Category Archives: Vacations

end of the road

April 11, 2019 8:29 PM , Leave a Comment ,

(Adapted and expanded from a Facebook post from May 2018)

I don’t quite remember when I first began doing these “end of the trip” personal summaries.  Certainly as far back as the turn of the century when I was coming back home from Baltimore though I might have done it prior to that. I just remember that particular time sitting in a mostly empty Baltimore airport terminal scribbling some random thoughts about the trip into a notebook. Since that time I have done summaries for most personal vacations and some work trips.

I’m standing in front of my hotel in east London at 4 AM waiting for my Lyft to arrive. On the last day in the UK I finally get to see just a wisp of one of those famous London fogs that everyone goes on about.  Not impressed. I do however suddenly have a craving for a cigarette.  Maybe it’s the urban setting that’s doing it but the craving passes by fairly quickly.

I decided to give myself a treat after two weeks of ‘roughing it’ and got a room at an upscale hi-rise hotel. A glass and steel spire with nice new streets, expensive roof top restaurants, and all night bars and clubs where the current crop of stylish 20somethings hang out. So this is how the other half lives.

The temptation to stay another two or three nights was strong but all vacations have to come to an end and soon the night wound down fairly quickly as I had a dawn flight out of Heathrow.

The next morning up pulls an E-class Mercedes and the driver comes out wearing a peaked cap. I didn’t ask for a fancy car and I suddenly felt rather scruffy in my travel-worn clothes and my travel backpack.

We whisk down the empty streets of London towards Paddington station. Even on empty streets it would take about an hour to get to Heathrow. The Paddington express would get me there in fifteen minutes.

The driver turns on the radio. A morning DJ is doing what morning DJs all over the US would do. Playing songs, talking to callers, getting people pumped up for the work day to come.

I could live here. I could get used to using the underground and walking everywhere and the smaller houses and running from one small store to another to get things instead of finding everything in one store.

I could probably make a go of it in any of the countries that I visited. You can learn local languages and customs fairly quickly if you want to or are forced to.

At the Airport I swap out the last of my English pounds, Euros, and Korunas for good old American dollars.

I’m thinking about how I’ll get home once I step out from Hobby airport in Houston and what the weather will be like.

My mind is shifting back out of vacation mode. I planned everything beforehand so I had little to think about during the trip. I just went to my next destination and it was there waiting for me.

While people around me went about their jobs and lives I wandered round with nothing to do. Except… joggers. Walking around London and Paris in the middle of the day I would encounter joggers and I would wonder what kind of job that they had that allowed them to take a jog in the middle of the day.

For the last two weeks my room was cleaned, my bed was made, my food was cooked, and my transport was arranged but now I’m going back to the real world.

Bills to pay, appointments to arrange and keep, checklists and schedules to make. Beds to make, meals to cook, places to drive to. A life.

My first real vacation in four years. My first real mental break since my dad died. I have come to terms with the fact that he will no longer play a part in my decision-making process.

For the past five years I’ve planned my life round his needs and now that chapter is closed. I can now put my needs in the forefront. The thought frightens me a bit.

I feel a bit like a soldier that’s just come home from a war with no clue about the future.

I had my daily routines, my schedule, the course of my life all built around him and putting him ahead of everything else so that he’d never want for anything or that his health might suffer. But that’s gone now and I have to do things for my benefit and I find that hard to do.

During the vacation I tried to remember what my ‘life plans’ were before I committed myself to take care of my parents. Those notions of what was “going to happen” seem like they belong to some other person.  My life path has gone onto a totally different course.

Twelve years ago I realized that my dad would need care and what and who I could depend upon to help. Ten years ago I bought a house to take care of both of my parents, a big Four bedroom house with front and a back lawn. Totally impractical for a childless bachelor but something that would give them the space that they had been accustomed to.  Five years ago they came to live with me.

I gave up a normal social life. The invites to events and parties trickled down to a few and then to none. No point inviting me if I always said I couldn’t go. I’ve become contented with a movie or a play on the weekends.  The parents and the job filled most of my waking hours.

The job I didn’t particularly like but it would let me work from home and stay close to them so I had to keep going. This came in particularly useful in the last year of my dad’s life when I had to rush him to the hospital more than once.

But now I’m coming home tabula rasa, with a clean slate. My dad is gone, my job is gone. I lost my job in March.

