When I was younger, my family didn’t take many vacations because we were a one income family and my father didn’t make good money until he got his electrician license. So there were years that would go by where there was no vacation. I’d go to summer camp and that was it.
When we did go on vacation, it was what my parents wanted to do. Yes, we spent a week or so in New England where we didn’t stop at Boston at all, but yet spent time touring boring mansions in Newport. Our last family vacation was on the West Coast when I was 18. For years, I wanted to go to California. We did, but with a bus tour since my father didn’t want to drive in all that freeway traffic. Based on how he drove, that might have been a good idea. The problem with a group tour is that if it’s not on the tour, you don’t go. So Disneyland in Anaheim wasn’t a place I’d visit for another 10 years.
As an adult, all that debt from the mortgage, student loans, and the Hurricane Sandy cleanup has been retired. So vacations and conference trips have created a lot of great memories. We’ve also huge New York Rangers fans and made some road trips. So with my wife needing a day off and the Rangers playing in Ottawa, a last-minute vacation was in the books. An 8-hour drive up and an 8-hour drive down in 38 hours, probably isn’t a vacation.
The Rangers blew a two-goal lead and lost in overtime. Outside of the horror of a game, I probably never had this much fun in that short period. Outside of the game, sleeping, and driving, a good chunk of the time was shopping. Went to our first Canadian Costco and there were enough goodies to fill up the trunk of our Mazda 3. Canada is like a cleaner version of the United States with better-behaved people and different foods you can’t find. Costco has the Canadian Cadbury bars and Schwartz’s smoked meat, which can make a good run against Katz’s pastrami as the best Jewish deli sandwich worldwide. I found the Extra Long Twizzler Nibs that Hershey’s stopped producing.
Our lives are filled with memories and I’ve had a lot better memories as an adult than I ever had as a child because I’m doing things, all of us want to do.
