Where did you vacation when you were young?
Where did you go for vacation when you were 22 or 23? I think my vacations all revolved around weekend camping or maybe a trip to a friend’s cabin in Sisters. Only when I was almost 25 did I have a job that gave me enough vacation time to take a full week off. Even then, we put $80 in the glove compartment as our return money. When we were out of money in our pockets, that meant it was time to return from the roadtrip to Utah. Why, you ask, am I posing this question?
Well, the NY Times ran a story about lack of vacations which included the “woes” of two Portlanders who can no longer afford their summer vacation. These two individuals work as a blogger and a barista. That’s cool. They probably have enough scratch to go have some fun and also pay the bills. What struck me though was that they’re whining because they couldn’t do a vacation that included the following - “…set out on a Kerouac-esque journey to traverse the country: flying to Boston, then to Chicago, and also taking a road trip to Montana, to revel in “the wide open spaces” of the West.” In the end, “They ended up just splitting the cost of a dinner date at a pasta place near their home.”
Wait a minute. The article states they kept trimming down the vacation plans due to cost of plane tickets. So, they had enough money initially to begin planing such an extravagant trip, but settled for dinner? Seriously, where did the funds go? Or was this just a dream and now they want to whine?
Holy crap. I’m have money in the bank and I couldn’t afford such a trip. The only people I knew in my early 20’s who were traveling extensively were the true road warriors who would work their asses off at 3 jobs for a year and then go trekking through europe for 6 months. And those were few and far between. Granted, everyone had a friend who was a trustafarian and could do almost anything, but again, they were few and far between.
This story reminds me of the WWeek story awhile back of post college Western Culinary institute students whining about loans and lack of jobs. Kids, it is cool to whine, that’s ok. I know I whined when I was your age about loans and lack of jobs, but don’t do it to the paper or the blogs. It makes you look like overprivileged douchebags.
Thanks to Bojack for the link to the article.
The whole trading-the-Kerouac-journey-for-a-suburban-pasta-dinner thing was something of an exaggeration, but it didn’t really come across that way in print.
Signed,
Overprivileged Douchebag
I think a long weekend in Chicago, Minneapolis or Kansas City (all 3-4 hour drives from where I lived in Des Moines) were the extent of vacations in my early 20s - usually staying at a friends place who lived in that city - or doing the 6 people in a hotel room thing.
Kids, it is cool to whine, that’s ok. I know I whined when I was your age about loans and lack of jobs, but don’t do it to the paper or the blogs.
Oh, the irony.
That is seriously one of the most out of touch and delusional articles. Ever.
We live in one of the best freaking vacation paradises in the U.S. for Cheese-sakes. People come from all over the world to vacation here in Oregon. Take the bus to the coast, camp out off a dusty logging road or legally shell out $15 bucks for a campsite, pack your food and walk into town once in a while for groceries. Woo-Boo that’s expensive!
What I did when I was “young” was work my butt off (and not as a blogger and certainly not just as a barista), then quit my job (jobs), move out of my apartment and put my stuff in storage and go to cheap places like SE Asia until my money ran low. If you are smart you can get a plane ticket still for under $700.00 You can also just go to Europe and generally find a job under the table working at a hotel or something. Explore before and after your job starts and ends and on your days off. Go out drinking with the locals at night. And French Vineyards and farms usually need labor (and they will house and feed you). My neighbor right now is in Hong-Kong with a free place to stay for three weeks because he did a house swap for his vacation. And my other friends go to Spain every year with free room and board because they teach at a camp there.
Seriously. Someone needs to school those kids on how to travel. Plane tickets for a Kerouac type journey? You’ve got to be kidding. I’m sure Jack K. took lots of planes all over back then too (snort). Buck it up and take Greyhound like he did. Get off when you are sick of riding and camp until you want to go somewhere else. Also, hello Amtrak. There is a great overnight train from Portland that drops you off in some of the most beautiful sky country in big sky country the next day. It’s cheap man.
Either the reporter on that story is a total idiot or his subjects are.
