I have to look at this bike ride as a vacation.  Unfortunately, I don’t really like vacations.  Leaving the house makes me nervous.  Changing my routine makes me nervous.  And I love my life – my house and friends and family.  Tennis and hiking and biking.  Volunteering.  Cooking and gardening and running errands.

Oh, my.  I sound very boring.  And very lucky!

It’s not like we never travel.  We went to Paris for a week when we turned 50, and we skied a lot before the kids came along.  We didn’t travel much with the kids when they were young, because Dana thinks “vacationing with children” is an oxymoron.  In recent years we’ve travelled to NYC a few weekends a year, which is technically vacationing, if only a bit, although I really like the looks I get when I say that we “vacationed in Brooklyn”. 

We have no desire to do a beach vacation, we’ve never stayed in a resort, nor gone on a cruise.  We don’t think we would enjoy any of that.  Or maybe we would, which might be a problem.  I like to keep things simple, and I take comfort in knowing that I don’t need very much to be happy.  What if we go on a cruise and learn to enjoy sipping daiquiris in lounge chairs, on the deck of the heated Olympic sized pool, followed by a huge dinner buffet?  It would totally ruin Brooklyn forever.

Nor do we like being tourists.  When I was a kid in NYC, we laughed at tourists.  I’m terrified of one day going on a bus tour, following a lady holding a purple umbrella, viewing a cathedral, all the while wearing my name and tour company logo on an id around my neck.  It reminds me of when the kids started kindergarten and had their names and bus numbers around their necks on the first day of school.  Bill’s little paper school bus didn’t even made it onto the bus.  It ripped off when he climbed the light post at the bus stop, much to the joy of the other kids and the horror of their parents.  Katie still has her red paper apple in her room, in a box with a handmade beaded bracelet, some birthday party favors, and a few pieces of very old gum.  She was on bus #24 in case anyone cares.

But again, I digress.

So, it’s time to start vacationing.  And while many would not define a 2200 mile bike ride as a vacation, I think this will be good for us.  No kids, no work, no house.  Enough exercise every day to justify relaxation (and very large meals, and ice cream cones, and perhaps just a little beer or wine?) in the evenings.  If we enjoy this trip, we will do another one.  Maybe to California or somewhere in Europe.  And if we don’t enjoy this trip, I think Dana will trade me in for 2 30-year-olds, and I will get a lot of cats.