(Quick break here... I swear, the song that just came up on iTunes.... Radar Love by Golden Earring!)
Anywho, I like to travel. Last year ended with a drive down to Dallas in early December. This year began with a drive over to Detroit for the car show (North American International Auto Show). I knew I was going to plan another few trips as well as some smaller side trips, but the long ones take planning. Planning and Vacation time. I've found out that it's actually quite rare for us to be fully staffed, so it can be hard to just 'take time off'. It's not that the supervisor at work is mean and won't give it... but if we don't have another person to just cover my shift and they have to utilize overtime, it's a hard no. Thankfully between the Civil Service Commission and the Union, we have our twice annual vacation book. In April and October we pass around a book and we get to lay claim to any days off we want. Well... any days where someone more senior hasn't already laid claim (it goes around in order of seniority), and any days that you'll have enough vacation time for.
So this year I started bugging my friends on vacations we'd like to take between May and October. E, A, and I decided that a trip down to New Orleans would be awesome and we decided on early September for that. My local friend and I decided to take advantage of one of his long weekends and plan a trip to Chicago in July. So I put those dates in, planned them around the weekends that I already have off, and just took a few days before and a few days after off. Take 4 days off, get 6!
Later though, my local friend and I decided that we'd like to take an epic trip next year. A couple years ago we flew down to Mexico and that was a blast. So this year we're going to knock something off our Bucket List and hit Mardi Gras! That's right, next February we're going to take the train from Chicago to New Orleans (the name of the train is literally "The City of New Orleans"!) and take in all that the big easy has to offer. Unfortunately that's gonna cost quite a bit of change and to get the best pricing we had to start laying down cash now. So we decided about a month ago to nix the idea of Chicago. Chicago is great, but it's expensive. You either drive and then pay out the ass for parking or you take the train and add a couple hundred bucks for the tickets. I can afford it, but my friend isn't as financially blessed as I am, so we nixed it. He still had the long weekend though, and I had already gotten the time off, so we chose to take a local trip.
We've done this several times before. We've gone to Detroit several times for the car show, but those are often single day events. Drive down, see the cars, drive back. So one long weekend we took in Detroit as tourists. We drove down, stayed in a cheap hotel (it's just a bed... why spend hundreds of dollars just to lay our heads down at night?), and took in the sites. Lemme tell you, the Detroit Art Institute is AMAZING! We took in a Tigers game, hit up some great bars, and had a blast. All for a tank of gas and a couple bucks for a cheap hotel. We later hit up another local town. It's far smaller, but they had a bunch of great brew pubs and as we're both beer connoisseurs, we really enjoyed the trip. Hell, just walking around the downtown section of some mid sized city is awesome.
So instead of hitting up expensive as hell Chicago, we decided to hit Grand Rapids. It's the second largest city in Michigan and we figured it would be large enough for a 2 or 3 day trip. After making that decision we found out that it was going to be one HELL of a great trip. Grand Rapids, it turns out, has over 40 micro breweries. Both Founders and Hop Cat are based there. Just in the downtown area there are 10 brew pubs.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was damned excited. There's also a couple small museums and the Gerald Ford Presidential Library and Museum (not a fan of President Ford... but hey it's a Presidential Library and Museum!), but the main draw was now going to be the beer. Grand Rapids has twice in the last 5 years been named Beer City USA. There's even a bar called Stella's that I was dying to hit up. They had brews from many of the local microbreweries, vintage arcade games, a burger that GQ named the best in America, and over 200 whiskys on hand. 200!
Seriously, this was going to be an awesome trip. Right up until my friend more or less broke his leg. It's not broken, but he twisted it really bad and can't walk on it except for short trips. He's going to get an MRI and his doc says he'll probably need surgery. I was disappointed but didn't exactly want to try pushing him into this. Vacations are fun, but your health is more important. After a few days, he decided that he could do it. We'd just have to take a walking aid (a cane) in case it got too hard, and try to limit our walking. You know... find a good bar and sit down while sampling the local brews, vintage games, and 200 whisky's. YAY!
And then last night happened. He called me up and said he'd made a mistake. This isn't his long weekend. Next weekend is when he was planning on us going to GR. My text of 'See you Thursday' was his first clue and realization that I was planning on THIS weekend. I.e. I not only had taken these days off and not next weekend, but I had also booked the hotel for this coming Friday.
Fuck.
So this weekend is off. Thank God I decided to pay just a bit more for the hotel and got to cancel it with no penalty so I'm not out any money. But I'm now stuck with all these days off. And it's not like it's just a straight 6 days off... I worked this past weekend so I had Monday as my regular day off this week, plus today's Independence Day (quick rant; the name of the holiday is Independence Day. It's not the 4th of July. Yes, the date of the holiday is the 4th of July, but damnit the name of the mother fucking holiday is Independence Day. Celebrating "The Fourth Of July" is as stupid as celebrating "The Twenty Fifth Of December!" Sorry... it's a pet peeve).
Anyway, I'm on the second of two days off. I work on Wednesday. THEN I get 6 days off in a row. Now I enjoy time off at home. But posting here, playing on DX, playing a video game, playing some games with my nephews, watching some movies... those mostly all get done on Monday and Tuesday. What the fuck am I going to do to fill up Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday?
Then it hit me. Road Trip! I've now driven down to Dallas twice and it's been easy peasy both times. Seriously, I get a real high off driving by myself. It's relaxing, I get to listen to an audio book and music and podcasts, I get to pull off the highway whenever I want to, stop driving for the night whenever and where ever I want, and just enjoy being honest to God alone for a couple days. Plus driving in Ginger was a treat.... driving in Isabella should be even better. Sure, I won't get nearly the same gas mileage and it'll cost me a bit more, but those seats are so damned comfortable and I now have the one feature that Ginger didn't have.... Adaptive Cruise Control! I've gotten the chance to try that a couple times now and it's an honest to God treat!
So I texted A down in Dallas last night and first thing Thursday morning I'm going to be headed to Dallas. It's going to be crowded as he also has his mother in law, his sister in law, his sister in law's husband, and their daughter staying over as well. But it will still be cool as all get out. Plus with all those people, A, his wife, and I can go out without the kids. We haven't gotten to go out and just hang out SINCE they've had kids (that's going on 8 years now I think).
It's not going to be as 'new' and interesting as GR was, but it's longer and more relaxing and will be great seeing A and his family.
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