Your cuz,
Jodi
In addition to Jodi's contribution: another of Tad's friends send this same email with the following preface
Tad was a special person and I am so glad I was blessed to be able to count him as a friend of mine. I wish I was able to express my feeling towards Tad in a better way, as there are so many wonderful memories that come to mind when I think about him. As I was going through all the old emails Tad and sent me and other friends of his, I came accross a story from Tad that I thought would truly capture the essence of Tad and his adventurous spirit
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Hello my friends,
There is a children´s book entitled "Alexander and the
Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day" about a
little boy who has just that-a terrible, horrible, no
good, very bad day. And on February 10th I had a day
much like that of Alexander´s.
Travel days are probably the least favorite part of my
travels as public transportation seems to be sized for
those 5 foot 8 inches and under(ie-Brian Stewart, Ryan
Clark). Saturday, February 10th, I begrudgingly
packed up my bag knowing that I would be getting on a
dirty, cramped, unairconditioned, uncomfortable seats,
broken windowed night bus headed from Sucre, Bolivia
to Santa Cruz, Bolivia at 5:30 PM scheduled to arrive
the next morning at 7:30 AM (Total-14 hours). This
was going to be a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very
Bad Day.
As we had already seen our daily quota of museums, art
galleries, and dinosaur tracks that Sucre had to
offer, we went about our day in a vegetated state:
eat, check email, eat, check email.
The time came for us to head to the bus station. Like
a cow in a slaughter plant, I unknowingly sauntered on
to my upcoming doom. Since the bus was going to run
for 14 hours, and there is no telling if or when there
will be any stops along the way, we decided it best to
fatten up before jumping on the bus. We found a nice
little cafe and ordered up a couple of hamburgers and
a chicken sandwich and nestled up at a cozy table next
to the TV with music videos playing. It was around 5
pm and I told linden to go check us in. Before
leaving, she said, as she ALWAYS does, "can you watch
my bag?" The astute traveling companion I am, I honed
in on her bag with one eye, and with the other eye on
the sultry seductive Shakira hip-shaking video on the
TV monitor. Unbenounced to me, some clever little
thief must have noticed my guard dog focus on Linden´s
bag (or my gawking at the TV screen) and stealthly
snagged my little travel backpack that was under my
chair. Linden returned just as our food got there and
we began to eat. Half way through my delicious second
hamburger, I got that sick intuitive feeling that
something was awry. I looked down for my travel bag;
gone. It was going to be a Terrible, Horrible, No
Good, Very Bad Day.
Immediately jumping from the table, I started looking
around with the desparation of a child lost in the zoo
looking for his parents. My bag was gone. Now if it
would have been just my rainjacket, calculator, and
the half used bottle of sunscreen in the bag it would
have been no big loss. However, our South American
Lonely Planet Guidebook (aka-the travelers´bible), the
"Scavuzzo´s" meat sign (sorry guys), my journal (with
all of life´s answers in it), and the copies of my
identification papers were in that bag. Good grief.
Our bus left at 5:30 PM so I had 30 minutes of
"chicken with his head cut-off" running around, and
outside, the bus station looking for the perpetrator
but to know avail. At 5:29 PM, I consented defeat and
dejectedly climbed onto our bus, christened by myself,
"The Misery". It now really was a Terrible, Horrible,
No Good, Very Bad Day.
A little distraught from the event that had just
occured, I sought solace from Enrique Inglesia on the
Ipod-I needed a "Hero" today. However, there was to
be no soothing here, as one of my headphones developed
a crackling squeal in it and the other pair of
headphones we had already been lost somewhere during
our trip. What a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very
Bad Day.
Giving up on the Ipod, I noticed that the bus
assistant was putting in a DVD. Maybe it would be
something great and in english; or at least with
english subtitles. Fat chance. It was a spanish
dubbed, no english subtitles version of "The
Magnificient Seven", an old western that I am sure is
a classic to a few of my readers out there but wasn´t
doing it for me on this particular day. This was a
Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
With no Ipod or DVD, I reclined my semi-recumbant seat
(aka-a futile attempt to achieve some sort of comfort
but ultimately only causing my knees to be jammed into
the back of the seat in front of me) to try and sleep
my blues away. Yeah right. While Linden slept like a
baby, I tossed, turned, and sweated like a pig. At
about 12:30 AM, I gave up and put the crackling
headphones back in and began listening to a US history
lecture: The Civil War and Its Aftermath. What a
Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
Sometime between 4:30 AM and "The Industrial
Revolution" I must have passed out. I woke up to our
bus stopped in the middle of nowhere at 6:45 AM. Our
bus had a flat and our crew was deligently working to
fix it. With the flat fixed, we were off and
cruising. We were scheduled to arrive at 7:30 AM in
Santa Cruz so you can imagine my dismay when 7:30 AM
came and went, as did 8:30 AM, and then 9:30 AM. What
in the hell? The bus pulled over to the side of the
road and the bus assistant reported that we were still
5-6 hours away and would we like to stop for food or
to continue on. There was a pleading cry for mercy
from us all, so we stopped. It had been 12 hours
since my last meal so I was ready for anything,
anything except the cup of tea and the half packet of
crackers our waitress so elegantly served each of us
for breakfast. This was turning into the most
Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day ever.
After devouring my packet of crackers, we returned
aboard "The Misery" to begin again. About 10 minutes
on the road we came to a screeching halt. What now?
Why is there a huge line of cars, semis, and buses in
front of us? Turns out, sometime during the night,
there had been a rainstorm and had caused a land slide
which left the road covered with a mound of dirt and a
tree sprawled across the road. Our bus driver said
that a road crew was on the way and that it would take
anywhere between 1 to 2 hours for them to get there
and clear the road. Well guess what, my lucky day, it
only took them 3 hours. What a Terrible, Horrible, No
Good, Very Bad Day.
Well, we eventually arrived at the Santa Cruz bus
station at 5:00 PM; a mere 9.5 hours overdue. Tired,
hungry, dejected, disturbed, and slightly mental due
to the lack of any nurishment to the brain, I stumbled
out of the bus into the Santa Cruz streets. With the
day we had just had, I wouldn´t have been surprised to
have been hitten by a car, or even a meteor, as we
crossed the street to a small restaurant. It truely
had been a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
As we sat at the restaurant waiting for our first
non-cracker based meal in nearly 23 hours I couldn´t
help but wonder what kind of day the theif that had
taken my bag had had. I can only hope it wasn´t half
as bad as mine and that maybe my assailant would
benefit from what was inside my bag. Yeah
right-hopefully the bastard ran out of the bus
terminal and was hit by a bus and, being caught up by
my backpack he was probably wearing, dragged a couple
hundred miles along the concrete and gravel roads into
the countryside where the last thing he saw before
being ravaged by a pack of wild dogs was "Scavuzzo´s"
Purveyors of Fine Meat. I smiled.
peace, love, and happiness,
Tad
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