SFTR: Don't End up On "Dateline"
[Stories From The Road] Life goal: don't end up on "Dateline." In any capacity. Also, you often don’t see it working out until it does.
A note about this post: One of my new best friends told me last year that she could never do all the traveling I’ve done for the past 18 months. I’m going on something like nine European countries on two separate trips, a 15-day Transatlantic boat journey, 30-ish US states and counting. She shook her head and said, “No, I’m too much of a homebody.” And was then floored when I told her I am actually a homebody as well.
I have been doing this to get flexible, to blow up my comfort zones and get way more comfortable being uncomfortable. Isn’t that why we all try new things? And isn’t it what all dreamers are hungry for? To meet interesting people, to get to know more of who we really are, what we are about in life, to take in beauty wherever we find it, to laugh with strangers, to connect with family and friends in new ways, to change and grow. Life can be so interesting when we take chances and that’s why I plan to share more stories from the road—to remind us all that there’s so much more to life than consuming, being safe, and being comfortable. That said, I can’t wait to make “home” again :-)
The worst Dateline shows are the ones where someone was doing something super ordinary when they get abducted or worse. I wanted to say, “when they get absconded,” but that’s not correct word usage. Absconding is what the bad (usually) dude is trying to do: “Leave hurriedly and secretly, typically to avoid detection of or arrest for an unlawful action such as theft.” In the case of Dateline happenings, the thing they’ve just done is usually a special kind of unlawful action, like a murdery type of unlawful action.
For example, if you decide to meet a stranger at an abandoned warehouse in a sketchy part of town at midnight, it’s not as big of a shock if you get gone. But when someone did something as ordinary as stop for gas, or go into a restroom at a visitor center, who really is going to point the finger of blame when they read or listen to the tragic story. “Oh, she stopped for gas? Well, I mean…”
A recent roadtrip
On a recent roadtrip from Raleigh, North Carolina to Wilmington, still North Carolina, my interest was snagged by a roadside sign promoting the Bentonville Historic Battlefield. “Well, that sounds significant,” said I out loud to myself, and peeled off the interstate toward whatever the historic preservationists wanted to show me.
Before ducking into the visitor center, I needed to use the bathroom behind the building. Except it wasn’t actually behind the building. It was several yards away, toward the woods, and behind the what’s-it-called…atrium? No, that’s an indoor thing. Aviary? No, that’s for the birds. Bowery? Yes, that’s it. Not a soul was around and as I walked across the wet grass to the isolated building, I thought twice about doing my business. You just don’t know if someone might be lurking inside an isolated public bathroom. Opening the door to a basically unlit and large bathroom didn’t do a lot to reassure me, but hey—necessity. Obviously nothing happened since I’m here to write this riveting tale, but still!
Before you judge my imagination, you should know that I have a very active one. I like mystery novels and spy thriller movies, and the Dateline podcast has kept me awake on many of my solo drives. I really ought to have been a spy or private investigator, but one day I’ll be the next best thing—a novelist. There’s also been much solo traveling and adventuring throughout my life, and I take my responsibility to stay alive and un-taken seriously. With some intentional deviations made with my best judgment for adventures and some totally foolhardy ones involving not a lick of judgment.
Anyway, I headed into the visitor center and was educated by two hours of video, exhibits, and a guided tour from Dominick. He took two of us visitors through the Harper House, a home commandeered by the Union Army to serve as their field hospital during the last major engagement of the Civil War. You could see a large bloodstain blotch on the floor and his description of amputated limbs being thrown out the window—”that one”—made that battle and that war feel really quite recent.
Remembering that my plan was to get to Wilmington and the beach, I headed off on an abbreviated version of the self-driving tour. Stop 3 was the one Dominick had particularly recommended, because you could see some of the actual battlefield trenches if you walked just a third of a mile. Not wanting to miss “The Bullpen,” I grabbed my umbrella and started walking down the trail toward the trees.
To my right was an open field where trees had recently been cleared and were being burned in a ginormous pile. Not a soul was in sight, and as I headed off, I wished I had my lipstick-size canister of pepper spray with me. That small tube is a self-defense luxury you don’t have when you’re traipsing around Europe, but when you are driving through the United States, you do. Not really a luxury though unless that’s what you call the ability to do a little sumpthin’ to defend yourself.
My imagination is one of my best if complicated features, and it took very little for it to construct the beginning of a Dateline episode. Please imagine Keith Morrison’s deep voice reading the following:
It was a drizzly day not unlike the second day of the Battle of Bentonville in Bentonville, North Carolina, when a solo history enthusiast took a short walk to see one of the sites. A large pile of tree limbs and stumps burned just 200 feet away, unattended. Or was it? The 42-year-old woman disappeared without a trace and it took investigators months to identify her killer. And oh, were they surprised...
Do you like how I block-quoted that like Keith has actually said it in real life? Me too.
