The Adventure, Explained

Vacation:  Freedom from some business or activity.

Lest I sound ungrateful it has been a great trip - I've seen a lot of wild stuff.  It has not been an overly easy trip, though, and that is not unexpected.  I knew what I was getting into and I got into it.  A couple of SuperK's friends have replied to the pictures she's posted on social media with comments along the lines of "I thought vacations were supposed to be relaxing."  Well, maybe. I'd call this more of an adventure or a journey or a trip, not a vacation, which has a desperate whiff of lying on your ass around a swimming pool, eating and drinking too much.  There's nothing the matter with that if you've got a stressful life and you want to unwind, forget it all.  I do not have a stressful life.  I do not want to unwind on a beach.  I live in a beach town. Why in the world would I fly 8,265 miles, in a middle coach seat, almost, to lie on a beach? 

To the non-travelers out there I say this kind of adventure is more like making it through a long day at work under a deadline to get something important completed.  The day itself may be stressful but the sense of accomplishment when it's over - particularly when you've done it with other people - is great.  No one sits around and tells war stories about the day they didn't really have anything to do so they sat at their desk all day and fooled around on the computer.  That day may be more pleasurable in the doing but it sucks in the remembering.  Now, we all need a day like that from time to time but we all should experience the new and exciting from time to time, too. 

It's just wrong the way the people on machines using an internal combustion engine interact with pedestrians in crosswalks here.