Maybe my mind couldn’t concentrate on the work anymore, or maybe I didn’t see the point in staying at a job I didn’t like with no compelling reason to stay, or maybe after 15 years of doing inside sales I just burnt out.

Sales was never a good fit for me. I’ve never been a born salesman. Somehow I kept it going because I had to. But I don’t see myself going back. Not to that company at least and probably not to the sales field.

Don’t ask me what’s to come for me. I don’t know. I’ve got savings so I’m okay for a while. I told myself that I was taking this trip to get some inspiration or some new idea of where to go and what to do. I think I knew that wasn’t true.

Truthfully I just needed time away from me.

Maybe now I can force myself to look at my situation and see something that I wasn’t seeing before. Get a clue about what to do.

Landing in Ireland and running to my next destination.

(Errata – June 2019.  One of my British correspondents rightly pointed out that Lyft does not operate in the UK. I went back through my Uber ride records and confirmed that it was Uber.  All I can say is that it was 4 in the morning and I earnestly remember that it was a Lyft but I was mistaken.)

Posted in: life in general, memories, travel, vacations, work

Making the most out of your travel experience the online way

May 26, 2015 6:40 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Travel can be a nightmare sometimes.  Whether it’s for relaxation or for business, at best travel is a chore that you have to get through in order to get on with your plans.  At worse it can be a nightmare that never seems to end.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. I get the fact that years ago when you had to rely on travel agents and paper tickets and possibly misbooked hotel rooms that things could often go awry but nowadays we have robust and well-developed and refined travel systems out there.  You really have almost no excuse not to have a good trip.

Let’s start with booking the trip.  If you just watch an hour’s worth of TV or listen to radio or read a magazine you will come across advertising for some sort of online travel agent.  I’m not saying you need to book through them but you can at the very least get online and compare prices for days and days and find those cheap tickets to almost anywhere.

You can take advantage of government security programs that let you minimize your time at security checkpoints in airports.  You can do a lot of the annoying paperwork that you had to do at the kiosks online and just drop your bags off and walk calmly to your plane with plenty of time.

Once you get to where you’re going you can arrange ground transport by taxi or über or airport shuttle.  You can tell people where to pick you up and if you’ll be late.

With hotels you can look at the actual properties where you’ll be staying and see how well you like it.  You can find online reviews or ask other people if they’ve stayed there before.

The most exciting thing about our new online life is that we can look at a location and see if there are attractions, restaurants, and other things that we can do besides what we expected.  We are no longer bound to be stuck in a hotel or an attraction.  We can now explore all the possibilities that a location can offer.

Weather of course is so obvious that it’s almost not worth mentioning but any little advantage can help.

So look at where you currently live and think about all the possibilities around you.  If you were a stranger what things would you like to know about your location?  Make up a list and then apply that to wherever it is you want to go and find out that information.

 

Posted in: activities, advice, hotels, travel, vacations, work

Staycation 2007

January 16, 2015 6:49 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is a reprinted blog from 2007.  Sorry about doing 2 reprints in a row.  I had a late meeting (ironically about blog writing and one of the topics was how to plan my blog more efficiently) and had to scramble for a filler post.]

September

Work piles up. It always does no matter how far ahead you think you are, you’re never really ahead. Clients in Canada, Germany, India. All of them want their products and want them now. The boss wants a proposal ready for one of the companies biggest clients and wants it today so you drop all the other urgent projects and work on that.

22 miles to work and 22 miles back and always traffic, always, no matter if its 4:30 AM in the morning or 4 PM in the afternoon. 240 hours driving per year, which works out to 10 solid days of nothing but driving.

It all boils down to stress and plenty of it. It’s been a rough year. Not financially but physically and mentally. Specially mentally. I’ve gotten to the point that I sometimes try to open the office door with my house keys. A Freudian psychologist would call that a slip and a sign that I have begun thinking about the office as my real home.

Whereas last year I was excited about exploring New England, this year nothing appealed to me. When the word vacation came to mind all I could think about was plane schedules, taxi cabs, hotel checkout times, renting cars, all the garbage that comes with a trip.  Made me exhausted just thinking about it. I put it off and waited till finally I said “Screw it. I’m having my vacation at home.”  A new trend becoming more and more popular.  The staycation.

