I know -- a surprisingly negative approach to fun, family togetherness, relaxation. And really, I enjoyed being with my family and all of our various activities.
What makes me crazy is the vacation as an entity. I've been frank in the past about my difficulty adjusting (even at age 45) to the idea of being The Adult: the competent, authoritative one. The one with all the answers. However, when you talk about "going on a trip", all I can think about is the hundreds of logistical details: the non-stop responsibility.
See, I'm the one mainly responsible for finding where we're going, how to get there, where to stay, what to do. And I do the majority of the driving. Really, there are so many ways that I personally can screw it up that I can't help but think of "vacation" as synonymous with "disaster" -- or "series of disasters" -- waiting to happen.
As I warned in my previous post, we were away for two weeks of that very entity. And in the end, plenty went wrong, including getting very lost 3 times in 2 days, and a motel that was about a step-and-a-half above a homeless shelter... and you know what? We made it home in one piece. All-in-all, we had a great time; the kids will be talking about some of their fun experiences for months. Maybe the "point" of the trip for me (besides fun & relaxation) was to let go just a little and realize that the earth will keep turning even if we take the wrong exit now and then.
Since I've missed almost 3 weeks, I'm going to include a little "bonus" -- our vacation in numbers:
- 13 days, 2029.4 miles -- 919.1 down, 918.6 back, even though we took completely different routes.
- 7 states plus the District of Columbia; 9 pages of directions printed from Yahoo Maps, 11 different interstates.
- 92.417 gallons of gas (21.96 mpg, with a LOT of A/C) for a total of $265.93.
- 4 nights with 4 people in one motel room, followed by 4 continental breakfasts -- 2 of which made me glad I didn't live on that continent.
- 2 nights the kids "went to bed" in the van before we arrived at our destination; 2 nights my daughter woke up screaming that her legs hurt.
- 5 different fast-food chains (in order): McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway, Burger King, Roy Rogers; 2 lunches packed in the van. Actually I would be reluctant to repeat any of our "road meals", although the ribs were tasty at the Texas Steakhouse.
- 1.5 oz. in the package of Kissables they give you for completing the tour at Hershey's Chocolate World. OK, it's free... still, I think maybe they did it differently in the old days.
- Several hundred gallons of water dumped on us in The Boardwalk waterpark at Hersheypark -- who knew you could get wetter than "drenched"?
- $2000 estimated retail value of a week at the beach cottage we stayed in at Sunset Beach, NC... proving that it quite literally pays to have family connections.
- 77 years' difference in ages of youngest and oldest family members at the beach house.
- 7 consecutive days at the beach, bookended by 4 motel pools, and The Boardwalk: 12 in a row, if you're scoring along at home... leaving my body at a much higher percentage of water than normally (the remaining % is fast-food fries).
- 5 other people in the theater with my wife and me for the 9:40 pm showing of Ratatouille.
- 7 and 5 -- ages of children you probably shouldn't take to any of the Smithsonian museums.
- 2 hours spent circling DC after the museum in the vain hope of a parking space, or even figuring out exactly where we are. My congressman (OK, person) will be hearing about this!
- 4 train rides to get in & out of Manhattan in the quest for the Central Park Zoo. I'm grateful to my niece for tipping me off to the PATH train from NJ... otherwise we'd still be circling Manhattan looking for a place to park.
Maybe this positive mention will make up for my inexcusable failure to write a blog about my trip to her high school graduation, how I remember her as a baby, graduations as rites of passage, and how ancient I must be to have an 18-year-old niece, blah blah blah. :-Q
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Mark, You have GOT to relax! I'm a detail person, but one thing that living in the Balkans has taught me is that great vacations can happen without me stressing out about the details. We often just take off in the general direction we want to go (beach, mountains, new road) and figure we'll find a place to eat, sleep or whatever when the time comes. Granted, we don't have a 5 & 7 year old that we're responsible to feed and find a decent place to sleep.
ReplyDeleteHaving explored both NY and DC, I agree -- you have to park somewhere outside the city and take the train or Metro. The same is true of Boston.