Vacation, Where Mistakes Don't Happen in Isolation
Trying *and failing* to fake it the first time out of the house in three years...
People lose their minds on vacation. It's a fact. I've lived in vacation destinations (namely Lake Tahoe and Park City) long enough to see it happen first-hand and try hard not to repeat those mistakes.
There's even a name for this vacation brain in ski towns, Gapers.
Gapers (coined after the 'gap' between one's ski helmet and goggles that usually leaves a headband-sized tan or sunburn streak) do more than just fall in the lift line or throw their Clif Bar wrappers off the chair lift and into the forest. The ripples of their wave of carelessness and destruction can be felt both while they’re there and long after they depart.
Telltale Gaper signs are buying (and eventually throwing away) way too much food, driving like shit, sitting in a parking space with your reverse and brake lights engaged but oblivious to the line behind you, spending double or triple what you ordinarily would for something you either don't need or don't know what you're getting, and letting the mundane panic of being out of place inform every decision—the thousand-yard stare of being out of your routine, with no lifeline of familiarity to bring you back to shore.
People being thrown off for an entire trip just because they don’t know how to work the hotel TV remote common thing I even wrote a book (OK, a novella) about it.
Though I’ll also admit that forming personality around being able to identify and avoid (or at least spending the majority of your adult life making fun of) these behaviors is something else entirely—especially when it happens to you.
Because here I am, midway through my first vacation in three years making all those same mistakes and not being able to help myself or stop it one bit.
It started in Pasadena on Saturday when my first vacation move was bold and misguided—breaking all my know rules and Gapering my way through LA.
Having spent the last six months of COVID trying to get rid of all meat from the diet in a very Linda Eastman way (I don't like eating anything with eyes that can see), I decided to go big and order from this vegetarian Chinese place in LA I’ve been stalking online for the last 90 days. Start things off big!
I ordered up and an hour later I arrived very late (traffic) for my pickup window (check!) to see a big-handled grocery bag already sweaty at the bottom waiting for me. I over-ordered (check!) and grabbed the handles, and the food dumped out the bottom (check!). I was so harried (check!) to scoop up the food and make haste out I forgot the soy sauce, napkins, utensils, and plates (check!).
I ended up back at the hotel an hour and twenty minutes later (more traffic) eating high-end cold vegetarian Chinese food, which, if you can imagine something, imagine it traveling worse than regular Chinese food—out of the carton.
There was sooooo much leftover (check!).
My meal budget blown for the entire trip (check!).
The second leg of the trip mercifully left the Chinese-leftover-smelling room at the Sheraton in my wake, my little boy declaring he'd never go to THAT hotel again until it was fumigated, leaving it well worse than I found it (check!).
After the short drive east to Palm Springs, things started off more sensibly with a light lunch at Sherman's Deli. Me a bowl of chicken-free chicken noodle soup, and the boy with a grilled cheese from the kids’ menu.
I was tempted by the mountains of pastrami that kept making their way back and forth past the table—those are, after all, the real reason for making the pilgrimage to the West Coast answer to Katz’s (apologies to Canter's and Greenblatt's (RIP), but I kept it conservative and stuck with light fare in attempts to continue my atonement.
Palm Springs is a very navigable town. I didn't even get lost on my first run to the Cactus to the Clouds trailhead, where a 10k foot climb takes one from the desert floor the snow-capped (at least after yesterday's storm) peaks of the San Jacintos.
Only a third of the way up, and you can see halfway out to Nebraska, or at least past the airport, and once you're back down, it’s a nice cruise next to the Palm Springs Art Museum, where I uh, accidentally spat upon the sidewalk engraving of the name Ronald Wilson Reagan, then hammered it home down the Palm Springs walk of fame waving to the enshrined class of Connie Stevens and Liberace and Roy Rogers and Dale Evans and even Alan Ladd.
Later on in the hotel hot tub, there were a pair couples talking to each other from a safe distance in the pool-sized bubbly water.
They were both from the Midwest, one set from Chicago and the other from Minnesota. Being a solo act, I got left out of the pleasantries, and that's fine. I looked up at the sky and felt the light rain coming down on my cheeks.
I'm always surprised with Midwestern accents that someone's not doing them as schtick. The Minnesota couple had an especially heavy Lundegaard lilt going on. They pairs talked about Covid like an old college friend who can't quite get their shit together.
"We were hoping Covid wouldn't follow us out here, but here we are."
“Yeah us too.”
"Covid got us in May"
"In May?"
"In May, after the vaccine."
"Oh, that's too bad yeah. We had ours earlier.”
"We were going to go to Puerto Vallarta but had to cancel because of Covid.”
“Oh, that’s too bad too yeah.”
“This place was on our list, we don’t want to get stuck in a foreign country with Covid. Unless it’s on a beach.”
“Even if it’s on a beach. You don’t want whatever that strain is here.”
“Yeah, no souvenirs yeah.”
I made my way back to the room and showered up. I took the little guy down to the arcade, and wondered about all the mistakes I was making in front of him that he was silently ticking off in his own head.
Someday I'd hear about it. Me, the vacation Gaper.
But for now, he needed me. I was the one holding the tokens after all.
UTEP vs. Fresno State in the New Mexico Bowl
Bowl Season kicks off this weekend with a slew of games that are sponsored mainly by the fossil fuels industry, big banks, or big insurance—reminders that we don't really need to be doing any of this (or at least not like this) anymore.
Still, someone's got to make their numbers pencil out even as a virus barrels towards its one-millionth death in the US and mask mandates start up once more in California and will continue indefinitely because likely a Palm Springs hot tub was ground zero for some new variant with Midwestern origins.
Last week’s pick (BYU over UAB) is on Saturday, and the only other game of mild interest to me this weekend the New Mexico Bowl on Saturday afternoon from Albuquerque, where UTEP (7-5) will take on Fresno State (9-3).
The Bulldogs were only a couple of snaps away from making it into the national conversation this year. They were beating Oregon for three quarters and controlled the clock and the line of scrimmage throughout that game but came up just short in Eugene to start off the season.
For all its successes, Fresno State also got in their own way plenty this year, dropping a gimme against Hawaii, was obliterated by Boise State, and barely got by UNLV.
Head coach Kalen DeBoer is already settling in Seattle to coach the Washington Huskies and the team may or may not have their starting QB under center—ditto a few other key sill position seniors who have also decamped. It’s a classic team in flux that is playing a nothing bowl two weeks shy of where they wanted to be on New Years’ Day.
The UTEP Miners averaged almost 16 yards per completion for under-the-radar QB Gavin Hardison which could be trouble for the Bulldogs as they did poorly against passing-heavy teams allowing more than ten yards per pass in all three of their losses.
The Miner defense could give up some yardage to the Bulldogs as well—again, depending on who shows up for the game. They gave up 400+ yards total offense thrice this season to UTSA, Boise State, and North Texas. All three games were losses for the Miners.
Both teams love to give the ball up. UTEP lost the turnover margin in five of its last six games and Fresno State, which caused more turnovers than it coughed up, was on the losing end of the equation for each of its three losses.
Ordinarily I’d say Fresno State wins by double-digits, but it’s one of those where UTEP is actually expected to show, and that may make all the difference.
Take UTEP +11 vs. Fresno State at the New Mexico Bowl 2:15 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18 on ESPN