eightblack

I hate summer.

You might find this a strange comment coming from an Aussie. But let me explain.

All those silly tourism ads, which are produced by young ad execs who clearly have high opinions of themselves and convince their partners that driving a Prius is obviously “the right thing to do”, portray life in Australia through some sort of mildly warped prism. Or a well used weed powered bong. As in the smoking sort of weed. You get the idea. I know you do.

Picture the ad, where there’s the cute blonde, scantily clad in something about as efficient as saran wrap, frolicking on an Aussie beach, with a posse of young men whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

Plainly, that’s complete baloney.

Young women don’t frolick. And if some unwashed miscreant were to whisper something in her ear (or get close enough to even try) they would probably be met with the full force of the angry womans X26 tazer, or a swift kick in the walnuts. Or both if the woman lived in Leichardt.

I think it’s the whole lying on the beach thing that I dislike the most. I just lose the will to live. There’s the sand, the heat, the blazing sun, the fact that it requires the effort of a Nepalese Sherpa to lug all the kids crap to and from the car.

When you were single, you’d simply find a place to park, grab ONE single beach towel and enough money for a drink.

Parents will understand that this is not at all possible. You have to move 3.5 metric tonnes of equipment at least 1000 yards, all by hand. On your own. Take 15 towels, a sunshade that requires a PhD to get it to stay upright, and enough money to essentially pay for every person on the beach to get to Aruba.

Or something like this.

Not to mention that Aussie beaches are in fact, infested with enough things either above or below the waterline that could kill or maim you in less than 4 milliseconds.

In movies, those beach scenes where someone yells “shark” and then everyone promptly runs around waving their arms and shrieking doesn’t really happen.

You and I both know it’s a lie.

When I have been on the beach in Sydney and the shark siren went off, the only people running around waving their arms were 2 guys in very unflattering speedos called Paul and Graham. The rest ran towards the water, hoping for a decent view of the impending mauling of a wayward and unlucky surfer. It’s the Aussie way.

So you will understand then my trepidation and fear when the family (actually my wife) said to me:

“I want to go somewhere warm for the summer holidays”
“Why?”
“Because I am sick of the cold”
“You do realize we live in Colorado where it snows”

A long, anger swelling silence.

“I’m not arguing with you. Make it happen”

Then a long, pitiful silence from me.

As you can probably imagine, my protests were defeated quite easily. Nothing but a whimper from me really. Even the dog thought I was pathetic.

So this is the tale of the Eightblack family holiday. Or series of them. A week in Orlando with 3 kids. A week in Tokyo with my son. And then a week in Michigan with the in-laws. My first real summer in America.

Nothing much happened.

Apart from a run in with the management at some amusement park run by lunatics.

A room service bill in Orlando which I will be paying off for months.
A stand up ding dong at an iHop.
A drowned Corvette out of Miami.
A drunk 13-year old in Tokyo (it really wasn’t my fault).
A typhoon.
Being detained by Immigration for 2-hours in Houston.

And a screaming match of biblical proportions with my better half when she and the devil incarnate (my daughter) and her best friend were delayed by 4 hours on their Southwest flight from Denver to Orlando.

My son and I knew better and flew American.

Thankfully all of this has happened and most of it I can remember (which is remarkable given the quantity of gin and tonic I consumed), so I promise to those 2 loyal readers out there, that I will finish. Even if it kills me.

More tomorrow...

krazykanuck

I'm most interested in the bolded portions. I know you only posted thr preview, but this sounds epic.

Personally I am quite ready for summer to be over. Summer in Texas is rough. Thankfully I'm off to the relatively cooler northeast next week for Labor Day. I have yet to decide if it will be TR worthy.

Thor3

Time to sit back with the G&T and popcorn. I've always enjoyed your writing style about events one could not possibly make up. Let the events unfold!

SQ421

he is alive after all

opushomes

Next time let them fly Spirit Airlines and let the shouting begin. Looking forward to the remainder of your holidays.

avneeshj

This sounds like an epic in the making. Subscribed and waiting...

thespeedskater

He's back! ^

LH4116

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! I can't believe he's back! Looking forward to the rest ^

eightblack

I think I may have told some of you before that when we travel as a family, we never travel together. Some people find this perplexing. Intriguing even.

It really is quite simple. Its called staying sane.

Travelling with a family has got to be one of the worst things you can do. It commits every sin in the Frequent Flyer handbook. You try finding 4 award seats anywhere. I mean anywhere of importance. Like a place you’d actually like to visit.

