Funny Guy Friday... Going on vacation...

   We planned a vacation for this week----sort of. I mean I took a few days off to go to Rhode Island earlier this summer, but this week was our official week vacation---as in I get two weeks off a year for vacation. I get as many weeks as I want, but there is this thing that I explain to my family every year----if daddy don't work, daddy don't make any money. If daddy don't make any money, daddy don't get paid.  As a result, I limit myself to two or three weeks a year. Of course, this does not include all the time I take off for baseball season, but that is a different story.
   Anyway, we were going to go to Disney, but decided against it. We then thought Myrtle Beach or Nags Head. Decided against both of those locations too. Why did we decide against each of these locations? Who knows? What I do know is that the Wednesday before our big week, we still had no idea where we were going to go.
   For a brief moment, I was back on the Mouse's scent and was checking on flights to Orlando. Surprisingly, the flights were not as expensive as I would have thought. But again, we decided against it.
   I got to the point where I was taking suggestions from friends. San Francisco? Yeah right, plan a trip to the West Coast in two days---besides, I've had my fill of earthquakes this year. Grand Canyon? People plan that for months ahead of time, not hours. Niagra Falls? Sure... and lose one of my kids over the falls. If I am going to have a family member go over, I want to plan for that, maybe take an in-law along "for the ride".    
    At this point, I told Cheryl to plan the whole thing and go wherever she wants---price is no object. Cheryl knows that when I say price is no object, I don't really mean it. Price is always an object. What it really means is make it fun with a few sprinkles of extravagance, but don't go crazy. I can say "price is no object" because I know that she knows that I worry about our money. Like my mother, I like to have it ready for something that I will never buy... in the event that I will need it for something else that I probably will not buy either. I think that makes fine economic sense.
   Anyway, she planned a trip that had two parts. Part One was to stay a few days at the beach in Ocean City. We have a place there that we don't get to use much, so the price was right. We did the beach through Wednesday.
   While swimming at the beach an elderly man frantically called me and Matthew in from the water. I was sure that he had spotted a shark. When he approached us he explained that there were rip tides. He went on to explain the meaning of the word rip and the word tide and how the two words collaborated to become one. He went on to tell us about his own personal  history as it related to rip tides, and about his time on beach patrol when he never lost anyone to a rip tide. Somewhere along the way he slipped in that he is independently wealthy. We were so worried about rip tides at this point that we decided to take a break from the water---forever!
   Matthew and I politely listened, but eventually, with my blessings, Matthew moved on and began tossing the football with Noah. I sat and listened until the man either realized he was running on a bit or exhausted his knowledge of rip tides. I joined Matthew and Noah and eventually Grace joined the fun. Noah and I dominated in a game of two-hand-touch. We had a great time in O.C. and as always, it was a blast just hanging out with Cheryl and the kids.
   On a side note, the elderly man returned later with a sand wedge and a golf ball. I could not help but think that the Atlantic Ocean presented one heck of a water hole. This time he advised me that he could have competed with Tiger Woods---back when Tiger was actually winning--- and that he remembers the days when Sonny Jurgenson played basketball at the University of South Carolina.
   I may not know much about rip tides but I do know a little about ACC basketball. Now he was in my wheel house. I suggested that Sonny went to Duke University. He was not sure, but he was sure that Sonny made the four corner offense famous. I am pretty sure it was Dean Smith and Phil Ford many years later at North Carolina. That's right he said, back when they were winning with David Thompson and Monte Towe. Uh, that was N.C. State. That's right, he recalled but Dean Smith was an idiot because Michael Jordan was not even a starter on that David Thompson team. He was right about that because Jordan would have been about four years old at the time.
   I began to regret my decision to not go back in the ocean.
   Part Two of the vacation took us to Williamsburg and the Great Wolf Lodge. Nice place, but as Noah points out, this place is obsessed with wolves. You think?
    We took the Chesapeake Bay tunnel and bridge from the beach to Williamsburg. Cheryl thought it would be nice to see the scenery. The second we hit the bridge, the skies opened up with the hardest rain I had ever driven through. The only thing we saw were dark clouds and buckets of water beating down on us. At one point we came out of the tunnel and there was a wall of water meeting us. Could not see a thing. Like any self respecting male, I drove through and even snapped off a photo in the process. Pulling over is for sissies. Cheryl took ten minutes of video, er uh, would have taken video if she actually had hit the record button.
   Great Wolf Lodge is a great place for kids... Water slides, arcades, shows, miniature golf... they even have a bowling alley.... right here at the lodge. All of that comes with a pricetag, but hearing your wife screaming as her rubber raft plummets into the funnel in the Howlin' Tornado was priceless.
   Busch Gardens is on the agenda for today. I can only guess that there will be more horrific, hilarious screams from my beautiful wife.
   The bottom line is that it does not matter where we go or what we do, we have fun when we are together. The kids are a joy and believe it or not, Cheryl is even more relaxed on vacation.
    With that being said, I have some great ideas for next year! I better start planning now!