Houston: The new capital of the southwest

I usually make fun of tourists that come to Houston. It’s not much of a touristy city. Oh sure it’s as modern as any in the US. The hospital system is the best in the world, giant buildings downtown, hundreds of miles of freeways, and it has all the requisite major sports teams. But when you come down to it, that s all it has. There’s no Hollywood hills(there’s no hills period), or Times Square, or Golden gate bridge or anything.  We ourselves don’t have a beach or mountains or hundreds of years of accumulated charm and history. It’s a modern factory town (with office buildings replacing the factories). A nice place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit.

But like any big city dweller there are things out there that you could do but somehow you never end up doing.  I suppose you take them for granted and tell yourself that you will do them another time.  So I had that in mind for my staycation.

My body woke me up at 4 AM Monday morning as it always does. I tossed and turned but it’s no use. So I wandered round the house and finally decided to get breakfast but not in the house somewhere that I would never go on a weekday. I went to the 59 diner on highway 59 and Kirby, about 15 miles from where I lived in the suburbs.

If you ever saw the movie pulp fiction, the diner scene, you got a pretty good idea of what it looked like. Mid century design and lots of memorabilia from that era.  A 50’s menu that hadn’t heard of low-fat diets, and waitresses that were probably here when the diner opened up so long ago.  A large and filling breakfast but nothing special.

Returned home around 8:30, and I saw a pack of teens and pre-teens kids hanging around near my house. At first I thought this was a group of gang kids but then I saw the backpacks and books and it dawned on me they were waiting for the school bus. Then I noticed a lot of people were just taking off for work. How odd I thought. All this stuff happens here while I am at work.  Back at the office I would have been working for over 3 hours by now.

I took the money I was going to spend on the trip and put all of that into my savings account. After that I was out of ideas for the day, so I watched TV and tried to lay around. Suburbs are eerily quiet during the day. I would look out the front door and see nothing going on, and I would listen to the house creak every now and then. Not a healthy situation (from a mental health point of view), so I decided to find something to do.

I took a spin around Loop 610, the main bypass freeway that rings most of inner Houston.  Not just part of it but all of it.  Seeing parts of town I hadn’t seen for ages.  The Astrodome, the east side of Houston, passing by north end and then back by the Galleria.

Wednesday on a whim I went to the Galleria. This was the premier mall of Houston. Other malls were larger but the Galleria was the “it” place to shop in Houston. In the well to do part of town. Back in the oil boom days, the well to do of Houston would come here as they do now and put in a hard days shopping and lunching.

I though it odd since I remembered a story I had heard years back when I was a stock boy in a supermarket. An old Mexican that worked with me told me back when he was a kid in the 40’s that the land where the mall lay was all bayous and forests and his dad used to take him hunting rabbits. Now its all concrete and steel, Jaguars, Beemers, and Mercedes.

Back in my high school days the truant from my school would head here to basically loiter round the mall till the school day was done. I hadn’t been to the Galleria in about 8 years, and I wasn’t prepared for the changes. I always knew it had been a high-end mall but this was pure culture shock. They had expanded the mall, added tons of new shops. It was all gleaming and shiny.

Clothing boutiques of all sorts, jewelry stores with more gold, silver, and gems than was ever dreamt of by any pirate. All the old stores like Foley’s and Joske’s were gone replaced by Macy’s and Nordstroms. And people, tons and tons of people. What were they doing here? Didn’t they have jobs? It was 11AM, why weren’t these people at work? It was a mixture of culture shock and outrage. Was I really so out of touch?

Dining

My life is fairly regimented.  Go in to work, do your job, go home.  Every week day and then on the weekends you can do something different.  Always the same thing every week.  When you have this siege type mentality about your daily life you dream about simple pleasures.

Going out for a simple steak dinner is one such pleasure. The Outback steakhouse is just a step above Chili’s really. But since I hadn’t been to one in so long it was like an oasis for me. The steak was tough and ridiculously over salted, the baked potato was a cluster bomb of sour cream, bacon, and butter but I didn’t care. Such a long-long time. And that was the problem. A couple of hours passed and my stomach wasn’t doing so well. Maybe its eating the same bland diet month after month or just overdoing it. Close to losing it but I didn’t.

Kaneyama, a wonderful sushi place with Miso soup to die for, colorful and tasty sushi and sashimi, and teriyaki steak that seems to melt in your mouth. Kasra’s Persian grill with light pillow bread and a Persian salad. The Palm Club, another steakhouse with over the top prices but with a classic atmosphere that makes you swear you were in a Fitzgerald novel in the 20’s.  So many good places to eat yet I never go to them.

