Theoretically, we’re leaving on a family trip tomorrow morning. I say “theoretically” because Jack got slammed with a stomach bug and spent most of yesterday in bed. It’s eerily quiet around here when he’s ill, let me tell you.
If he’s feeling better today and if no one else gets said bug, we will depart at nap time tomorrow for our first road trip as a family of six. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a delight or a disaster. At this point, it could go either way. Or both ways.
Truly, this very well may be Doug’s and my second Heinous Driving Vacation. (Our first was a trip to Wales when Jack was two: I didn’t understand that it took seven hours to drive from the north to the south end of Wales, a mere 200 miles, you see, which on the West Coast would take about three hours. But in Wales you can actually go negative miles per hour. I am not making this up. You really can. And we did.)
Anyhoo, a few weeks ago, our friend Tara was visiting from California. We ran into her in the hall at church. “I hear you’re coming to visit us next month,” she said.
We’ll be staying one night at her house on our way to bakin’ Bakersfield to visit my parents. On our way home from Bakersfield, we’re going to visit Yosemite.
“Yosemite?” Tara said. “What are you going to do there?”
“We’re going to climb Half Dome,” Doug said.
“And he doesn’t mean hiking,” I said.
“That’s right,” he said. “We’re going to scale it.”
“With the twins on our backs,” I added. “And once we get to the top, we’re going to rappel down.”
Doug snorted scornfully. “Rappelling’s for wimps. We’re going to BASE-jump.”
“Wow,” Tara said, “I didn’t know you guys liked to live on the edge like that.”
“Oh you know me,” I said. “I’m all about edge.”
She laughed. “Yeah, sure.”
She’s right. I like to stay as far from the edge as possible. In fact, the riskiest thing I ever did was on a night in November 2009. The twins were born eight months later. With that kind of luck, my parachute probably wouldn’t open.
So. We won’t be BASE-jumping off Half Dome. But we will be camping in Yosemite. And on the Oregon coast. And a few other places, too.
I am keeping my expectations for this trip (please note I did not call it a vacation) extremely low. I figure that as long as we come back with the same number of kids as we started with, it can’t be too much of a bust.
Right?
