Yesterday was
Friday the 13th and, whenever I'm in South America, I have to remind myself that
it's not bad luck. In
the Spanish-speaking world, Tuesday the 13th - martes 13 – is the day and date to fear. When marketed in the
region, all
those grotesque slasher movies had to be edited, with misleading subtitles,
for cultural reasons.
I've never
cared enough to sit through one of those movies, but I came perilously close to
a disastrous 13th this week. I was due to fly from Los Angeles to Santiago on
Thursday the 12th, arriving on Friday the 13th, and ultimately did - as the seatback video screen above shows - but not
before getting a scare. It was not the slasher sort of scare, nor was it an airplane problem, but it briefly
unnerved me.
On Wednesday I
intended to drive to LA, spending the night at the house of friends before
catching my Thursday afternoon flight. As it happened, I left the house a bit
late to pick up my rental car at
Oakland International Airport and had to rush through a couple errands
before returning home for my luggage. I quickly loaded the car, gave the dog a
bone in the backyard, and then headed south on the MacArthur
Freeway.
About ten
minutes out, for some reason, I experienced the uneasy suspicion I had
forgotten something (for me, packing is the worst part of any trip). The feeling
was strong enough that I left the freeway and started going through my bags
with only a general notion that something was wrong. It became very specific,
though, when I found an empty leg pouch that I had chosen as a backup to the
one with my passport and US$2000 in cash - which was nowhere to be found.
I didn't quite
panic but, not wanting to return home, I did another quick search before
concluding that I had to do so. Another problem was that, before leaving home,
I had dropped my house key into our mail slot, so I had no certain means of
entering without contacting my wife at work - which I preferred not to do.
Fortunately, just before I left, I had seen the next-door neighbor, who has an
emergency key, but I have never entered her number on my phone. Thus, I had to
drive back and hope she'd be there.
Fortunately
she was home but, unfortunately, she couldn't find the key, and I was almost
resigned to interrupting my wife at work. Then a near-miracle happened - another
neighbor was walking her dogs and, when she heard about the situation, she volunteered
the fact that she had a key to our house (I had no idea she had one, and my
wife later said she'd forgotten about it).
So, a happy
ending, except for the hour and a half it delayed my departure for LA (where my
friends and I dined late – for them, at least - at a Brazilian restaurant). I
shudder to think what would have happened had I arrived in LA with neither
passport nor cash, which would have delayed my departure until at least Friday
the 13th - or, for all I know, the next martes
13 (which takes place in September of next year!).
My arrival in
Santiago, as indicated in the map above, was a more agreeable experience –
though I only managed about two hours of sleep in a 36-hour period. I topped
off my Friday the 13th here with a visit to MOVINight 2015, a major tasting event for the
Movimiento de Viñateros Independientes – an
alliance of small-scale bodegas producing, for lack of better world, craft
wines. It was at the Centro Cultural Matucana 100 (pictured above), a great facility I had never visited before, and I managed to see a few friends
and acquaintances there – thanks largely to Courtney Kingston, of Kingston Family
Vineyards. I also got to sample an unusual selection of wines - there were also beers and even whiskey, which are not to my taste - and when I returned to my Santiago accommodations, that helped me catch up
on my sleep.
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