See, I told you. Can’t be done.

Logistics are a nightmare. Finding a vehicle to fit the 22 bags in is a nightmare. Coping with a teenager and one on the verge of becoming a teenager is downright scary. Hotels run away and hide when you tell them you are on a family holiday and want 3 connecting rooms.

As a group you move through the airport at a glacial pace. Time literally stands still. The more you yell and complain the more the family enjoy watching you “lose it”.

Airline staff who normally treat you with some modicum of respect, now take pity on you and hand you small bottles of Vodka. Constantly.

I decided a few years ago then, that when we travelled as a clan, we would go in 2 groups. I would take one child. And my wife would take the other. We would simply agree on the destination and meet there on or around a certain date. As luck would have it, my son and I stuck together from the start and refused to be split as a team.

Somehow this arrangement suited my wife and daughter. Although one time though it tested her patience as we were all going home to Michigan to spend Christmas with my wifes family. Son and I took off a week before yelling out the door "that we were we sure to get there in time". Except we didnt. We got lost in Europe. My wife says I did this on purpose.

Moving on then.

Travelling in separate groups has nothing to do with self-preservation or ensuring the family name would survive in the unlikely event of an accidental water landing. That doesn’t worry me. But living in a trailer park with all my worldly possessions in a Ziploc bag does. And nothing good comes of travelling with 2 small humans you created after an alcohol filled evening with a woman who thought you were cool because you liked Eric Clapton. Who incidentally, in that same moment of Captain Morgan inebriated weakness agreed to marry you.

Anyway. We can talk about that later. Apparently my mother in law has a different interpretation of what really happened.

I had recently been to Orlando for a work conference and quite enjoyed the experience. So when the CEO of the family “suggested” we go somewhere warm, I hinted that Florida was quite nice. Except for the fact that it wasn’t.

I shall elaborate. Even if you don’t want me to.

When you travel for work, you travel with a degree of myopia. You navigate the airport, pick up the rental car, head to the hotel, do your meetings or attend the mind numbingly boring conference. Half the time I forget which city I am in. Unless its Miami. In which case, you want to ensure (oh never mind).

More often than not, you eat alone, and afterwards look at yourself in the bathroom mirror and say to yourself, “I really need to get in shape”, and then make a half hearted attempt at working out the next day.

This is when you rather spectacularly make a fool of yourself by falling off the treadmill as it’s purring along at the blisteringly quick pace of 5mph.

Or something like that.

But when you travel with family, time stands still. Kids will push your buttons until you are ready to beat them to a pulp. Airlines decide that today of all days they will forget you exist. Hotels will be full and have conveniently lost your booking. The TSA pre check logo that’s normally printed on your boarding pass will be nothing more than vapor ware now. It will take you so long to get through security at Denver that you could have listened to one entire side of a Rosetta Stone CD on learning how to speak New Zealand.

Orlando seems nice when you look at it through the ones and zeros of the internet.

But it was too late. As soon as I had mentioned the destination, the kids whipped out their iPads and both went in search for things to do – things that would drain the financial life out of you.

My son typed into the Google “retina detachment rollercoaster” as keywords and miraculously – a slew of amusement parks came flooding back down the wifi connection. I need to have a serious talk with that child one day.

My daughter, in her usually flippant way started…

“Dad, can Amy come?”
“No” I barked
“Why not?” she protested
“Because I said so”
“But she is my best friend”
“Well, Blake Lively is my best friend and she cant come”
“Who’s Blake Lively?”
“Your father’s a moron” my wife suddenly chirped in from across the room
“Of course she can come” she continued

I sighed.

Yet another “Its Good To Be The King Moment”

But if I’m honest, it was a stroke of brilliance. Those of you with kids will agree with me. I know you will.

At the age our kids are, their brains are not hardwired to get along. In fact, they are not hardwired to do much of anything really, apart from seeing how many bath towels they can use in a 24 hour period.

They use the word hate a lot. With each other mainly. There’s a lot of screaming, shouting, crying, door slamming, name calling and cussing. And that’s just from my wife, trying to wake the kids in the morning. On a school day.

Best friends diffuse the sibling tension quicker than George Bush silencing a rowdy crowd at a Mensa conference.

And when we called up the best friends mother, asking her if it would be alright if her daughter tagged along for the week, she was around at our place within 15 minutes, her Sequoia halfway across the front lawn, door open, and running towards us with an envelope full of clean crisp bills, enough to make a Miami drug dealer blush.

