Nature calls

Well Whoop-Dee-Do! I went on vacation. For me this usually means going to some forest lodge somewhere and spending quality time choking on campfire smoke and being eaten by parasitic insects. Not my children by the way. Good times!

Travel experts call this communing with nature. I call it, “Finding a spot so repulsive my adult children refuse to join me.” Boredom becomes blissful if you’re far away from all the stresses of work, and your majorly aggressive cat. You don’t need to enjoy yourself. You always come home with a smile on your mosquito bitten face. Also remember, hospital stays from having broken a few bones, after doing something stupid, can be very relaxing as well.

Sadly though, my wife and I decided, this year, to throw caution to the wind and go to a resort. Why, you ask? What a coincidence, I asked the same question. When we have the perfect set up, why would we mess it up by making a change? The answer is simple, because our friends talked us into it.

What sold my wife on this idea was when they told us that beaches have fewer biting insects and more alcoholic beverages. What sold me on it, was my wife telling me that she was sold. I’ve learned that life is a whole lot easier when I just agree up front. Frankly she’s right ninety-percent of the time anyway. So why not just play the odds.

Drink it in

Either way, this deluxe resort is surrounded by a beach on one side and a theme park on the other. They tell me these things are fun. I was a bit skeptical. Frankly, every time I’ve gone to the beach, I ended up forgetting my name because they keep bringing me rum drinks every ten minutes. Getting lost in the woods is at least understandable because all the trees look alike. Being lost on the beach is embarrassing. Especially, when your so tipsy you forget to turn around to see your hotel right behind you. Of course, when to do figure out this miracle of inebriation, they bring you a drink as congratulations. It’s a never-ending cycle.

The theme park presents a whole different set of issues. These places make a science of separating you from your cash. I used to worry about pick-pockets when I traveled. These days, I kind of hope they show up. The pickpockets are more economical than the theme park by far.

In truth, my problem stems from my own stupidity. When you travel to the woods you do normal things like taking long walks, bird watching, and falling down ravines because you were trying to catch a butterfly. Your idiocy is limited by your environment. Beaches and theme parks offer so many more ways to be stupid and I somehow find a way to take advantage of all of them.

A day in the life

How about this example; You get up very early in the morning and decide to have a nice breakfast at one of the many fancy restaurants. So far so good. Then some pretty, blonde server walks up and asks if you’d like a Mimosa or perhaps a Bloody Mary? My wife intelligently remembers it’s seven in the morning and asks for orange juice. The server turns to me and some ridiculous part of my brain thinks, “Woah! I can have booze for breakfast!!” Remembering a Bloody Mary is tomato juice and vodka. I order one of those, because tomato juice is healthy. And a healthy breakfast is important. Right? That’s how the stupidity starts, small and simple.

Since my wife didn’t want one, and it was included in the price of breakfast, a little bit more of the stupid came out. I certainly didn’t want to waste that resource, so I drank hers. My brain justified this by thinking, “I’m being thrifty, not a silly drunk.” The real problem with all this is after that huge meal and alcohol, I was headed to a theme park filled with thrill rides.

Would you like to know the definition of a thrill ride? It’s an entertainment designed to violently liberate a person from their latest meal in under four minutes. And you have to wait in line for a half-hour for the privilege. Don’t worry, I did not get sick on the ride. It was a delayed reaction. I managed a whole fifteen minutes before that happened. “And what happened after that?” you ask? I sat for ten minutes then screamed, “Let’s do that again!”

And now for something completely different

Not everyone is as idiotic as myself. More intelligent folks take one look at these vomit factories and correctly say, “I’m not doing that!!” This is why those clever park designers require better tricks up their sleeves. One brilliant scheme is called the “Dark Ride.” You never know how big a dark ride might be. They’re inside a building. They give a false sense of security. I’m told they use flight-simulator technology to make you think you’re traveling on two miles of rough track, flying through space, or training a dragon when actually you’re just sitting in a self-contained box. All the motion sickness with none of that nasty motion. Are these folks brilliant or what?

Honestly, no, I didn’t toss my cookies at this park. However, if I was going to toss cookies, this would be the place. I mean, even the old carousel was advertised as being one of the fastest in North America. Add to this the plethora of sweet and salty snacks, greasy food, fancy coffees with weird names, and of course, alcohol available around every corner, and it’s a wonder they’re not an intake office to a local hospital. Folks pay better than a hundred bucks a day for this. As I said, “Stupidity gone rampant”

Beach burn

Then again, you don’t have to spend every waking moment being swirled and jostled in the name of fun. You can spend down-time at the beach and maybe take in some cooking. Sadly, what’s cooking is you. Add, all the available tropical drinks, and you’re generously marinated in fruit juice, spices and rum. I got a whiff of my sunburned arm, and suddenly realized I’m quite delicious. I actually asked one bartender for the recipe of Mr. Ohh! the other white meat.

Then there’s shopping. These places have more useless stuff than you can imagine. I can buy a t-shirt at home for a couple of bucks. However, put a picture of a rat, and it can be gotten for the low price of fifty-dollars. And why would you want a shirt with a rat picture? You need the rat shirt to advertise the fact that you went on vacation. This way other idiots who did the same silly stuff will recognize you as one of their own.

They actually have clubs for this, and now I’m a member. I can now be with my own kind and proudly state, “I went way over budget on things I don’t even remember, and I don’t care” This is a real problem. Doctors say, saying crap like this is the first true sign of insanity!!

In other words…

I Had A Great Time!!