Happy New Year! 2011 not only begins, but a new decade in the new millennium begins. It’s a new, new beginning.

As with anything, though, plans rarely survive contact with the enemy. In typical fashion, I am reminded by the Universe that not everything is within my control.

A fact I am disgruntled by, I might add…

My story is typed from a table in the Acela Lounge in Washington, D.C., on Saturday afternoon, New Year’s Day. It SHOULD have been, or rather was INTENDED to have been, typed from a train somewhere in the Carolinas. Maybe, dare I suggest it, Georgia.

DC was YESTERDAY.

Ah. But that would be the case if the plans survived contact with the enemy.

The enemy, in this case, being a burst water pipe.

We were taken via rickety golf cart to our train via the wrong way down the tracks (no, really; the Red Cap [i.e. Bellman] got lost… reassuring, eh?) and got to our car – the last car on the train, and aaaaallll the way down the tracks from the station – and were told “Oh, didn’t anyone tell you? Your compartment is flooded, we put you in Coach.”

For a twenty-five hour trip.

Needless to say, we were not, um, pleased.

We were put up in a Holiday Inn (an actually nice one; I was gratified and surprised, not being a fan of the Holiday Inn chain) for the night and given a stipend for the cab and for dinner. They managed to get us into a sleeper car for the trip to Florida on an earlier train, but ON New Year’s Day instead of New Year’s Eve.

We both fell asleep prior to midnight, in the middle of attempting to watch a movie. I did manage to call my husband and a friend and wish them Happy New Year first, then zonked.

In the “seeing the Sacred in the ordinary” department, this was pretty darned cool for the possible outcomes. We didn’t get derailed, the train didn’t hit anyone while we were on it, and we got a nice, comfortable hotel with two huge comfy beds AND a bathtub. And dinner – a pretty nice Chinese takeout with too much salt but very yummy steamed dumplings and won ton soup.

All in all, one of the better contacts with the enemy experiences my plans have gone through.

Thereby proving, once again, that adventure is all in how you look at it.

Happy New Year!