Liquor. My drinking days are past me. I had some wine during the week but nothing else. Back in my heyday I could down a Long Island Ice tea, a couple of shots of three wise men, and a flaming Dr. pepper (remind me to tell you bout that one day), Nowadays….I had a couple of glasses of wine Wednesday night and had a mild headache on Thursday morning.

People Watching

People watching is a bad habit of mine. Whether it’s at a mall or a park or at the museum like I did this week. Always on the outside looking in. Hordes of school kids at the museum being chaperoned by a frazzled school teacher and a curator who seems like she’s past the point of total boredom.  Cliques of upper class ladies at lunch in some fancy restaurant in the Galleria next to the skating rink, complaining about how rough life was while next door at a pizza parlor there’s a young couple trying to make lunch out of a single slice of pepperoni pizza for them and their 5-year-old kid.  Little vignettes of life.

Epilogue: Thoughts and plans

This type of vacation gives you a lot of time to think. Is this the type of life I want for myself? Am I just going to count down the weeks till next year’s vacation? Why was it that I took things so seriously while others just seem to cruise through life without a care? After seeing all this can I really go back to the 10 to 12 hour work day with nothing waiting for me at home?

Posted in: Houston, thought, vacations

Massages, the end of trips, and looking forward. Vacation 2014 Part 3 Friday and conclusions

December 13, 2014 6:11 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’m lying on a table.  The scents of jungle flowers, and citrus are heavy in the air.  Soothing music plays in the background.  I am being massaged. My travel buddy suggested it would be the perfect way to end the vacation and prepare for the trip back.

This is not the first time that I’ve gotten a massage but was certainly better than the last time.  Back in 2013 I got a massage at Mohonk Mountain lodge.  The massage itself was great but the problem was that I had never had a massage in my life and I was more than a little nervous.

This time it was different.  I knew what to expect and enjoyed a 90 minute long deep tissue massage. As I was being worked on I had time to reflect.  Not just on the past week but the past year and my life in general.

Life had been good this past year.  No denying that.  But I had many things left undone and many goals left incomplete.  Even if I had completed these goals, the pressures and strains of life had carved deep into me.

The point of this vacation had been to undo those strains and pressures.  To let some of those difficulties in life resolve themselves and just to let my mind and body relax and breathe.  In that it was successful.

I usually write these things up at the end of the trip or back home days after I get back.  This time I can’t.  I don’t have the time.  I will be in the midst of finishing the year and preparing for the next as December draws to a close.  But now I don’t mind.  I now have a better perspective on the way forward than the perspective I had a week ago.

2015 will eclipse 2014 in accomplishments and will be a breakout year for me in several ways.  I can’t say all the credit goes to this vacation but I have to give it its fair due.  This has really opened my eyes in several ways and let me see the way forward.

Till next we meet, Vacation.  I don’t know where it will be or when but I look forward to it.

 

Posted in: activities, vacations

ATV’s, zip lines, and coastal restaurants. Vacation 2014 part 3 – Thursday

December 12, 2014 8:16 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We had signed up for one last major activity during the trip.  The Montezuma adventure.  The pamphlets said something about ATV’s and zip lines but I didn’t pay too much attention.

For those who don’t know, an ATV is an all terrain vehicle.  Basically a 4 wheeled motorcycle.  As it turned out we would be (or rather I would be) driving to our location on this. The guide, Juan, showed us how to start it and shift it into gear and basically let us get to it.  My travel partner looked at it and recommended that I drive.  Even though we were both novices she felt safer letting me drive.  Why? I don’t know.

We set off down the road in motorcycle helmets and sunglasses looking like a pair of hipsters.  I would pop the clutch each time I shifted gears and we both bounced round on the back of that behemoth.  She was gripping my shoulders as tightly as possible till I suggested it would be better for her to wrap her arms round me to hang on.

We got to the zip lines.  This was on top of a hill and you got hooked into a harness and sped along the treetops at breakneck speed.  We were joined by some German couples and slowly descended down the hill.  Nice but not too exciting as my friend had done zip lines several times.

Then we headed to the Montezuma water fall.  Here’s where things got interesting.  The trail up to the waterfall was along a sometimes steep and twisty mountain road.  I nearly drove us off the edge of a ravine a couple of times.  My friend was clinging for dear life with her arms tightly laced round my waist and screaming in my ear “Will, Look out!!”  All I’m thinking at this point is that I don’t want to get her killed.

After the second time we nearly went off-road I was nearly ready to give up but she seemed to have faith in me and so we tried again.

