Tag: Fun

Daily Life, Travel

Time To Hit The Road

The other day I saw one of those on-line questionnaires designed to phish for security info disguised as a quiz; “how many of these states have you visited?” But it did get me thinking, so I put together a list of all the states and countries I’ve been to. It’s not overwhelming. Nobody is going to mistake me for a travel influencer. The official count – 23 states and 6 countries. I’d guess that makes me an average traveler, maybe a touch above? It is possible my state count is higher… early on in my career there was a bunch of flying to visit customers that’s mostly a blur now. Anyway, I’ve been to about half the country.

Here’s the reality though – of those 23 states, I’ve only really seen a handful. “Seen”, meaning drove through a significant portion. Did sightseeing. Ate at restraunts. Did the tourist thing. The rest were business trips, driving through to get somewhere else, or saw only a tiny portion.

And now that we’ve reached retirement age, it’s time to truly travel and see ’em all. Both Mrs Troutdog and I have been talking about travel for some time. We both agree that we want to see the USA more than other countries at the moment. The problem? We can’t agree on how to see the country.

Mrs Troutdog wants to travel in a mega-land-yacht RV so we can sleep in our own bed each night and not be pooping in public toilets. She wants home cooked meals rather than eating out every day and having to go to a restaurant just to get coffee in the morning. I want to travel by car so we can be nimble and flexible, able to easily stop at every roadside stand advertising deep fried Twinkies. We’re at a bit of an impasse.

Full disclosure – we used to own a mega-land-yacht. In fact we lived in it for a year, so we’re very familiar with that sort of travel.

Impassioned pleas have been made on both sides of the argument. Power point presentations and white boards have been involved. Hundreds of hours of YouTube videos have been viewed looking for an edge to win the discussion. Friends and family now cringe and leave the room if anyone brings up the “travel” question.

The thing is, when you step back and think about it… it’s a silly discussion. Two thirds of the people in this country would give anything to be fortunate enough to be in our shoes. We’re very blessed to even be having this discussion. We worked hard, saved our pennies, and now find ourselves in a great place in life. We’re able to do as much or as little travel as we want. I don’t take that for granted.

So here we are. I think we’ve come to a temporary compromise. We’re going to pick a handful of things to see and places to visit in shorter 3-4 day trips. We’ll either drive, or fly and rent a car, and do the hotel thing. We’ll use this to not only sightsee, but to evaluate that sort of travel. Do we like that sort of flexibility, or is the whole hotel/motel, eating out every meal vibe a no-go for us?

It will be an interesting experiment. One I’m looking forward to. I see Route 66 calling my name. How about you? What’s your preferred method of vacation/travel?

Of course with the price of gas, food, and lodging these days… we may have already missed our grand travel window.

Cool, Daily Life, Motivation

Performance Anxiety

I have performance anxiety. Wait, that sounded bad. Not that kind of performance anxiety… I mean with sports. I could never be an Olympian or compete in some sort of professional sport. Aside from having to be talented, coordinated, and possessing athletic skill, those folks tend not to choke when it matters. I don’t have that ability.

Take golf for example. Golf seems to be my nemesis for some reason. I have a weird golf dyslexia that I can’t seem to get past. Despite a frightening amount of money spent on the driving range, lessons, and clubs, I still just don’t get it. I have zero confidence that when I step up to the tee, I’ll be able to hit the ball. As a result I hate the first hole. As in, I actually get butterflies in my stomach walking up to tee off. It makes no difference if I’ve warmed up on the range or not. All I can think of in my head is “don’t screw up, don’t screw up”. It happened just the other day. Mrs Troutdog and I were playing and got partnered with a 12 year old kid. He hit a beautiful drive that went a country mile. I stepped up and… chunked it about 10 feet. I set up to hit another… and chunked it about 10 feet. Sigh.

