to myself. Then I tried to move on and do the next thing on my list: Chinatown. However, it was kind of a stinker, too:

Chicago's Chinatown is nothing like NYC's or Boston's . . . it's just kind of there . . . full of tourists in awkward hats. After walking it a few blocks, I decided to hop back on the subway and see other parts of Chicago.

The experience was, actually, a good travel experience. With travel, our best laid plans sometimes do not unfold like we want them to or, many times, like they should have. These experiences, though, are often the best travel experiences we can have. Travel mirrors life in so many ways. Life is full of lots of ups. It's also full of plenty of downs. We cannot always control our experiences and how things turn out for us. What we can control is how we react to and deal with life . . . and travel.