A lemon cake. That’s what I won at a school carnival in third grade at Forest Hills Elementary in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, USA.  Contestants walked around a circle marked by numbers on the floor while music played until the cake walk ringleader stopped the song. If the ringleader announced your number, you won the cake.

Despite the fact I didn’t particularly like lemon cake, I was quite impressed with my prize and my luck. It’s a good thing because that is essentially the only award by chance I have received. I’m not really counting a pair of ski gloves I won at a raffle last year since, basically, almost all raffle contestants  were out skiing or in the lodge drinking beer when the tickets were drawn. Due to several no-shows, I claimed the gloves with one of the last remaining tickets.

However, my luck karma reached jackpot levels at the end of 2012. After entering a Facebook contest sponsored by Lonley Planet, Tourism Australia and Virgin Australia Airlines, I won two roundtrip tickets to Australia. Yeah. I know. HUGE. MASSIVE. MEANT TO BE!! People really do win these things.

The Universe must have been listening. Ever since my family and I returned broke in 2011 from my exchange teaching stint in Adelaide, I have joked that I need to find someone else to pay for or sponsor our travel. The Universe came through — BIG TIME.

The contest involved writing a 25-words-or-less bit about who you would take to Australia and why. Of course, I chose my husband, Kurt. I must admit that in my entry writeup, I didn’t want to admit that we had lived in Oz already. So I wrote something rather vague and cheesy. Here’s the spiel:

“A real homebody,  my husband Kurt has just recently given travel a go; I want to share the world with him!”

I figured the part about “recently giving travel a go” was vague enough to cover…”he hadn’t really traveled outside the country until we moved to Australia, and then we traveled HEAPS.”

The contest also involved creating fake postcards for which you downloaded FB profile photos. Here’s the collection:

I didn’t think much of the contest because, of course, I hadn’t won anything since the lemon cake. However, in October 2012, an e-mail with a red exclamation point showed up in my inbox.

Congratulations! You’ve won the Lonely Planet & Tourism Australia competition‏!

After freaking out and then determining this e-mail was legit, I started weaving the dream. Kurt, who is the realistic one in our relationship, pointed out several reasons why both of us couldn’t go on this trip.

Although we had free tickets to get to Oz, we still had to get to Los Angeles, pay for expenses in Australia, and in the meantime, Kurt wouldn’t make any money while we were gone. Plus, we would need someone to look after the kids.  My argument that we could live off of peanut butter and bread and I would promise to go easy on refrigerator magnets didn’t convince him.

Basically, it wasn’t a problem because I asked my sister, Suzanne, to come with me. She immediately said, “yes!.” Suz and I haven’t traveled together in ages, and we were both thrilled at the opportunity to hang out together. After several weeks of calendar wrangling, we settled on May. The Prize coordinators at Lonely Planet had stated: The tickets are valid for 6 months from date of issue 01/09/2012. 

So, we were set. The tickets were valid from January 9 until July 9. At the time I thought it seemed a bit strange to begin the ticket eligibility on Jan 9, but hey, WHATEVER! I e-mailed Caroline, the Virgin Australia prize coordinator, just last month and told her of my plans to travel in May. Here was her response:

“The prize tickets are valid for 6 months from 19^th October, so to keep within the validity you need to depart by 19^th April.  The return date can be later but the outbound flight does need to be within the 6 month period.”

WHAT???

Well…I had been back in the US long enough that I read the dates the way a Yank would. Month, Date, Year. So what was really September 1, I read as January 9 (We’ll ignore the fact that I completely disregarded that 2012 was listed, which would have been a dead giveaway about the time frame).

In addition to finding out my dates were totally screwed up, I also knew that the entire month of April would be blacked out because of school holidays in Australia. “CRAP!!!” (an abbreviated and toned down version of what I really said aloud in a high-pitched tone)

I quickly e-mailed Caroline and said:

Hi Caroline,

I’m realizing now that I read the dates Lonely Planet sent me in an American fashion and thought the month came first, the day and then the year. So I read 1/9/ as January 9, and thought I had until July 9 to book a flight.