The Concept of Vacation

Sometime in my teens, my father planned a family vacation at some resort on the Gulf Coast frequented by the Old Money families from the South. The tri-fold brochure that my father showed me depicted vacationers playing tennis, sailing and, of course, whacking golf balls. We did not discuss the fact that no one in my family did any of these things.

My parents’ marriage was already on the rocks; my mom hadn’t joined us for the previous year’s vacation to the Southwest and wasn’t planning to attend this one, which I figured gave me the opening to say I didn’t want to go. Looking back, I saw this as a tactic to try to get my father to choose something else that actually sounded fun, but I never communicated that to my dad and he simply said, “Okay, don’t come.”

That incident came back to me 15 or so years later when I went on assignment for Bicycle Guide to ride the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, better known as RAGBRAI. Part of my problem, I realized, was that I hadn’t yet articulated to myself just what my idea of a vacation was. At 16 or 17, all I knew was that I’d run across something that was ostensibly a vacation for those both hoitied and toitied, but sounded like a madras-shirted and Bermuda-shorted nightmare to me. If I couldn’t wear jeans and a T-shirt, it was most definitely not a vacation.

It was at RAGBRAI that I identified my idea of a vacation. Ride my bike every day. Meet other cyclists. Dance to the Spice Girls (actually, that hadn’t been on the list, but it happened, and I enjoyed it), drink Budweiser chilled to 33 degrees Fahrenheit (also not on the list, but really great to drink while you dance to the Spice Girls), sleep in a tent. I couldn’t believe I was being paid to do the ride and write about it.

That one experience crystalized for me a definition of vacation that has dominated my life for nearly 30 years now. For nearly 10 years I went to Europe every summer and rode for two weeks, and then wrote about it, and writing about those experiences counted as part of my concept of the vacation. I’ve had to adjust that definition here and there (good thing definitions are malleable). Having a partner who doesn’t ride as much as I do demanded that. Having kids called for yet another adjustment.

So while the amount of riding I do on a vaction has changed, one dimension has not: To count as a vacation, a trip must include a bike. I’m not sure I’d state that in such definitive terms were it not for the fact that, last week, while visiting grandma with my boys in Memphis, someone asked me about whether or not I had a bike with me and I said, yes, of course I had a bike with me and that, “I don’t really consider it a vacation if I can’t ride my bike.”

On the inside, I paused for a moment because of the ease with which those words spilled from my mouth. On the outside, I shrugged my shoulders in that unavoidable existential truth way we all do.

When I consider all the ways my life has changed since 1997 when I rode RAGBRAI, I’m a little amazed that my definition of what constitutes a vacation hasn’t changed. The amount of riding has changed for sure: I no longer think spending two weeks in the Alps and riding 600 miles would be fun. However, I still want to ride my bike at least some.

Let me put this into more concrete terms: If I went to New York next week and didn’t attend a single Broadway show, I wouldn’t feel like my trip was incomplete in any essential way. If, however, I went to New York and I didn’t get together with my friend J.P. and pedal into New York or New Jersey or do the Saturday ride from the Rapha Club—and at least one loop around Central Park—that would be a fail. For me, those rides are every bit as essential as visiting MOMA.

I’ve got a vacation of my own coming up at the end of next week and, yes, I’ll have my mountain bike along.