The fact that she had 4 daughters home for the entire Summer holidays probably had something to do with her eagerness to get rid of one of them.

So it was settled then. We were off to Florida. Home of every retiree in North America.

Like a responsible father and honorary member of FT, I took command for flights and hotels. I told all other people who shared my last name that I was having nothing to do with “events” or “entertainment” because quite frankly I hate amusement parks, water parks or any other so called parks where an uppity plump young girl in kaki shorts, and a wide hat yells at you through a battery operated bull horn about the virtues of their pet crocodile.

Apparently, you cant drink Heineken on those guided tours. Something to remember for later then.

I couldn’t get direct flights to work for me and my son, so I simply booked a one stop journey on American and we would land in Miami around 6ish. I made the mistake of telling number one son that we could rent a car and drive up from Miami to Orlando, because how hard could it be. He smiled.

Flights for the girls. Where to begin. My wife hates connections so she barks instructions to “make sure we are on a direct flight”. Ok then. You know best.

Something called Southwest was all that I could find for a reasonable price. United wanted drug money. And another airline called Frontier runs out of DEN to ORL but apparently one of those crazy women from the kids school told my wife that her cousins niece got pregnant in the back of a Frontier minivan, when she was working for the airline as an intern. In Kansas.

I think it went something like this. Regardless, Frontier was out. Southwest it was then.

After 5 minutes tapping away and entering my credit card, the Southwest website spits out what looks a set of confirmation numbers. Then it started barking at me regarding seat selection.

“Honey, the stupid website wont let me choose seats for you” I yelled with only a small degree of concern
“Why not?” she quips”
“I have no idea. What am I, a SW employee”
“Did you do it wrong?”
“No I did not do it wrong” I said defiantly
“Its an airline booking, I do them all the time”
“No you don’t, you send an email to someone and they take care of it for you”
“Yes, but I tell them what to do”

Clearly we weren’t getting anywhere.

Wait until you hear this. Would you believe that Southwest don’t let you choose seats. I had no idea. They apparently assign you a boarding group number and you go over the aero-bridge in waves, as if you’re invading one of the beaches at Normandy. How bizarre.

Wanting to wash my hands of this unpleasant ordeal I promptly forwarded the email confirmation to the boss and moved on to bigger things. Two minutes later I had taken care of the car booking via Hertz. And now to tackle the hotel.

I’m not going to tell you which Hyatt we stayed in – because I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. But it was a big one. Enormous in fact.

After a few minutes of fumbling around the Hyatt website I was happy with the room and decided to call Hyatt to see if I could apply a suite upgrade. I was thinking we might luck out and get a suite which had multiple bathrooms, a sofa bed which the girls could share and then we could get a rollaway for number one son.

We did indeed get lucky and the nice woman at Hyatt Gold Passport confirmed my Diamond Suite Upgrade for the week. Boom. Perfect even. I was quite pleased with myself. Flights booked. Car booked. And Hotel booked. Daughter happy because she is now travelling with back up, son happy because he thinks we are going to visit every idiotic roller coaster place in Florida and wife happy because she thinks it will be finally nice “to go somewhere warm and get away for a week”

Delusional fools. All of them.

LondonElite

Very much enjoying this! I see soooo many similarities here!

Subscribed.

DavidPM

Epic - I love this style of writing and I'm looking forward to future instalments. Don't worry too much about the kids - in my experience the first 26 years are the worst (daughter is 27 next year...)

Also subscribed and watching..

Culture Guru

The eightblack family is back!

Cant wait for the next installment ^

Madone59

HE'S BACK!!! ^

Can't wait to read this.

My first job was at an amusement park - spent 10 years working there. I look forward to your insights.

eightblack

Here we go then.

Son packs his standard wheelie. One pair of underwear. One tee-shirt. And a toothbrush. Quantity never changes no matter how long we are away, or the destination. Rain, hail, sleet or snow. Same clothes. Everytime.

His mother and I were forced to intervene though because the child has started to smell and we insisted on deodorant. A lot. And maybe multiple pairs of everything.

While I still think of him as a little kid, problem is he’s nearly as tall as my wife. Christ, he’s nearly as tall as me for that matter.

He has essentially stopped communicating to all and sundry in English and now uses some sort of weird grunting language that only other 13-year old males understand. And his room should be declared a bio-hazard. We pick up his laundry with a long set of aluminium tongs, and then wipe them down with industrial strength Lysol.

