The Square Peg – Surprise!
©
S. Bradley Stoner
So, this morning I saw
a snippet on “Surprise Vacations.” It seems that some travel agencies
are offering package deals that require no planning on your part and send you a
travel package right before you take your vacation based on your answers to a
set of questions… surprise!
I don’t know about you, but we rarely plan our vacations.
Sometimes we have a general direction in mind, but generally we wet a finger,
see which way the wind is blowing, and take off. If the wind changes enroute to
wherever, we’ve been known to change with it… a lot. Just a couple of examples…
we once headed for Great Falls, MT from Helena to do a little fishing along the
way and wound up at the zoo in Calgary, Alberta. Another time, I came home from
work early one Friday, found my sweetie packed and ready to go for a long
weekend. “Where to?” I asked. “Just drive,” she answered. We wound up in
Seattle around two thirty the next morning and were on the beach at Ocean City
before the sun came up. We managed to get a hotel (it wasn’t the busy season)
later in the morning on Saturday, spent the day touring the harbor and little
museums, got a good night’s sleep, and went to Mount Saint Helens, then on to
Portland Oregon and were back home on Sunday night. Now that’s what I call a
surprise vacation!
In my high school and college years, kids used to go on road trips. Yep, grab a couple of
buddies, pack up the car and head out. It could be anywhere… as long as it wasn’t
home. And it could last anywhere from three days to three weeks, depending on
who had to be back when. Road trips provided us with the “adventure” young
folks today seem unable to find on their own. Somebody has to plan it for them…
and surprise them.
We’d have been horrified at such a prospect… it takes away
independence. You, know the opportunity to change directions in midstream so to
speak. And change we did, as long as gas money held out. Hotels? Forget about
it. We took tents and sleeping bags. There was usually someplace to camp… a
state or national park, national forest… someplace. And if not, well, we’d sack
out in the car at a rest stop or some side road wide spot. Back then we had
cars that was more than a sardine can with a GPS. Like we knew what a GPS was…
we went on dead-reckoning with an occasional peek at one of those archaic
things called a map. Those of us old enough to remember, you could pick those
fold up, poster-sized pieces of paper with the web of highways and roads on it
for the particular state you were in at any gas station. And guess what? They
were free!
You didn’t have to pump your own gas at those stations
either. An “attendant” attended to your needs. He checked your oil, your tire
pressure, and washed all your windows… for free! Gas stations back then were
filled with things like oil cans, oil filters, headlights, spark plugs, points
(like kids today even know what they are), fan belts, and other assorted
automotive products. You could buy an air freshener (and believe me, after a
few days in a car with your two best buddies, you needed one), and a pop…
usually in an eight-ounce returnable bottle… or a stale candy bar from a
vending machine.
Kids today will never know such joys. Oh sure, they get to
stop at pump-your-own-gas stations with convenience stores filled with all
kinds of impulse-buying goodies. But they’ll never have a smiling attendant
take care of your car while you grab your map and figure out which old candy bar
you want to pull the knob for and hear that satisfying whoosh-thump as it drops
into the tray of the vending machine. You know what else none of us will ever
experience again? Gas that cost less than thirty cents a gallon. Those days,
along with your friendly service station attendant, are long gone. No wonder
you see so many sour-faced folks at today’s super-mart fuel stops. But I
digress.\
Oh, we had “surprise vacations” way back when… only they
were usually planned by the government to some exotic place you really didn’t
want to visit, usually preceded by sixteen weeks of intensive preparation for the
surprises waiting for you when you got to that exotic place. Surprise! I don’t
recommend those kinds of surprise vacations.
These new surprise package vacations include air fare,
hotel, and what not. I’m not sure what “what-not” is, but it’s in there. Some
of the packages are for only a weekend. By air? You gotta be kidding me. When I
was working, I flew… a lot. Matter of fact the standing joke was my second home
was a Boeing 737. Flying was no joke. You had to get to the airport two hours
before your flight so you could check in and clear security. To save ten
minutes, I routinely got e-tickets, and printed them out at the airport before
I got in line with my laptop over my shoulder, pulling a carry-on, and holding
my shoes. Flying commercial air was not an adventure, it was a giant pain in
the butt. Okay, if you don’t fly routinely, it might be an adventure.
So, come on, kids. Don’t shell out for somebody sitting at a
desk planning a surprise package for you. Get off your rear end, pack a few
things, get in your buggy, and go. You don’t need to make hotel reservations
because, no matter what you’ve been told, there are plenty of hotels with
vacancies out there. If you’re smart, you can get some good rates too, unless
you just must stay at a high-end,
full-service hotel. In that case, you’ll be screwed on cost. By the way, did
you know that “full service” means no “freebies?” No free wi-fi, no free
breakfast… nothing is free at a full-service hotel. It all costs. It’s why I
avoid them. It’s not that I’m cheap… I prefer to say frugal… but I like getting
up to a hot breakfast that doesn’t cost me anything, and I like that free
wi-fi.
Oh, and one final thing… get off the frickin’ Interstates,
at least once in a while. Get on the back roads of America. This is an amazing
country and if you stay on the super highways, you’re missing a lot. You’d be
surprised what little gems you can find traveling America’s back roads. It’s an
adventure!
