Do I have a story for you

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a situation I’d never been in before.

I’d just taken a train to Rennes, a town in northwestern France. There was a tall escalator leading from the train platform up to street level. I had a huge backpack on my back, a fanny pack around my waist, and a carry-on hard-shell rolly bag.

I stepped onto the escalator and pulled the rolly onto the step behind me. About halfway up, I took my hand off the luggage handle for a second to adjust something. This wasn’t a good move because it turns out only three of the four wheels were on the step, so as soon as I took my hand off, it fell backwards down the escalator.

Thankfully, no one was on the escalator behind me because the bag was quite heavy. Instead of quickly falling to the bottom, my luggage thrashed around, bobbing sideways, and bouncing up as it hit each step as the escalator moved up. It reminded me of a kernel of popcorn in an airpopper.

As I watched this, my only thought was the golden rule of travel: keep your luggage securely by your side at all times. And my luggage was not by my side, and the gap was getting bigger as I moved closer to the top and my luggage moved closer to the bottom.

Do you want to know what I did next?

In all of my genius, I thought the very best move was to start RUNNING DOWN THE ESCALATOR AFTER IT.

And the cringe? It took me a good 30 seconds before I realized why I wasn’t getting anywhere.

Please take a moment to really picture this.

Picture my luggage thrashing and bouncing all over the escalator, very slowly making its way to the bottom. And then picture me, panicked, sweating, red-faced, with an oversized backpack on my back and a bright orange fanny pack around my waist, attempting to RUN DOWN the up escalator as fast as I could while getting nowhere.

You can laugh—I’m laughing!!! It was ridiculous.

After an embarrassing amount of time, I realized that no matter how fast I went, I would not be able to reach the bottom in this manner. I stopped running and just panted as I let the thing do its job and bring me to the top. Once there, I got another bolt of adrenaline and started running down the adjacent stairs as fast as I could. This time, surprise, surprise, I was getting somewhere!

But when I was halfway down, a young fella walking past the escalator saw my bag, still bobbing around, and stepped on. He walked up to my luggage, managed to wrestle it upright, and secured it on the step, putting his hand on the handle. At this point, instead of turning around and running back up the stairs to meet him at the top, I continued to go all the way down the stairs and then proceeded to go back up the escalator like a total maniac, hoping the fella wasn’t going to take off with my luggage.

I walked up the moving steps just as quickly as my shaking legs and heaving lungs could take me, and right there at the top was the fella with my very beat up, but miraculously intact luggage. He looked at me like I was extra crispy crazy, handed it over, and proceeded to go down the stairs, the correct downward transportation option—ahem.

As I stood there, out of breath, pouring sweat, wondering what the hell just happened, all I could do was wheeze a “merci beaucoup” down the stairs toward him.

And then I burst out laughing, wishing I could call my sister Kirstie and tell her what had just happened. Because she would have loved it. She loved hearing about my adventures, especially when shit went sideways. She would listen intently with her whole being, clinging to every word, like she was right there, going through it with me.

Three years ago yesterday, Kirstie transitioned into the land of who-the-heck-knows.

I share this story with you today in her honor.

May we always have people who want to hear our stories.

Molly