Stephany Toman
Joy of Spa recently provided gift certificates for Travelogged's first contest ever. Participants were asked to share their most stressful travel story,and here are the two that netted the winning GC's! Enjoy!
Ali, of Ali's Adventure's winning post: 
I travel carry-on-only because I don't like the hassle of checking luggage. I also don't want to take so much stuff with me that I have to check luggage. My backpack is just barely small enough to pass for a carry-on-sized bag, so I get really stressed out about making sure it will fit in the overhead of a plane, and I get stressed out when checking in for a flight.
Recently while in Australia, I was checking in for my flight from Ayers Rock to Cairns. The ticketing agent made me weigh my backpack, and it was 12 kilos, 5 heavier than the allowable 7 kilos. So I rearranged and redistributed the contents of my backpack into my new knock-off Jimmy Choo purse (purchased in Hong Kong the week before) to get the weight down to 7 kilos. Once I got through security, I started putting everything I had taken out back into my backpack, because my purse with all its contents spilling out was not easy to manage.
While I was doing that, the ticketing agent came through security to hand me a tank top I had accidentally dropped. She must have noticed what I was doing and told some other employees because when it was time to board, one of those agents stopped me to weigh my bag again. Not satisfied with my reply that it had already been weighed, I had to rearrange again. The excuses I was given were 1) from the ticketing agent – that my “heavy” bag could fall out of the overhead compartment and injure someone (I don’t think 5 kilos makes much difference in this scenario), and 2) from the boarding agent – that it was a weight and balance issue.
I had to bite my tongue to stop from telling her that I have taken ground school, and I know that 5 kilos in the overhead or 5 kilos on the floor makes no difference to the weight and balance of the plane.
Guy & Girl Adventures, Joey & Michelle's Story: 
Recently we won a Joy of Spa gift card, valued at $50 by answering Travelogged’s question of what is the most stressful thing about travel!
For us, the majority of our travel stress stems from our GPS, Janice. We named our GPS Janice after Joey’s sister who gave us this GPS as a Christmas gift a few years back. While we are very grateful for the gift, we pretty much have a love/hate relationship with our girl. What’s so stressful about her is how she dings at the most random times indicating our freeway exit, turn, directional change, etc. Janice rarely gives us adequate warnings, especially when we need it most – in a city that we’ve never been to before or barely know!
For example, this past weekend we went to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Janice royally screwed us as we missed our exit after the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. (Janice dinged after we past the exit.) Janice proceeded to send us in circles around central Philly, as her dinging remained delayed. Luckily, Joey was the navigator, so he was able to figure out an approximate of where we were headed based on Janice’s confusing directions. However, this didn’t stop us from freaking out on our girl and damming her to GPS hell.
We live at the Jersey Shore, so we are an hour’s drive from NYC, an hour and a half from Philly, 3 hours from Baltimore, and 4 hours from Washington DC. While we are in the perfect location to enjoy both a city and beach lifestyle, getting to these locations is crazy stressful between cuttings off cars, driving around in circles, and praying we don’t get pulled over by police for our dangerous maneuvers!
While Janice may be the most stressful GPS in the world, we love our girl for making our trips more eventful and adventurous. Although Janice is never consistent, is always indecisive, and makes us cross over last-minute lanes of traffic, our girl always gets us where we’re going. The middle fingers we collect along the way, well, they’re just an added bonus!