I know that half the problem is that I’ve gotten into my own head over this. I know I’m creating a self-fulfilling prophecy by obsessing over it. I just don’t know how to get past it. Mrs Troutdog laughs at me and says I shouldn’t care. We’re just out to have fun, it’s not like we’re trying to turn pro or impress anyone. She’s right. But I hate being bad at things, especially in front of strangers.

Maybe it’s a guy thing? I’m ok being bad when I’m a complete beginner. I’ve never been waterskiing. I would be really bad at it initially and that would be expected. But at some point you want to move up to being at least average. Especially if you’ve purchased all the expensive gear. Nobody wants to be a poser. Maybe that’s where my issues started? When I was young I did a lot of surfing. In the surfing tribe it was critical to fit in (or maybe it was just a teenage thing). You could always spot a poser. They’d have brand new expensive wetsuits and boards, yet were complete kooks in the water. As kids are prone to do, we mercilessly made fun of those guys.

That desire to fit in with the tribe as a kid probably left an indelible imprint that’s lingered into middle age. I desperately don’t want to be that guy who has all the expensive gear but not be able to walk the walk. Reminds me of a great old movie, “Man’s Favorite Sport?” staring Rock Hudson. The main character is a famous fishing guide who’s written books on the subject. Turns out he’s never actually been fishing. His boss enters him in a fishing contest and hilarity ensues.

With things like skiing and mountain biking, I’m comfortably average. I can reasonably ride most any terrain and know exactly what my fitness and skill limitations are. Even if I don’t know you, I’d happily go for a ride if you ask and be confident that I won’t embarrass myself. Ask me to play golf and I’ll spend twenty minutes making excuses. I hurt my back. Haven’t played since last year. I used to play years ago, but am just now taking it up again. Anything to cover for the inevitable flubbing on the first tee.

It’s silly, isn’t it? I’m a grown-ass man. Am I really so vain at this point in my life that I’d care about what you think of my golf ability? Apparently so. And I hate myself for even caring about it. I should strive to be Rodney Dangerfield’s Al Czervik character in the movie Caddyshack. Loud, flamboyant, every golf gadget available, yet was hopeless at golf. He didn’t care what anyone thought because he was having fun.

Maybe that’s the ticket to busting through this weird anxiety I have? A form of de-sensitivity training. Perhaps I should go buy the most outrageous plaid golf pants I can find and wear an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt. Add some sort of ridiculous hat, tee up a bright pink ball on a naked lady tee and let’r rip. Maybe by going over the top and pretending I really don’t care what you think, I’ll convince myself that people actually really don’t care if I can hit the ball or not. Maybe. I’m just not sure Mrs Troutdog will still play golf with me dressed like that.

Cool, Daily Life, Lists

Notions Of Cool V.002

A random list of things and shower thoughts that an old guy (who still thinks he’s 20) finds cool or worth pondering.

  • Listened to a fantastic podcast about twitter and general journalism group think. The interviewee is a journalist I wasn’t familiar with, Tim Pool. Following him now.
  • Our debt is now $22 trillion. The debt service alone is greater than the federal budget of Canada and Mexico.
  • I find it odd we’re willing to dump billions of dollars in aid to foreign countries… but not do the same for failing cities like Detroit.
  • There’s a guy who walks a three legged dog through my alleyway every morning. There must be some deep meaning there.
  • We had a bonfire in the snow last night with my nephew. I was kinda grumpy about it because the temp was in the teens. We ended up having a lot of fun. Sometimes the simplest things are the best.
  • For the aforementioned bonfire, we used a Solo stove. Can’t speak highly enough about these. Great product.
  • This is now the third patient I’ve had that decided to kill themselves via a gun… and ended up paralyzed instead. I can’t imagine mentally making the first decision, let alone the emotional weight of waking up and finding yourself even worse off. That’s heavy.
  • It’s hard to describe how happy it makes me to spend time cross country skiing with my dog. Putting the little skis on him is a pain though.

Song of the day: You know why – Trent Cantrelle