On Vacations

My brother brought up the topic of vacations this weekend.  As a kid in Alabama, you more or less....went on 'farm-adventure-trips'.  My dad had three basic ingredients for his vision of a vacation: (1) the time away from the farm could be three days and two nights, (2) some element of this trip had to be tied farming, and (3) you tended to leave at 4 AM on day one. 

For me, the most interesting trip was the one where we ended up at the 'Arch' in St Louis and actually rode to the top in that train-vehicle.  I stood there for an hour admiring the 'Arch' and the amount of effort it took to construct it. 

For me, the road-trip was 50-percent of the enjoyment of the trip because you got to see a lot of the country.  Around a dozen years after the 'Arch' trip....I had a two-week period of leave with the Air Force, and drove from Louisiana....out to Arizona/Vegas, and then got onto Highway 1 in California and drove all the way up to Seattle.....then returned via the Rockies.  After that, I got the road-trip thing out of my system.

The most chilled-out vacation I ever took?  Around twenty years ago....I got talked into a trip to Denmark and rented a 1890s-built farm house about three miles from the Danish beach area for two weeks.  Yes, this place had this odd mildew smell, but this was the two-week period where it only rained one single afternoon, and I rode a dozen times on a bike out to the beach.  We brought tons of beef in a cooler and bar-b-q'ed almost daily.  I probably had the lowest blood-pressure of my entire life at the end of that two weeks.

The most challenging trip?  I had that 2017 Dubai-New Zealand trip which had nearly forty listed items tied into that 17-day period....from airline reservations, parking reservations for the car, hotels, car rentals, tours, shuttle bus pick-ups, etc.  I probably spent well over a hundred man-hours in the planning stage and executing the arrangements.    I had a binder in my carry-on bag which listed out times, phone numbers, emergency arrangements, maps to nearby restaurants, etc.  My dad's arrangement business?  Other than a packed bag and a box of cheap cigars.....that was it.  Whatever happened.....happened.