What to do When Urine Trouble

In our last episode I left you in a seedy internet cafe on the streets of Montmarte, Paris. But the real story - as is often the case - lay not in the destination, but in the journey. Getting to Paris was a little trickier than I thought. Having spent the night at my friend Val?s in Cambridge, I crept out the door at the crack of dawn to catch an early bus. Since I was unfamiliar with the geography of the city I left myself some additional time to walk to the station. Val had drawn me a map but nevertheless I got lost walking through the subway (which is the term for an underground pedestrian walkway in England). I walked quite a ways before realizing I had gone in the wrong direction. Doubling back to the subway, I reoriented myself. Once again I went the wrong way. Time was running short and I began to get nervous. That was when I actually saw the bus zoom past me in the opposite direction, heading towards the station. I followed it with my eyes for a moment then bolted after it. My knees ached and my ankles feigned death as the 30lb pack on my back sent shockwaves down my legs with each clodhopping step. I was gasping for air, my lungs an angry furnace. With a little luck I managed to make it just before they closed the doors. Sweaty and exhausted I slumped in my seat and quickly drained about half of my Camelbak. This is known as foreshadowing.


The ride was supposed to be three hours long and the water from my Camelbak didn't filter through my kidneys and into my bladder until about 30 minutes after we boarded. Now this shouldn?t have been a problem. England has a great public transport system and these were nice coach buses with restrooms in the back. So you can imagine my surprise when I found the door to be locked. At first I thought maybe it was locked when the bus was moving so I waited until the next stop and tried again. No such luck. I asked around to see if there was some sort of secret British handshake one needed to perform in order to gain entry or perhaps some sort of pee-pee dance. They assured me it should be open and that any performace on my part would be unnecessary, though possibly entertaining. At the ninety minute mark I got up to ask the bus driver if he knew the door was locked. He said the only reason it would be locked is if it were out of order and, regardless, he had no key. Dejected, I headed back to my seat and tried to distract myself by writing in my journal and reading my guidebook. After two hours I felt internal organs quietly rearrange themselves to try and handle the overflow. Desperate thoughts passed through my head. My Camelbak was half empty; maybe I could refill it. I even had a sweatshirt in my lap I could use to cover myself up. I fidgeted with the bottle in my hand. No one was sitting next to me and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could pull if off without too many people noticing. The hell with that.

Two and a half hours into the ride I needed to go worse than any animal in the history of the earth. I ran to the front and explained to the bus driver that I literally wasn?t going to make it. He promised that he would scan ahead for a public toilet but reminded me that I would need change to get inside (public restrooms in England require money). I quickly rifled through my pockets and came up with several bills and some pocket lint, but nary a coin in sight. I was exasperated. Fortunately an old woman up front overheard my story and pulled a one pound coin from her purse just as the bus driver spotted a loo in the center divider.



We pulled over and I snatched the coin from her frail hand as a busload of passengers watched me hop over a railing, dodge two lanes of traffic, then hop another railing into the center divider. I lunged toward the restroom, my arm outstretched, the coin in my fingertips, for all the world looking like I was trying to win some sort of urology marathon. You can only imagine the shock on my face when my hand glanced off the slot.



The coin didn't fit. Glancing down I noticed a sign casually mentioning that only 20 and 50 pea coins would work. It was roughly this point in time that I decided there was no God. My eyes darted around and landed on a Pizza Hut on the far side of the street. I repeated the hop, dodge, hop situation on the far side of the street and dashed for the door. It was locked. Now imagine taking this whole scene in from the window of the bus. The color completely drained from my face as my second grade fears were about to be revisited. There was time for one last-ditch effort. Spotting some strange restaurant that appeared to be open I burst through the doors like a madman. Speaking some manic, garbled language I?m certain wasn't English I babbled something about a lifetime of indentured servitude, my first born child, and a one pound coin to use their restroom. A begrudging nod of the head saved an embarrasing mess in their entryway. My mind finally at ease, I carefully dodged traffic and leapt my way back across the street to the bus. The driver and passengers had all waited patiently while this scene unfolded before their incredulous eyes, yet no one uttered a word as the bus continued on its merry way. And that, my friends, is both the definition of English hospitality and "What to do When Urine Trouble".