Dumbest thing I've done in a very, very, VERY long time...
Get up early and hit the road about 9:00 AM last Sunday. Made good time down I-5, the 405 and the 710 to Long Beach and checked into the Queen Mary around 3:30 PM.
Took an audio tour of the ship/hotel, imagining what it might have been like to cruise on something like that. Had a few drinks in one of the bars, then moved into the dining room for a quiet dinner. Back in the room, admiring the tons of wood in the stateroom, sat down and began knitting, while KW read his book.
Around 8:45 PM, as I was mentally walking through the next day's cruise check-in activities, I suddenly went cold and ashen, and frantically started tearing through my purse and luggage. Nope, no such luck - I had left my passport home.
Home. 345 miles and 6 hours away. Or, because we'd have to drive up and then back down again, 690 miles and 12 hours away. Boarding for the cruise starts at 12:30 PM; we can't check in any later than 3:30 PM. It's now almost 9:00 PM, we're tired from the drive down earlier in the day, and had already started that part of the evening when you allow yourself to wind down and relax after the day. Crap. What a stupidhead. Idiot. Stooopid. Asshole. Jerk.
I called Carnival Cruise lines to see if I could still get on the ship with either my driver's license or my military ID. Again, no such luck. Even as I was talking with her, I was remembering that they changed the rules around 2 years ago - you need a passport to travel into and out of both Mexico and Canada. Fucking stupidhead idiot who calls herself a "traveler."
Into the car we go, on the road by 9:02 PM. It's dark. We're on I-5 with large trucks and fast cars. KW and I swapped off, with him taking the L.A. portion and my taking the bulk of the I-5 and 152 portions. We'd nap (or try to) when we weren't driving. Made it home by 2:30 or so AM, got the passport, and after a stretch and potty stop and a gasoline fill-up, were back in the car and on the road by 3:00 AM. Another swap or two along the way, with truckers to keep us company, and we hit the 405 around 8:00 AM, whereupon it took us around and hour-and-a-half to make it the last 35 miles or so to the Queen Mary.
We staggered into the room 9:30 AM, set our alarms for 11:00 AM, and put heads to pillow a bit before 10:00, ready to get about an hour's worth of 'sleep.' We made it to the cruise check-in by 1:00 and managed to stay awake and alert until 8:00 PM or so, until we both hit a wall head-on. Crashed, we were asleep by 8:30 PM.
I'll post my "Things I Learned While Driving I-5 Three Times in 24 Hours" in the future. In the meantime, I'm still looking for other names to call myself for being such an idiot, but I seem to come back to 'stupidhead.'
