Hi! I'm Inconvenience. You and I are going to encounter eachother quite often if you decide to pack up and leave the county to budget travel for 3 months, so let me tell you a bit about myself.
I am the guy in the bunk below you, in the 3 bed, closet-sized dorm we're sharing with your dad. I will decide at 4:30 AM to bring home a girl and have sex with her "quietly" because I'm sneaky and you're an entire 3 feet above us and we're an entire 2 feet away from your dad. My name is Inconvenience and I'm going to get laid at your expense.
I am any and every manifestation of wireless Internet. Just finish an 800 word blog post? Ha! Disconnect. Really need to Facetime with your mom? No, you can't. Just want to browse the web? Here, please reenter your login details 6,543,218 times.
Inconvenience is your $90 Big Agnes Insulated AirCore sleeping mat (yes, the one you just raved about loving) deflating after 2 hours of sleep on the first night of a 7 night backpacking trip. But it's all good, just give those tiny puncture holes a patch job! Actually, no, I'm Inconvenience, I'm a persistent little bastard, and despite your hours of patching, you will wake up to reinflate you're mat every 2 hours for 7 nights and ultimately have to purchase a new mat with your coffee and candy budget for the entire month. But you won't actually stop consuming coffee and candy, because that's absurd, so you'll be even further out of budget than you planned. A scathing letter to Big Agnes will not get you back the hours or the money you lost. I'm inconvenience and I'm damn good at my job.
I am the jagged springs in your dorm mattress, jabbing you awake at night. I am a $30 per day charge for an under-25 driver on the rental car when you are mere days from your 25th birthday. I am $7 beers, the TSA agent you caught on a bad day, the disintegrating waterproof seal on your tent tarp. I am lost cell phones, stolen food and misleading road signs. I am, at my very core, the blister on your heel.
But here's the thing - I'm just Inconvenience. I'm not my unruly son, Disaster, or my unbearable wife, Tragedy. I am just the little things that pile up to seem like big things when the most stressful part of your life is deciding which gorgeous Australian beach to camp on tonight. And I'm not all bad, either. Inconvenience is the filter, the fence that keeps out all the false lovers of travel, the home bodies and fancy folk, so there's room for you and your backpack across the world.
So, here we are. I'm Inconvenience. You chose me when you boarded the plane and flew away from your comfortable home and the world you know. Learn to love me, laugh at me, embrace me as part of your experience. All it takes is a little attitude adjustment, a cup of coffee and a bag of Starburst gummy snakes (that are WAY out of your budget).