That much of the episode introduction and maybe 200 feet down the trail is as far as I got when I decided to turn back. There may have been a little hunger involved as well, but an interest in not disappearing without a trace was the primary motivator. Since the whole stop had been an unexpected detour and delay in getting to Wilmington, I opted for the glamorous Hardee’s to get a fast-food-on-the-go lunch, a decision I regretted almost immediately. And not because it was so delicious but bad for me. It was not delicious.
Lost in Tbilisi
This incident reminds me of another far more vulnerable situation (also involving burning wood) I found myself in last year in Tbilisi, Georgia the Country. Without those last two words people get confused.
I’d met Miguel, my new Spanish friend, for dinner at a highly reviewed restaurant on Shota Rustaveli Boulevard. He had soup and I ordered like half the menu—the large chicken plate, the highly reviewed tomato salad, the bread. Oh the bread! They did bread right.
We parted, Miguel back to his hostel, and I to my well-reviewed apartohotel (4.7/5 on Google, out of 180 reviews) in a spaghetti street neighborhood. I only mention the reviews because 4.7/5 did not mean it would be as comfortable as I hoped. The host was responsive, things were clean, and the breakfast each morning—prepared by the mother and grandmother of the apartohotel—was phenomenal, but this otherwise was budget travel at its finest. But hey, if you’re going to see a place, try to really see a place, right? And experience air dried towels and the hardest mattress you’ve ever met and inconsistent heating for yourself.
Anyway, I trekked uphill in the dark on a route which had become somewhat familiar, but given how snarled the streets and alleys became, it was impossible for even the best intuition or spatially-reasoned person to recognize their whereabouts. Especially when said person had been relying on Google Maps for navigating and had not been paying the kind of attention she should’ve.
This neighborhood wins the prize for having the narrowest “roads” I’ve ever seen cars drive in. With frequency, cars scrape corners of houses, but the houses in this neighborhood and many others were used to it. I closed my eyes with great frequency as I rode around town in Bolts (the European version of Uber), positive the driver was going to scrape his car, another car, or a house. Sometimes they did.
Google Maps decided to abandon me when I was the most critical five minutes from my hotel. It basically got me in the worst possible area and then gave up—recalibrating and trying to reconnect to data. So there I was. Imagining all the ways this could go wrong. Trying not to hear Keith Morrison’s voice in my head.
Smoke from wood fires filled the air an unusual amount that night, and I tried not to think too much about the derelict homes I was passing. These structures had no windows—whatever windows they once had had been smashed or were missing entirely, and my imagination could just picture a guy like my angry-looking Bolt drivers popping out to accost me. Dogs (Georgia has thousands of unowned dogs) wandered the roads and I swear a black cat was just getting ready to cross my path. As nervous as I was, I couldn’t help but think what a perfect setting this was for a Halloween movie.
By the way, I don’t think my Bolt drivers were angry. I just think they’ve been through a lot. Many were Russian and fled when the war started. Others were Georgian, but they (especially the older generations) have also been through a lot—Soviet occupation, corrupt governments of their own, armed conflicts with Russia, tension with Azerbaijan, and the ongoing Ossetia situation.
I’m a praying girl, and you’d better believe I was praying to God for help as I tried to quell this special Georgian kind of panic. My cousin’s husband is an FBI agent at the embassy there, so I know my death wouldn’t have gone unsolved, and I’m not too worried about what happens to me after death. It would’ve been a pretty newsworthy way to leave this world, but still, the process of a traumatic death in Eastern Europe is pretty low on my bucket list. As is making an appearance in any capacity—victim, perpetrator, or bereaved loved one—on Dateline.
Keep walking confidently, like you know where you’re going, and figure it out as you go.
When traveling solo abroad, here’s one travel tip: try to not obviously look lost. No charge for that one. Keep walking confidently, like you know where you’re going, and figure it out as you go. There’s actually a lot of life and business application in that there statement, isn’t there? Definitely you sometimes need to do a hard stop, and pause for figure out where you are or where you’re going, but the first one fits this particular situation and post.
So I kept walking, made a right turn here, a left turn, another right turn, hoping something would look familiar. And wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, something did. I eventually found my way to the itty-bitty street of my hotel and could’ve cried with relief when I saw the two planters outside and the cheerful porch light. Never-mind that there was no actual porch involved in this scene—the door opened right onto the street but that’s neither here nor there.
You don’t see it working out until it does
That’s how a lot of travel seems to work out. And a lot of life, business, creative endeavors. You don’t see it working out until it does. The part where it works out is great, but the stories you collect along the way—trying stuff, getting lost, making left turns and right turns, always trying to move forward—are the most interest parts of the whole thing.
That’s something I at least am learning. You too? That, and that my “this-reminds-me-of-a-Dateline-story filter” is doing a pretty good job at keeping me safe and alive along the way, and turning boring events like using the restroom at a visitors center way into creative fodder. You’re welcome to adopt it as long as you’re sure to tell me all about your stories.
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This made me laugh so hard!! Please keep including lots of dateline filter stories! I bet you could come up with some good murderous possibilities 😂
This line was my fave: “the process of a traumatic death in Eastern Europe is pretty low on my bucket list.” Same girl, SAME.