If I was 13 again and went to a co-ed school, I would make sure my room was spotless in the unlikely event that a) a girl might come over and b) I managed to convince her to come to my bedroom.

I mean – imagine if you could wind back the clock. A little Luther Vandross playing gently in the background, some freshly cut flowers in the corner, a set of neatly pressed 1500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets on the bed, a Nespresso machine on the nightstand, and a small bar fridge under the desk with a perfectly chilled, cheeky little French Chablis inside, just waiting to kick off proceedings.

I don’t get it.

I mean he knows that something called puberty has detonated inside his body. Basically I said to him, just hang on for the ride. You have no control of it. He sighed. According to him, girls apparently are no longer scary. I told him that when he is married – he will find out the true meaning of fear. He muttered the standard response “Dad you’re an idiot”

Onwards then.

So he and I set off for the airport in that relaxed father and son manner. No screaming. No shouting. No drama.

As I said, I had booked us on American so we had a brief one-hour layover in O'Hare. Easy as pie. Apart from the fact that my son can only last 2 hours now before he is hungry. That kid can consume his entire body weight in food. If I’m honest, it’s a little scary.

The way the outbound itinerary worked went something like this. Son and I would hoof it to Miami via Chicago, jump in the rental car and drive to Orlando and meet up with the girls. If all went to plan, we should arrive just a whisker behind them.

The girls were leaving a lot later than us due to the direct flight they were on with the airline, which has as its ticker symbol the letters LUV. I mean, what sort of company has a symbol like that. Fools. Should be enough to warn you away if you ask me.

I had booked a separate rental car for the girls in Orlando so my wife could drag all the crap to the hotel. Told her to check in ahead of us and we would be but a moment behind. That was the plan.

Like all perfectly laid out travel plans involving our family, things went pear shaped as soon as everyone headed for the airport.

They get to Denver. Wife has never flown Southwest before. Neither have I for that matter. In fact, I have no idea which terminal they operate their little tin pot operation from.

She has 2 girls with her and a mountain of luggage. They sit and wait for their flight. Then the first delay. Then another one. Then one more for good measure.

As soon as Number One son and I land in Chicago, I turn on my iPhone and the thing nearly explodes. There are text messages up the wazoo.

The 140 character limit messages start out innocently enough, but then they quickly deteriorate into a tirade of abuse.

“Stupid Southwest, took ages to find check in. No priority queue. What sort of airline did you put us on?” the message read

“Flight now delayed 1 hr. All is ok. Girls happy”

“Flight delayed even further now. What is going on? Call me”

“Honey where are you?”

“Are you ignoring me?”

“Stupid frikkin’ airline says now departure is 2.5 hrs. Never flying this airline again. Why did you book us on this!”

“Right, I’ve had it. Airline says departure now 4 hrs late. I hate you.”

Actually, there were a lot more text messages, but because FT is family friendly, I have taken the liberty of deleting them. All you husbands out there will get the idea though of the content. A lot of the eff word. And everything else in between.

I summonsed the courage to call The Dictator and then held the phone away from my ear. An unholy barrage of the most foul language spewed from the little iPhones earpiece, making people within ear shot run and duck for cover.

I was trying to pacify her and say things like “honey its fine, were on holidays, this is what happens when you travel”. But that was met with a violent “don’t you honey me and wait until I see you”

Son was laughing in the background and telling his mother in a loud voice that we had to go soon as our on time connecting flight was departing and he wanted to ensure we had room to put our wheelies in the First Class overheads.

As I was trying to Homer choke him because he clearly wasn’t helping, his mother was threatening to sue Southwest, sue me and anyone else who stood in her way between a Mojito and a deck chair by some crappy hotel pool.

Clearly then, the vacation had not gotten off to a good start.

On the plus side, it was looking like we were going to beat the girls into Orlando, even after navigating our way through the maze of Miami airport and the 3+ hour drive from MIA to MCO.

Which made me feel a little better as truth by told, I was a bit nervous of her checking into the hotel on her own. She’s not a good traveller. The hotel could quite easily say to her that everything is booked and that they have only been able to find a room in the basement, near the furnace. And she would gladly accept it.

As some of you know, I have a PhD in waving my arms. I relish those sorts of challenges.

Man, look at the time. We haven’t even got to the fun part yet.

wrp96

And most of your loyal readers just thought, "I'll believe that when I see it."

Looking forward to it.