This has certainly been the summer of travel. Whether for work or fun or some combination of the two, I have visited the beach, New York, Washington, and Los Angeles in the past two months.
I traveled to the last destination just last week for a conference, which luckily included a bunch of free time in the evenings. That helped me remember one important thing about travel.
I love hotel living.
Since we are getting closer to celebrating our 15th anniversary, it’s pretty obvious my wife and I are pretty compatible.
We do have a lot of the same interests, but just enough different ones to give each of us an opportunity to have some alone time. But when we went on our recent trip to Washington, D.C., I think I discovered our greatest compatibility.
We really complement each other well when planning and executing a trip. It’s almost scary.
Maria and I went on a trip recently. Nothing fancy, just a weekend in Washington, D.C., to see some tennis and have a celebration for our 15th anniversary a couple of months early.
As is our usual custom, we flew by the seat of our pants for most of our plans. That meant enjoying lunch the first night at a pub we just happen to read about in a guide book that afternoon.
I love this part of traveling. You never know what you will find when you stop for a meal in a city like D.C. In fact, on the next night, we ended up meeting the brother of a guy I went to high school with at our dinner spot.
That coincidence, however, paled in comparison to what happened on our first night. We had settled in our booth with a couple of drinks and waited for our sandwiches when I saw it.
At first, I could not believe my eyes. It had been a long day, and I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but there was no mistaking it. A family of four walked into the bar and the father, probably about five to 10 years older than me, wore something that made my jaw drop.
A fanny pack.
Nothing makes me happier than coming home at the end of a hard day and seeing my wife and daughter. We really have a lot of fun together.
But when I get a chance to have the house all to myself for three days, I’m not going to turn that down.
Maria and Bridget went to visit some friends last week, leaving me to my own devices.
My wife and I have had a tradition of traveling for our wedding anniversary. We have had some really great trips, but fell off the wagon the past few years. Since our 15th anniversary is this October, I wanted to resume the fun.
Luckily, we have had a very flexible definition of when an anniversary trip can take place. We headed up to New York in 2007, the last time we took one of these trips, to see a couple days of U.S. Open tennis action. Maria loves tennis, and we had a great time. I thought about repeating that trip, but then we came up with another idea.
One of the tournaments preceding the Open takes place in Washington, D.C. We have never made it down for that event, the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, so we set our sights on making that our 2010 anniversary trip.
We got tickets for evening sessions on Friday and Saturday, booked a hotel room and planned for a little sightseeing. Since D.C. is just about a two-hour drive from our house, it made for a nice little getaway.
Details after the jump
I had enough to worry about on my wedding day. I had a family full of people who could embarrass me at the drop of a hat. My best man had an incriminating picture hidden in his tuxedo jacket that he kept threatening to show my wife. I didn’t need the celebrant losing track of things.
But that’s just what happened. After I did my vows – or Maria did hers, I forget who went first – things skipped ahead to the next part without allowing the other one of us to say the vows. I tried to get the celebrants attention, but it took a moment or two, so we had to backtrack and re-do the vows then get to the rings part.
That’s my favorite Maggie Hormel story. There are others, but the laughter she brought while celebrating my wedding will always top the list.