Monday, June 27, 2011

Road Trips vs. Vacations

I came to a glaring realization this weekend, as I pondered riding 6 hours across the state of SD with 4 males, that a road trip and a vacation are two very different things. Now, don't get me wrong, I love road trips, but they differ from vacations in a few key areas.

A vacation is a relaxing, no deadline type, of time period. A road trip, especially a sporting one-is no such thing. There are deadlines, registrations, and instead of people waiting on me, I wait on everyone else.

Vacation food-if you do your research is usually YUMMY. NOw I don't mean healthy-but yummy. I packed health snacks, noone including me, at them. In a car across the praire pringles, jerky, m&m's an grapes are your friend. On a vacation we I hope it is a margarita, which leads me...

Beverage on a road trip consists of tolerable WHITE merlot in a mini bar bottle-I wisely bought my own corkscrew to hide in the car for future emergencies.

Driving, driving, driving...with stinky, stinky, stinky boys. After a vacation, usually everyone smells of sand, or camping, or lake. After hours in full bike gear, helmet, and hot muggy weather, boys smell. BAD.

Vacation photos are treasured, snapped, the camera carried everywhere. I took 3 pictures with my PHONE at the END as my camera lay there at my feet while I yelled my fool head off at people to "pedal", "go faster", "stay in there", and "get the snap". I then spent after time, consoling, reassuring, and telling people to "stop asking for treats and cowboy up".

At the end of it there were some similarities-no one got hurt, we all stayed together and came home together. A little frazzled, dreading the unpacking and cleaning, but prepared to go again, wether it be road trip or vacation.

5 comments:

carey said...

exchange the bikes for hockey bags and i hear ya, sister. we finally learned to pack a cooler full of decent food or we spend the entire road trip eating crap.

how did the whole thing end up?

cherk said...

Small fry had tough days Friday and Saturday and then kicked it into gear on Sunday, would have got third overall but quit pedaling on the last hill and got passed. Big Fry only had 2 other racers on Sunday so he made it, was 2nd in the last race. The big corn fed kid fell:)

bobbione8y said...

the thing about road trips vs. vacations is that you don't have to leave the cat home alone for days and worry about her the whole time ;)

ha. otherwise, i'm with ya all the way! even though i don't have any stinky boys around :)

Karen said...

I'm smack in the middle of a vacation...but I slept on a hard, cold floor last night b/c the WH was taking over the full-sized bed..

The beach and an umbrella drink sound pretty darn good right now.

cherk said...

Karen-and mango salsa? Have some in the fridge right now:)