World' s Unluckiest Traveler: Unlucky Summer Travel Stories

	I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up! On my 3rd day of what was to be a 10-day vacation on a lake in Wisconsin swimming, boating, and tubing I got to have orthopedic surgery instead! I came home with a life long souvenir of a 4" metal plate and 9 screws in my right ankle after I fell on the sloped green lawn outside of a lake house. It was about 8am in the morning, the rest of the family was inside with the windows closed, and I was lying in the grass with a dislocated foot and an ankle broken in 3 places. No one could hear my cry for help so I finally had to combat crawl across the yard, still in my pajamas, and pound on the door before others came to help. Instead of having fun on the lake I spent the next 12 hours in the hospital and the next 8 WEEKS recovering. As a teacher, I got to open a new school year just a couple weeks after the fall teaching from a wheel chair with stories of "How I Spent My Summer Vacation."
	Erica the Turtle This past summer I did a backpack tour of Europe. My backpack weighed 20 kilos, about 40% percent of my own body weight. It was extremely difficult to haul around especially in airports, trains, subways, in Europe's small elevators and on its narrow sidewalks. The most difficult task, however, was trying to stand up with the backpack on. Sitting down was no problem, and was our obvious choice when waiting hours for trains to arrive. This particular shot was taken at the Antwerp train station. We had missed our train to Brussels, and were waiting for the next one to arrive. My friend thought it would be funny to photograph our daily hilarious task. Check it out!
	Me and Mother Nature I was in Kenya on a ranch a couple hundred km north of Nairobi. My visa was about to expire, and I needed to leave ASAP when the heaviest rains in the last 50+ years hit, turning every road into a mud pit; now I'm stuck. There was a break in the weather and we ended up bringing in a plane to fly me out only to slide sideways during take off and then almost hit a giraffe at the end of the runway (he ducked). Once in Nairobi, I had to avoid political rallies that were getting violent to get to the airport. Then after a grueling 12+ hour flight to Toronto and having 2 cups of coffee spilled on my lap en route, I headed up to Meech Lake only to get done over by the ice storm. An oak tree fell on my house, 2 weeks with no water or phone plus 4 weeks with no power plus going from +30 to -30 with only summer clothes didn't help either. Based on that, people now joke wherever I go, don't go there too unless you like dealing with Mother Nature as well...
	Don't Hug Monkeys! Bukit Malawati's main attraction for me were the Silver Thread Monkeys. You can feed them green beans for less than a buck. I was told to hold one bean high in the air and let the monkeys climb their way to the food. I was worried at first, but I went with it. I was suddenly allowing monkey after monkey to climb up my body to the green bean in my outstretched arm. Each time they would get braver, and so would I. Finally I sat on a large boulder with monkeys all around and eventually one came to sit on my lap. The monkey on my lap wanted the green beans, not to be petted, but he allowed it. The final straw came for him when I posed for a picture in a hug-like position. Do not expect to be able to have both hands around a wild monkey in Malaysia. He bit me on the hand faster then he had stolen the previous two green beans away from me. I learned a valuable lesson on this trip... don't hug monkeys.
	Dead Celebrity My wife and I and our two children had been wanting to visit the east coast of Canada for years. In August 2003, we set off from Toronto driving our Chevy Celebrity. Approximately 2 hours east of Toronto, we pulled into a rest area for a quick pit stop. We started off again with me driving. 1 or 2 minutes after I got up to highway speed, I felt, rather than heard, something happen in the engine. The car lost all power, so I had to steer onto the shoulder and stop. The car would not start. We were towed back to Toronto and left the car at a garage that we knew of. The next day we found that the the motor in our Celebrity was dead. We checked into renting a car, but were told that we could not leave Ontario with a rented car. We talked it over and then decided to rent a car and go to Ottawa. After a couple of days in Ottawa, the Big Blackout hit Ontario. It turned out to be a different holiday than planned.

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