Embracing (sort of) the legend of my travel jinx

I started my last blog post saying that I believe in facts, not jinxes. That bears repeating after this tweet from my traveling companion:

Here are the facts:

  • I tweet a lot.
  • I travel a lot.
  • Travel often sucks, but not always.
  • One tweet is sufficient to say that you arrived on time.
  • A travel delay prompts more tweets.

When flights or trains arrive on time with no problems, one tweet suffices:

My tweeps yawn, if they notice at all. But a delay needs a little explanation and, well, I have time to explain. If the delay lasts hours because of a fatality on the tracks, I livetweet the whole thing. People retweet and spread the word and a Twitter mini-legend is born.

Earlier this month, my former colleague Sam Chamberlain, traveling in New Hampshire, speculated that I must be around somewhere because his travel was delayed (I was in Pennsylvania).

Here are the facts about my Amtrak travel over the past few years: I’ve probably taken somewhere between 15 and 20 train trips between Washington and other cities along the East Coast: Trenton, New York, New Haven. Three of them have had significant delays.

The third was today. My traveling companion and I were returning from a trip to New York. Our Acela ride to New York Thursday was uneventful, and we started our return trip optimistically:

This was my first return trip from New York since the one that was halted by a suicide on the tracks in February. This trip was also uneventful. Until we reached Philadelphia. The tweets pick up the story there:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m a stubborn guy and half of my brain is trying to count up all the plane flights I’ve taken that landed on time without incident (and you can see I already did that for train trips), so I can blow this bogus legend away with the facts. But maybe it’s time to follow the advice of the editor of the Shinbone Star and just embrace my Twitter travel legend.

6 thoughts on “Embracing (sort of) the legend of my travel jinx

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