These road trips are a breeze when the inevitable adversity The Universe has in store for me is still mostly theoretical. Waxing philosophically about overcoming future struggles is easy until that first a bump in the road clanks your brain up against your skull, leaving you grasping at thin air to regain your bearings. Unlike previous trips, where my chair just suddenly stopped working, (twice!) or was demolished by a second-rate airline, this trip’s troubles slowly snuck up on me.

It all started innocently enough. Claire and I spent Monday celebrating our second anniversary; exploring Joshua Tree National Park during the day, hanging with our favorite pair of 90-year-olds on an uncharacteristically rainy desert night. It was the perfect way to celebrate a fantastic couple of years, and I was all charged up with a metaphor about how, like century-old fault lines and majestic rock formations, good relationships take time and effort, but a lack of WiFi at our hotel stole my proverbial thunder. With a light day scheduled for Tuesday, I figured I’d get to it sometime that night.

The next morning, Savannah and Nikita whisked grandma away for her hair appointment while Claire and I held down the fort with grandpa. The old man’s ears may be shot, and his memory is starting to fade, but it couldn’t stop us from relishing every moment with him as we toured his neatly manicured by 5-acre oasis, setting out bird seeds and food scraps for the various wildlife he seems to be single-handedly sustaining. After reconnecting Ed with his freshly coiffed Betty, we then had to zip Claire down to the Palm Springs airport to catch her flight home. The girls and I snagged some dinner, leaving just enough time for me to drop in on a local iteration of my favorite spiritual program. I rolled out my meeting feeling a hint of a fever creeping up, which could mean only one thing.

We had noticed an abnormally pungent odor every time we drained my catheter bag for the last handful of days, which is usually a good sign I am brewing a urinary tract infection. Although it’s been an undeniably healthy six years since some of those little vermin migrated their way from my kidneys to my bloodstream causing me to flatline for five minutes in front of my family, the specter of a UTI always manages to stoke my fears. I guess dying will do that to you. To avoid exhausting usable antibiotics, I’ve been under strict orders not to treat infections until a fever presents itself, which tends to compound my anxiety at times as I wait for that ticking time bomb to blow.

Thankfully, I know what I need to do these days, and we set our bearings on the closest hospital. As a bit of an emergency room connoisseur these days, I can highly recommend the folks at Eisenhower Medical Center who set the land speed record for diagnosing, treating, and discharging me. Ask for Heather if you’re ever there. She kicks ass. After a failed 1 AM wild goose chase through the streets of Palm Springs in search of a 24-hour pharmacist, we had to give in and retreat to our hotel. It was past 3 AM before we finally got to sleep.

We spent most of this morning scrambling to tie up the loose ends caused by last night’s detour. We hastily packed up our stuff, bid farewell to the world’s greatest grandparents, filled my prescription, went back to the hotel after getting a call we forgot a handful of items, and hit the road back to Sin City. We only had to pull over a couple of times to make sure we weren’t lost. I guess the moral of the story is that, despite my best efforts, I still have lessons to learn.

Here’s to surviving another third day snafu. Some bumps are unavoidable, it’s all about how you recover.