Tuesday, April 20, 2010

I Found Out Long Ago It's a Long Way Down the Holiday Road

I am a planner by nature. Throughout my life, I have put together activities for my friends from simple outings to trips to scavenger hunts. I met WonderWife™ during a kickball game that I co-organized for some friends. I even had a hand in planning my own bachelor party. I am an organized person and I like to research, so planning vacations don’t phase me. Plus, I kinda don’t trust others to get the details right.

WonderWife™ is also a good planner. She may be a bit less organized than me but she gets the job done, especially when it comes to booking plane tickets where she can sniff out a bargain like a beagle on the hunt.

Like most things in my marriage, we work well together planning a vacation. Of course, we don’t take very many vacations. More often than not, if we’re packing up the brood in a car or a plane, we’re trekking to visit family. But when we do plan a bona-fide Geek Boy family vacation, WW™ and I do it together. When it comes to taking the vacation, however, we deviate in our methodology.

I’ve gotta be honest with you, when I’m a on vacation I get a little Clark Griswold. I not only read the guidebooks, I ingest them. In the weeks before, I’m all over the internet. (Ah glorious internet, how could I have possibly existed before you? I want to know all of my options for fun and figure out a way to fit them into the trip. I plan. I schedule. I need to make sure I know what we’re doing at least a day or two in advance. I’m the guy who lugs around the books and makes lists. I don’t want to miss something cool. If the world’s largest ball of twine is in the area, we should be there to bask in its splendor, right?

WonderWife™ plays it much looser on vacation. Her attitude is this: the rest of our lives are scheduled, why do it on vacation? So what if we don’t go hiking today? There’s tomorrow.

This kind of drives me nuts.

But she’s right. A vacation isn’t a vacation if every minute is planned out. So I’ve had to learn to mellow out and compromise. There are a few big ticket things that we plan, but we also need to give ourselves enough freedom to play things fast and loose.

And you know what? Some of the best times we’ve had have been spontaneous excursions that have sprung up because we’ve had the time for them (and because we’ve had the guidebook with us).

How about you? Who is the planner when you take vacations? Do you have different vacation philosophies?

8 comments:

Florida Dom said...

She does the planning and I jsut go with the flow. But we were in Tucson a few years back and saw a site that a Titan missile site had been turned into a tourist thing. She wasn't interested but agreed to try it and she enjoyed it too. In the guidebook, she had passed it up but it turned out to be a fun experience. Amazing how limited the computer power was and yet they could have started a nuclear war.

FD

ATV WEB SOLUTION said...

You can choose the site best suited to your tastes or visit all of them sequentially.

Shelle-BlokThoughts said...

I am more like your wife...but I wish we had guide books because sometimes I will find that we are "bored" on a trip!!! Imagine that right!? How much cooler would it be to have someone like you and your guide books around to point us in a fun direction.

I learned I need to search the internet more before a trip!

Great Post!!!

heelsnstocking said...

my husband has never planned the holiday, he just turns up at the time allocated in his diary. We move house the same!

I think I prefer it this way though as he would over plan if he did get involved whereas I love the adventure.

Mind you he was livid when I booked the last holiday, I didn't include him! well he said he was busy and was camplaining he didnt have the time so me and the kids had a great time in Egypt!

Stephanie & Brad Bishop said...

I so relate to our vacation planning method!!!!!!!!! I used to spend 4 weeks planning a week vacation and then I needed a VACATION!

This post you might enjoy about this topic:

http://sebishop4.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-difference-9-years-makes.html

Unknown said...

I'm a "Let's lay on the beach and do nothing" kind of person and CP would rather do water sports. Or rock climb. Or go mini-golfing. Give me a book and a beach and I'm happy. I do like to plan though. CP only wants to plan after we get somewhere (which makes me nuts) and I want to have everything done beforehand. Even if it's only finding out where the nearest chair rental is for the beach.

Chief said...

We totoally plan together so no one can complain when there isnt something they like to do while we are there~!

Anonymous said...

That would be me...otherwise all of our vacations would be spent with his family doing what they wanted! LOL....I keep telling him it's time to cut that cord! (and we're not even married yet! LOL)

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