Nothing tests your endurance more than the unexpected crisis on the road .

Most of the time, these incidents would be mere inconveniences back home, solved simply by contacting your bank, hiring a local professional (like a locksmith), stopping off at the mall, or just calling up a friend to come and help you out. But here, on the other side of the planet, it’s usually quite uncomfortable when things go wrong, and the solution often requires a little creativity.

For the most part, I’ve been really fortunate and it’s been smooth sailing the whole way (I hope I didn’t just jinx myself by saying that), but I have had a couple run-ins with the unexpected.

With highlights like breaking my camera in my first month out (a huge setback to my livelihood in Web design), being unable to withdraw any cash in Guatemala (due to my 7-digit pin number), overestimating Nico's bike riding capacity on the 40-mile bike ride along the east coast of Ri'iatea, having one of the only ATMs on Bora Bora eat Nico’s card on the Friday evening before Easter weekend, and discovering that my laptop lock combo had randomly “migrated” after I had locked my laptop to the steel bunk bed in my hostel dorm room, my various encounters with unforeseen predicaments are among some of my favorite travel stories.

Out here, there is no easy way to conduct bank transactions (like changing your pin) and your bank definitely won’t be sending you a new ATM card to your hotel. Even the simple task of making a phone call to the states often seems daunting. Oh yeah, and I can pretty much guarantee that most all vendors and restaurants don’t accept American Express (an ugly lesson for Nico when he ended up penniless in French Polynesia with only an AmEx card for security).

What’s most interesting to me is that these experiences are the best tests of resiliency. It’s amazing what you learn about yourself when things go wrong. My best advice to anyone faced with a crisis on the road is take a deep breath, focus on the solution rather than the problem, and most importantly, laugh it off.

May 2, 2006