Eventually by driving slower and more carefully we got there.  We had to hike to get to the falls. Up and down slippery rocks.  We got there.  Impressive but honestly too touristy.  Too many people hanging out, cooking lunch, selling cheap trinkets. Hippie hollow back in Austin has (or at least had) a similar vibe.

We left there and went to a nearby town for a spot of lunch.  Some wonderful fish dishes at a local restaurant/hotel.  We sat and talked with our guide Juan for hours.  After a brief walking tour of the town we went back to our resort.  The trail back was much smoother and my control improved considerably though it was still a white knuckle ride all the way.

Near town we had to contend with traffic.  Cars, motorcycles, other ATV’s, and pedestrians, that were all seemingly intent on getting in our way and getting killed.

Okay, it wasn’t all that bad and my travel buddy yelled encouragements throughout the trip back so that definitely helped a lot.  Not something that I would do every day but definitely something you should try once in your life.

We ended Thursday with work emails and concerns from back home.  Houston was calling in more ways than one.  I think every traveler experiences this feeling in one way or another.  For as wonderful as a vacation may be (and this was a wonderful trip), one begins to long for the familiar surroundings, experiences, and routines of home.

 

Posted in: activities, vacations

monkeys, bicycles, long runs, just getting to know someone. Vacation 2014 Part 3

December 11, 2014 6:14 AM , Leave a Comment ,

After Monday full day we tried for a half day trip to the Curu National preserve on Tuesday.  We got up extra early and met our guide.  His name was Pablo and apart from being a tour guide he was also a graduate student studying the local archaeology, a chef, and a conservationist.  Just an exceptionally talented young man.

We wound our way over hills and valleys towards the preserve.  Even in the of Winter, Costa Rica was exceptionally green and beautiful.  The Preserve was a park reserved for local endangered wildlife.  Pablo went through the entire tour and pointed out the various types of plants and fauna.  He didn’t seem to be reciting prepared notes.  He genuinely knew what all these things were and was genuinely interested in the topic.

We got to see three types of monkeys.  The almost black howler monkeys, the white-faced monkeys, and the spider monkeys.  It was an amazing almost safari like adventure.

After we returned from the trip we went running.  A bit of a mistake on my part as I am not a day time runner.  When it comes to running I am almost a vampire.  Direct sunlight saps my strength.  Running near noontime with the hot tropical sun on me didn’t feel great but with a lot of encouragement from my friend I made it.

We had a lazy afternoon.  She went and had a massage and I lounged and did some email work.  We then had dinner and then came the favorite part of my day.  Just hanging out and talking and working on the various things that needed to be done.

Wednesday we programmed as a “lazy” day.  We hung out in the morning and talked.  We had another run earlier in the morning and this felt much better for me. We talked through most of the run and I got to know a lot about her.

We then really got adventurous and went on bikes to the local town to find lunch.  We zipped over to a “soda” which is what they call the local diners and ordered a chicken lunch. Both of us were nervous about possible parasites in raw food so we just stuck to the chicken and left the rest.

The local town, St Teresa, is pretty much a surfer town.  Surfer kids in their 20s walking down the road shirtless and carrying surfboards, all sorts of hostels, cheap diners, and beach stores.  Everyone just focused on the tourism trade.

In the afternoon we worked on more of our emails and work items and personal goals.  The real world always seems to intrude doesn’t it?  We ended the afternoon with a swim in the pool as a fiery red sun set over the pacific ocean.

Just a perfect day.  Just goes to show that you don’t need to be doing “something” each and every day of your vacation.  You can sometimes just do “nothing” and have a good day too.

 

Posted in: activities, vacations

planes, surfing, horseback riding, and just relaxing. Vacation 2014 part 2

December 9, 2014 6:23 AM , Leave a Comment ,

So in the last episode my travel partner and I had planned a trip together.  We had picked out Costa Rica and were on the verge of traveling.  We reasoned that the airport would not be too crowded on a Saturday and that it wouldn’t be too much of a problem to travel and we didn’t need to arrive two hours early.

I got to the airport and found the opposite.  Huge crowds waiting for us and everyone in the check in line had their own special problem.  By the time I got to the front they had closed the booking for the flight.  Luckily my travel buddy talked to one of the agents, explained the situation and got him to reopen the line for us.

