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Imagine this:
You are sleeping in your small boutique hotel (for one night) in a foreign country.
You set your alarm for 4 AM which will give you time to wake up and arrange for airport transportation. Your plan is to arrive at the airport before 5 AM, for your 7 AM departure. The first leg of your flight will be Lisbon to London Heathrow, on British Airways.
Because you have been away from Wi-Fi for 21 days, you decide to set your iPhone 13 Pro to back up before you go to sleep at 10 PM.
You wake up at 2:30 AM and notice your phone is going haywire. First it’s telling you you don’t have enough storage for your photos which is not true. Then it won’t let you erase photos. Then it won’t let you write a note because the app keeps crashing.
You decide to check Uber times and prices and the app closes and your phone goes black!! You decide to reboot your phone and the only result is the Apple logo suspended in a sea of black. You have never seen this before.
You cannot go back to sleep because you don’t have an alarm clock because it is on your non-functioning smart phone!
You cannot call the hotel concierge for help with a taxi because it’s a small boutique hotel and the concierge is not on duty from midnight until later in the morning.
Hotels no longer provide telephones or directories in the rooms.
You’ve had no coffee to help you think.
You must devise a plan to find a driver with a vehicle to take you to the airport.
You spring into action to prepare to leave your hotel room. You zip your bags, put on your coat because it’s 50° out, you move your luggage into the lobby.
You leave all of luggage unattended in the lobby of the hotel.
You don’t speak the local language.
It is pitch black outside.
All the businesses are closed.
There are no people around.
It is raining.
The entire city of Lisbon is asleep.
You are a 5 foot tall, 90-pound woman with a purse, walking alone at night, in the rain, in a foreign country, on empty streets.
You hope the four-digit code the concierge gave you to re-enter the building (after you find a driver) will work properly.
You set out to find a solution to your problem.
It is eerily quiet in this residential neighborhood.
You notice a man on a motorcycle. He stops and begins to yell toward a specific apartment above. His friend comes out and they have a conversation. You approach him to ask if he knows where taxis are located.
He pointed at a nearby square.
You continue walking in the direction of the square, carrying an open umbrella and a purse.
After walking for 10 minutes, you see the most beautiful site ever—The letters TAXI on top of several cars in a line.
Here’s what happened to me next:
I approached the first driver who was asleep.
The second driver was also asleep. I decided to take the first driver in line since he had arrived first.
I successfully communicated with the taxi driver that I wanted to go to the airport but we needed to first stop at my hotel to collect my luggage. He didn’t speak English I don’t speak Portuguese but I made myself understood. I arrived at the airport at 4:20 AM and the British Airways gate opened at 4:50. I went nonstop for 22 hours spending time in three different airports, waited in lots of long lines, took two shuttle buses in London Heathrow, had only two muffins the whole day. After asking for help from multiple people, I finally found someone to allow me to send an email to a friend asking for help with Apple Store appointments.
I was concerned about finding a solution to my phone problem knowing the next day was the day before Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving would be black Friday. Stores would be mobbed with people and there would be no parking in shopping malls.
Upon arrival home, although I have global entry that provides fast-track entry back to the US, I was pulled aside for a random security check that took an extra 30 minutes. I had to take an expensive taxi home because I couldn’t order an Uber. I really appreciate shared ride services. Ironically, on my flight from London Heathrow to Miami, I watched the first three episodes of the Showtime series about the founder of Uber and found it fascinating.
Fortunately, the next morning I was the second person in line at the Genius Bar at the Apple store to get my phone issue solved. The representative told me there was a way to repair the hardware issue but it would have been time -consuming and labor-intensive and parts are unavailable so, he got authorization to replace my iPhone 13 Pro, that I purchased in February.
All is well that ends well!
There is something to be said for all those years that I traveled around the world by myself, before technology was invented. I always managed just fine.
