leaving the path less travelled

Big Feet and Little Feet went on a vacation.

"Whee!" shrieked Little Feet. "Vacation!!"

"Shut up," said Little Brain. "We'll talk about this one like grown-ups."

"Wheee!!" Little Feet frolicked happily. "Vacation vacation vacation vacation! Talk about vacation!"

Well, now that that's settled....

The Guy has been on a month-long vacation from work, a badly needed respite from an 11-to-7 job that has been testing his rather limited store of socialization skills. In the normal course of things, the Guy's opinion of his fellow man is only marginally higher than his opinion of pond scum, and his current position -- the title of which contains the word 'Quality' and 'Assurance,' neither of which have anything to do with each other -- is hardly the kind to improve his views in this regard. While in normal life he's as good a man as ever buttered bread, it can't be denied that he sounds like he's a bit of a trial in the workplace.

"He's really good at what he does," a colleague once assured me. "It's just that he doesn't have much tolerence for idiots."

Much as I love him, this is not the description of a man who should be working with other people.

As part of his month-long vacation, he wanted to go out and hit the road. "I want to see America," he said in a yearning, grumpy way. "We could drive up to Canada. Maybe visit Banff."

Barring the logic of seeing America by going to Canada, this instantly sparked in me a qualm, and no little qualm either. A big qualm, one that wedged itself in the throat, like an egg swallowed whole come back to revisit the nostalgic scenes of its consumption. My childhood was full of road trips going out to See America. My father was afflicted with a glorious delusion of the nomad life, the joys of the road trip. I can only think that at some point in his life, some malicious ass had given him a copy of a Jack Kerouac or Jack London book -- Jack is such a common name, don't you think? -- translated into the Japanese.

Once a summer, he would announce we were going on a road trip, pile his reluctant family into the car, and drive off into the sullen sunset with us whining peevishly in the back seat. Mom handled the mechanics of food, planning, reservations, sites; he was more the idea man, a delegator with vision. Even the driving he delegated, innocently popping a few beers at dinnertime while my mother's back was turned, thus condemning her to a long night spent at the wheel while he napped contentedly in the trunk. I know at some point in my golden years, those memories will come back to me all rosy-colored and happy. Right now, they consist mainly of long hours of oblivion interspersed by boredom, embarrassing cameras, and motion sickness.

Riding in an automobile acts on me like Civil Liberties 101 on George "Dubya" Bush. I turn my head and snore.

It's a sign of what love will make one do that I choked back the majority of my protests, and agreed that a road trip might be fun. "Banff sounds good," I said wanly. The Guy brightened out of his depression while I nobly hid mine.

In due course, I had a week's paid leave from work, and the Guy had tentatively mapped out a trip that hit the entire western half of the United States, and some of Canada to boot. Listening to his happy plans, it occurred to me that he really had very little concept of distance. After all, he'd grown up in England. A strong man's fart could span that island in under an hour. What scale did he have to measure the size of the United States by?

"You know we only have a week," I reminded him.

He glared at me. "Because you couldn't take more than a week off of your stupid job," he grumped.

This was undeniable. I added more qualms to my already fully matured one. There was quite a little party happening in my thorax; by the time the vacation started, I would have a complete set.

After a dinner out one night, we wandered over to the bookstore to see what they had in the way of maps and travel guides. My stomach was making odd gurgling noises, and chatting in an ominously confidential way with my intestines and bowels, if you get my drift. There were embarrassing body noises in the offing, and I tottered towards the high, isolated stacks at the back of the store, thinking to hide my shame in privacy.

The Guy diverted me mid-step and steered me, mutely suffering, towards the travel guides. "Here," he said, and waved a map at me. "What do you think?"

It was a map. I stared glassily at its cover. The crayola covering was waving at me. "Looks fine," I said. "Let's get it." And tried to make a break for it.

He, however, was relentless. "Look," he carolled, and waved a guide book at me. The Pacific Northwest, from Lonely Planet. I eyed it wistfully; it was big and hefty, just the sort of book one could use to brain a grown man. "Let's get this."

"Sure," I said desperately. The travel section of the bookstore, unlike the rest of the place, was fairly populated by last-minute browsers like ourselves. One was parked cross-legged on the floor next to me. I started to hear little snuffling sounds from my hip. I sidled self-consciously away from the sniffer, pretending I had nothing to do with his sudden congestion. There was a bathroom somewhere at the back of the store. There had to be. I ached for it, like a puppy bereft of the teat. So to speak.

"And look," enthused the Guy, oblivious. He has nasal passages of steel. Another hefty volume joined the first. Canada, from Lonely Planet. The resulting pile of books and map could not only brain a grown man, it could be used to dismember and bury the corpse.

Say what you will about travel book writers, they have a refreshingly laconic attitude towards book titles. Let's not beat about the bush, they seem to say. Our reader will be a weary and careworn man. Shall we confuse him with poetic meanderings about the wild frontier? Shall we compare our subject to a summer's day, or make comparison to the heartfelt yearning of the repressed frontierman possessed of an SUV? No! There will be no 'Bountiful Beauties of BC,' or 'In the Secret Sands' from us. We will be bold, and direct, and say what we mean, like honest men. What ho, Canada it will be!

"What's it about?" I asked, to distract the Guy, and skittered determinedly towards the hidden bathroom.

He caught up with me as I was negotiating the stacks in a painful waddle. "Where're you going?" he asked, in that sane, patient, sympathetic tone of voice one uses for children and the mentally insignificant. "The store is closing. We have to pay for the books."

I whimpered a little. We hadn't even left and the vacation was already off to a bad start.