Lizzy,
You hit the nail on the head. Even one of the subjects of the story commented here that the story was a little exaggerated, but even on her website she is all giddy about being written up. If the story is that off base, maybe one would try and clarify it on one’s blog for the rest of us.
@Steve -
lol
It seems to me that the backlash against these two stems from a sense of “when *i* was your age, i had to walk to school uphill BOTH WAYS!” it’s too bad that you weren’t able to take trips when you were younger; that said, why begrudge these two? they were planning a vacation, plane tickets went up hundreds of dollars, and they decided instead of spending an exorbitant amount to do what they wanted or spending less but doing something they didn’t really want to do, they went out to dinner and called it a night. what’s the issue here? just because you weren’t able to do this when you were their age means that they’re not allowed to be disappointed because they can’t?
It’s not about the two twenty somethings, per se. It’s really about The NY Times doing completely lazy journalism and showing absolute lack of imagination on how to live well on a budget. That whole article pissed me off because for me it illustrates (yet again) that the NY Times is stuck in an ideal that in order to do what you want to in life you need money and you need to spend it a certain way in order to get any satisfaction. I mean, have you ever read their “frugal travel” articles? They are about as frugal as Paris Hilton. The other passage about the family whining because they couldn’t afford plane tickets but instead had to drive…gasp…in a car. Um, I thought that’s what family vacations were - you know, stopping for picnics in State Parks, going swimming or stopping at historical monuments when we needed a stretch break, checking out cheap regional BBQ joints and lunch counters and having a blast telling each other ghost stories, playing I-Spy, Punch-Buggy or a thousand other road trip games.
I did travel a lot in my early 20’s as I still do. I did it on the cheap then and I still do and I have an absolute blast each and every time.
I feel bad for the couple in the story. I feel bad they got duped by the NY Times into sounding like complete spoiled idiots. I feel bad they couldn’t do their jet-set “Kerouac-esque” adventure. And I feel really bad that they just gave up and instead of compromising a bit (seriously, that overnight train to Montana is one of my favorite cheap getaways) just blew their money on some pasta. But hey, whatever. To each his own.
I guess I feel so strongly about this because I feel like for the longest time Americans have been really spoiled with cheap fuel oriented transportation (autos/airplanes) and have this idea in their heads (perpetuated by stories like the one in the Times) that things like vacations are now off-limits. It simply ain’t true.
Whoa, kids! Chill out! As a twenty-year-old college student, I’m pretty sure I can wholeheartedly agree with Winona and Nick that a trip to Boston and a drive back to the west coast would be epic and amazing, especially since it’s a journey so many people recommend and one that takes the traveler through almost the entirety of the U.S. It’s definitely a worthy goal to set out on a trip like that, and I’m sure any barista and blogger had to count their pennies to make sure they’d be able to handle that sort of trip. It would be almost impossible, however, to account for the type of jump in fuel prices we experienced this summer; the pair may have been well prepared for that vacation at $3.75 a gallon, but $4.35 is a whole different ballgame.
As for the whiny douchebag comment, anyone interviewed about their experiences in a newspaper is doing the reporter a favor and helping them with material. If a reporter asked you what the price of gas has affected in your life, you sure as heck are going to say you’re not a fan and it’s impacted you somehow. They aren’t whining; they wrote it off to bad luck, responsibly realized they couldn’t afford the trip, went out to dinner and called it a day. They should be applauded for responsibly handling their finances instead of irresponsibly splurging the way so many twenty-somethings (even myself included, occasionally) do these days.
Lastly, the lazy journalism comment is just silly. The NYT wasn’t out to publish about living well on a dime- the reporter wrote a story about how gas prices and the economy are forcing people to really cut back. As a journalism major, I’m pretty sure a features reporter at one of the best newspapers in the country, and arguably the world, will do a pretty damn good job at covering exactly what it is they set out to cover, and if they happen to stray from the path they planned they have some of the most critical editors in the business to call them out before they head back to the drawing board.
Thanks for playing, everyone.