But our day was just beginning.  We got on the plane and she said “Do you smell oil?”  Indeed we all did.  The hydraulic system on the plane had failed.  Everyone on board had to be shuffled off and we had to hike to another plane.  This in turn was delayed for take off.

One little thing after another seemed to delay us more and more.  We finally set our feet on the ground in San Jose about three hours late and had missed our original flight.  On top of that we had to search for our luggage.  We caught the next leg of the trip that would take us to the Nicosia peninsula.  The plane was a small prop plane.  That was a wonderful experience.

We landed in a tiny airstrip on the coast seemingly wrenched out of the surrounding jungle and found the hotel had sent a car to wait for us. A bumpy ride to say the least.  My friend didn’t look too good.  We hadn’t eaten all day and the van ride was aggravating.  But she’s a trooper and kept it together.

We arrived at night and really couldn’t see much of the property.  We got a fairly large villa with two bedrooms.  But what was needed more than anything was food.  That helped out the situation a lot.

On Sunday we got a good look round the property and planned our week.  The place has quite a range of activities.  Two things we picked out for the week were surfing and horseback riding for Monday.

Surfing.

Anyone that knows me, knows I’m not the “cowabunga, dude” or tribal arm band tattoo wearing, bro type of guy.  But surfing seemed to be one of the main activities on the coast.  After some good-natured cajoling by my partner, I decided to go for it.

My instructor, Miguel, was extremely patient with me.  He explained all the techniques gave me a lot of pointers and kept on wading out into the surf with me over and over again as I tried to get on the board and would inevitably fall off.  I finally hit my knee on an underwater rock and I decided that was it for me.  For the record I did get up on the board once…before falling off again.

But the fun wasn’t over.  We were both going horseback riding in the afternoon.  It turned out that Miguel was the guide for this too.  My partner is an excellent rider and was frequently ahead of everyone.  I on the other hand hadn’t been on a horse in thirty years.  We wound our way up hills and down valleys inside a huge ranch.  We finally ended up on the beach and rode for home.  A pleasant little ride and the best part was that I didn’t fall off.

I shouldn’t say that. No.

The best part has been relaxing with my friend.  She is just so wonderful to be with.  We’ve talked for hours and hours.  We’ve laid out on the beach reading and watched the sun set over the Pacific together.

We both needed this trip for our own personal reasons.  Life can get so overwhelming and tiresome at times.  It really warps you in a way.  But vacations serve the purpose of letting all those little knots untangle themselves naturally and allow you to find your balance once again.

The trip had a rough start but hopefully the rest of the journey will be a pleasant life affirming experience.

 

Posted in: activities, thought, travel, vacations

Vacation trips, sorting life out and just decompressing. Vacation 2014 Part 1

December 7, 2014 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

One of the things that I get out of vacations is the chance to step out of my daily routine and really explore what my life has been about this past year.

Life has been good this year.  I can’t deny that.  To say otherwise would be a grave disservice to those that don’t have it as good as me. But even when things are going good they can be daunting, challenging, and otherwise put you into a state where you’re stretched to the limit.

Such a thing was and is happening to me.  I have so many things going that some days I am left in state of paralysis jut trying to decide what, where, and when to do things.

This trip was mandatory.

Planning began months ago.  Maybe even as far back as New York.  I sort of knew I would need it even then.  The first step as always is figuring out where to go and what to do.  I began with the most improbable and impractical of destinations.

The Maldives islands.  Literally on the other side of the world.  Why there?  Cause it was there?  I don’t know.  I wanted something exotic.  Something no one else I knew could say they’d done.  A friend pointed out that this would entail 4 days of solid travel on my part.  Sort of killed that option right then and there.

I started on a long list of location in this hemisphere that I could enjoy closer to home.  Honestly nothing was sticking.  I haven’t been to these places and I do find them to be alluring but the plain fact of the matter is that it would be another vacation alone.  I could vacation anywhere in the world and still be alone and quite frankly I had already been there and done that.

So things sort of went into limbo till late August until a chance text conversation sparked things up again.

A friend of mine was looking for a travel partner to share in her vacation.  She was in need of her own vacation to sort things out.  She suggested we team up for a joint vacation.  I thought about it less than a second and agreed.  She was thrilled at the idea and we began making our plans.

Planning was….daunting.  We had about 2 or so months to plan, book, and prepare and we were both busy beyond belief.  We floated several dates, nothing was open, she was busy, then I was busy.  Nothing was getting done.

