Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Coincidences

The ash cloud finally blew off, flights were restored, and we had no problem flying back to Hobart after connecting through Sydney yesterday.

Well, technically I should say the first ash cloud has blown off because this morning we read the news that all domestic flights from Sydney are being cancelled this afternoon because a new ash cloud is moving in.

Strange coincidences. We fly from Hobart and the next day they close down flights to the island. We fly from Sydney and the next day they cancel flights from Sydney.

Of course, it has nothing to do with us. No more than the fact that the northeast US airports basically shut down for days in December the day we flew out of the only one that was still open. Or British Air went on a strike the day we flew them from Europe last June.

Or the Iceland volcano stopped air traffic the day we arrived by ship in Greece last year. By the way, that was the day before Greece had a bloody national strike that stopped everything in its tracks.

Of course, bad things don't always happen promptly on the day after we leave places. Some times they take a little longer. It was literally weeks after we left Egypt and Jordan before those places ground to a halt during the Arab spring. And we had left Tunisia a couple of months before they had their national strikes.

To repeat, of course it has nothing to do with us. Just coincidences.

But if they are not -- if we are leaving some strange karmic spore behind after we visit places - then it's a bit spooky. I don't believe there is a cause-and-effect in play here, but if it is then I have a bad feeling that the effect is coming faster lately.

In our earlier days of travel, it seemed to take longer for stuff to happen once we left. Our first big-deal holiday was in Monterrat, and it took years before the volcano blew and removed that island from the list of places people visit. But it took less than a year from our visit for Christchurch to be ruined by earthquake.

Sure, we do not have any responsibility or link to any of this. But. Just in case, there's one ongoing disaster I really feel bad about. For it was only a couple of weeks after we left Alaska that John McCain named Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate.

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