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Travel Guides
by Rob Schaeffer
It is the summer and I am sure all of you would love to go somewhere fun.
Well, here is my guide to fun places in the world. Some are cheaper than others.
I have even been to a few of them. Some even exist.
Alaska:
Doesn’t that sound cool! Lots of trees and woods and bears and moose. Northern
lights! Small funky towns like in Northern Exposure! Moose!
And of course: dogsleds. Sleds pulled by dogs. Happy dogs. Notice that dogsled
dogs always seem very, very, almost scarily, happy.
Also, in the summer the days are long, like really, really long, like maybe
a few weeks long. In the winter it works the other way around, but if you go to Alaska
in the winter on vacation you are already insane.
Now, I have never been there, but I have watched a whole lot of TV about
Alaska.
Hawaii:
Like Alaska, I have never been to Hawaii, but I know someone who has. Apparently
it isn’t her first choice of places to go. Something about catching something
called “parrot fever” from someone’s parrot. Parrot fever is a disease where
millions of tiny parrots live in your lungs and make you sick for about a
year. You cough a lot.
The rest of my knowledge of Hawaii comes from the documentary Lilo and
Stitch. Be warned that it seems that comical large white guys never get
to eat their ice-cream due to various natural disasters including alien spacecraft.
I assume that eating ice-cream inside is safe.
Stalking:
A novel vacation idea is to take a week or two and stalk your favorite celebrity.
The up-side is that you get to meet a lot of interesting people this way,
or at least see them from a distance. The down-side is that many of these
people will want to arrest you.
Choose your celebrity carefully. Do you want to just see what the life-style
of your favorite rock star is? See what he or she does in his or her spare
time? Or do you want to catch your favorite star catching some rays by their
pool? Or do you want to actually meet this person?
I would suggest that if you want to know way-too-much about a celebrity,
use the internet. It is a lot safer to download pictures of them buying a
six-pack and chips at the local 7-11 than to actually follow your target
around.
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream Factory:
This is fun. Take the tour, but then sneak off at some point. You will need
a sleeping bag or something. The good news is that the food is top notch,
as long as you grab from the right end of the processing equipment. I don’t
know what goes into ice-cream, but I bet there are a lot of things that may
not be yummy until they are processed or frozen or something.
You will gain a lot of weight on this vacation.
The down-side of this idea is that there are security cameras and guards
and all that, so maybe you can work in some aerobic running away to burn
off those calories.
Where You Work:
Yes, just go to work. Since you aren’t actually working, you don’t have to
go to any meetings you don’t want to, but you can still hang out with people
you know. For food, raid meetings for donuts. Talk people into playing WarCraft—you
aren’t on work time.
I novel approach to this is to take your vacation time in hour increments.
Decide that from 3:00 to 4:00 is your vacation. That is only one hour, but
you can totally relax during that time. If you are in a meeting that started
at 2:30, you only have to pretend to pay attention for half an hour, and
they can’t give you any work until you get back! Make sure your vacation
extends past the end of the meeting. This also works well for people on phone-support.
“I am sorry, sir, but my vacation just started. If you wish to chat about
non-work topic feel free to stay on the line.”
Do not, under any circumstances, get drunk on this type of vacation. Especially
if anyone at your work has a camera. This is especially rough on those hour
long vacations.
Klingon Home World:
Have you ever noticed that the Klingon home world seems to not really have a name?
Now, I can not imagine any reason to go there unless you want to practice
talking like, well, a Klingon. That is not to say talk in the Klingon language,
since they all speak English. But if you like to say things like, “may your
mission be filled with glory and the blood of your enemies,” every time someone
goes to get some munchies at the local store, then this is the place for
you.
The hard part is that it is a fictional place and is far away. Exactly how far away depends on which version of Star Trek you watch. In Enterprise it is right next door, in the original series and The Next Generation it seems pretty far away, even by warp standards.
The food also sucks.
A Bucket:
Yes, simply put your head in a bucket. Get a nice one, I mean, come-on it
is your vacation, you can spend $20 on a nice bucket. Paste some nice pictures
on the inside to look at, or take the more Zen approach and leave it as is.
Choose a clean bucket if at all possible.
The food and night-life tends to be pretty minimal, but if you get to Joe’s
Grill, tell him I sent you.
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