But seemingly at the end of our tether we found a resort (or rather she did) that we both agreed we liked.  The dates were open, the flights available, the booking agent was cooperative and with a little disbelief on both our parts we found that we had done it. We had booked our vacation.

We met up in early November and we couldn’t quite believe it.  I still don’t to a degree.

With less than a month I began putting together some necessities for the trip and clearing my schedule for things to come.  The last was the hardest part.  With the way that modern office life is, we can’t really afford to ignore work totally and we can’t totally unplug.  I had to scramble to get a cushion of time opened up for the trip.  I imagine she had to do the same.

Finally the day came and I found myself at the airport waiting in the ticket line.  That’s when thing took a turn for the worse…

 

Posted in: activities, vacations

vacation work

December 1, 2014 7:04 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Even vacations can be work.  Well not really but yeah.

My daily routine and my life doesn’t end just because I’m going on vacation.  If anything, my life gets concentrated.  Those little breathers that we all have built into our daily routine disappear and I find out just how much I can really get done when the pressure is on.

I have to dig out the suitcase and take out of it all those things I “temporarily” stored in there and move them somewhere else.  Think about and find whatever clothes I will take on the trip and acquire those things that I don’t have and will need and if the place you’re going to is out of season, good luck finding beach wear in the Winter.

Some things I will buy for the trip and some things that I normally use everyday will go with me.  But which ones?

The personal kit.  That tube of toothpaste is dried out, get a new one, that razor is rusty, these pepto bismol pills are out of date, those band aids are all stuck together. Most hotels carry things like soap and shampoo but you know the one time you don’t pack them…

Cram it all into the suitcase.  Put the socks into the shoes.  Packing cubes are great but no matter what you only have so much space.  Play Tetris and try to change cubes around to get more things in.

Electronics.  How much to take and how much is overkill?

Besides all of that, like I said my life doesn’t stop because I’m going on a trip.  I have work to juggle round.  Clients that need to know you won’t be there and arrangements to make at the office.  At home I have to tag people to come check on things at home while I’m away.  I have to make sure my bills are paid and up to date till at least a week after I return so I don’t get caught short on time.

I still have to eat of course so grocery shopping.  Some of the items I will take on the trip, I need to use everyday.  I can’t pack them yet so I have to make sure I have space for it in the suitcase and not forget to pack it at the last-minute and hope that it doesn’t disrupt all the packing.

The seconds tick away as the departure date draws near.  Nerve wracking in a way.  Once the day arrives whatever gets done, gets done.  Everything else you will have to do without.

Then of course once your vacation is under way the clock starts running again and you’re counting the minutes till you have to go back.

Posted in: life in general, plans, vacations, work

The reason why

October 18, 2014 6:53 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Life isn’t merely meant to be survived.  I’ve noticed that attitude among people more and more as I get older.  They just merely want to get through the day and start the next one.  Like some overly complicated maze that we as rats have to run round to get our daily cheese.

Living life this way is damaging.  I don’t care how stress free your life is or how mentally tough you are.  This will damage you over time.  We build up toxic and damaging “mental gunk” in our thought processes.  We unconsciously develop bad mental habits and corrosive attitudes.

Vacations aren’t merely luxuries or a foolish waste of time.  They serve a very real purpose.  Even if it consists merely of sitting on the couch and watching TV for an extended period of time, you need to step back from that routine that you’ve worked out for yourself and you need time to consider.

Consider if this is where you really want to be going in life.  Whether what you’re doing in your life is really the best thing to do or whether you should change your routine.  But mainly you need to unplug and relax.

Consider the mind at work or in its routine as an athlete that gets no rest.  All the time going and going and going.  Like some sort of marathon runner.  Even the most adept and determined runner will hit a wall from time to time and not be able to continue racing.  The results are not pretty.  Recovery is a long and arduous process.

Why then do Americans have such an adversarial relationship with vacations?  We have the shortest vacation time on average of all the industrialized world.  I feel that some people almost feel ashamed of taking time off.  Will the world end if you take some time off?  I can assure you that this ball of rock and metal that we live on won’t fall apart if you take some time off.

So you still need to justify it?  Vacation with a purpose then.  Make it a vacation tailored to meet your relaxing and therapeutic needs.  Take yoga classes, mud baths or massages, learn a new hobby or sport.  Visit a place that you’ve never been before or would normally never go to.

Most of all realize that you weren’t meant to live inside a cubicle or air-conditioned building.

Posted in: attitude, life in general, travel, vacations