Tag: vacation

When I felt like I did something good

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

On our last morning at Disney, we had breakfast at The Contemporary, at Chef Mickey’s.  Mythical wife and I agree that character meals are often great indulgences to partake in, especially with the kids, because it guarantees meeting a number of characters, without having to wait in gigantic lines, all while you get to relax inside an air conditioned place, eat and not be on your feet.

Anyway, I excuse myself to go to the restroom; and the first thing I do when I go into any public bathroom stall, is check the toilet paper.  The last thing any man wants to happen is to do your business, only to shortly discover that there’s no toilet paper or an inadequate amount of toilet paper left.  And it was good that I did this, because the first stall I went into, there was nothing but the roll of cardboard left on the roll.  Poor form for Disney, because usually they’re on top of this kind of thing.

So I go into the adjacent stall, find sufficient TP left, and proceed to do my business.  While I’m sitting there, I hear the door to the restroom open, and I hear the labored breathing.  In an instant, my mind is racing, wondering if this guy is going to go into the stall next to me, and if he does, should I say something to warn him about the conundrum he’s inevitably going to have, but before I could do any more thinking, the guy is already in the stall, breathing like he was just in a race, belt buckle clanging on the ground and he’s sitting and destroying the planet in the blink of an eye.

Seriously, I’m picturing that scene in Dumb and Dumber when Harry has to crap like the apocalypse because Lloyd spiked his coffee with TurboLax hearing what is transpiring in the stall next to mine, and unsurprising I hear an exasperated “ahh shit” come from him, knowing that he’s probably just noticed that there’s no TP on the roll.

At this point, there’s a part of me that’s wondering if I should just stick to men’s room etiquette and keep my mouth shut and mind my own business, but at the same time, I am very much aware that there’s an emergency about to happen right next to me, divided only by an inch-thick metal wall.

There was a time in my life where I would just go the aforementioned route of feigning ambivalence and washing my hands of the situation, and leave the guy to fend for himself, but especially on a trip like this one, at Disney World, it occurred to me that there was a very high chance that this guy was like me, in the sense that he too was a dad, probably had dealt with a metric ton of bullshit, babysitting, kid-chasing and exasperation, and the absolute last thing he needed in the world was to be put in a scenario where he’d have to bare-ass it out of the stall and try to wash his asshole in a public sink and hope nobody comes in and sees it.

So after I was done with my business, I gently extended my roll of paper down low to beneath the bottom opening, and softly said, hey man I think you’re going to need this.  He quickly grabbed the TP and was just like uhhh thanks, and I was off on my merry way back to my family.  Although the interaction was short and very few words were spoken, I felt like I really did a very good deed, and I like to think that this guy knew how lucky he was to have been next to me, and didn’t have to think too hard on whether he should swallow his pride and ask or risk a worst of humanity situation.

I didn’t have to do what I did.  I could’ve just feigned ignorance and left Harry to fend for himself.  But from one dad to what I’m guessing was probably another dad, we endure a lot on these Disney trips, a bathroom meltdown shouldn’t be one of them.  I’m glad I did what I did, and I think I did a really good deed and I applaud myself for it.

Dad Brog (#140): Disney Trip 2024

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Being both passholders as well as Disney Vacation Club, it goes without saying that my family spends a good bit of time going to Disney World.  Personally, I’m pretty long past over most anything in regards to The Mouse, but my wife and kids still enjoy it a lot, and there’s not much I won’t do for them, especially when I have little idea what to do with my vacation time in the first place.

However, the big story of this last extended Disney trip was Hurricane Helene, which I didn’t even know was bubbling up in the Gulf of Mexico until two days into the trip, when suddenly everyone in person and on social media are talking about this megastorm that’s forming, and how it’s not only going to wreak havoc on Florida where we were, but appeared to have Atlanta firmly in its crosshairs, leading me to feel all sorts of anxiety about shit happening to my home while I wasn’t there.

Fortunately for us, the storm conditions didn’t really come into play until the last day of our trip, to which at that point we were pretty bushed and fairly content to spend more time at the resort than more time at the parks, and it didn’t really affect our trip.

In fact, other than watching some serious winds from the safety and comfort of our resort, not only did we avoid the storm in Florida, much to my relief, Helene kind of banked hard east, which we all know by now, really fucked the western parts of Appalachian North Carolina, but as far as Atlanta was concerned, really managed to avert disaster.

It was interesting driving back, because as we traversed from Orlando back to Georgia, there was plenty of evidence of the carnage that Helene brough, even as far central as I was coming from, with trees down all over the shoulders and sides of the road, and pretty much every billboard in the state was stripped and barren.  Piles of sawdust on the shoulders indicated where trees actually affected the highways themselves, and this was the case all the way up into Georgia, and right before getting to Macon, it all kind of stopped, and this was presumably where the storm banked hard east, and miraculously swerved past Atlanta.

Insert ironic joke about how not even category-4 storms don’t want to visit Atlanta.

As for the rest of the trip, I wouldn’t exactly call it a vacation; I knew this was most likely going to be the circumstances going into it.  It was a trip, and there was a tremendous amount of work involved, wrangling the little monsters of mine, who are bursting with excitement and curiosity and the want to run around and explore the vast World of Disney, and as is often times the case, the lion’s share of labor falls to me to do, and I don’t really get to have the same sense of vacation, relaxation, recuperation and entertainment as everyone else does.

There were really only two things that I wanted to do that would have been self-serving and when the trip was done, I didn’t get to do either of them.  Between kid wrangling, the time it takes to do absolutely anything at all, and the weather coming into play, there simply wasn’t any space for anything for me to happen, and the fact of the matter is that as much as I love my kids, if there’s any chance at all for me to not go completely sour on Disney World and the Disney brand, there have got to be some kid-free trips lined up in my future where I can actually relax, unwind and not be a dad for a fucking minute.

I kind of knew what had happened was going to happen, and that it really wasn’t going to be that much of a vacation for me personally.  But my kids and their safety always come first, and trying to keep them in a modicum of line is also high priority, and it’s often times frustrating when trying to stick to good habits while on the road is challenging, and even more so when I don’t really have anyone but myself to rely upon to handle the load of keeping an eye on my kids.

But the girls seemed to have a good time in spite of the weather and some of the challenges experienced while there.  They got to ride a lot of rides, eat a lot of junk food, spend some time with me at the pool, see a lot of characters, eat more snacks, and watch a whole lot of television at the resort and while in the car, so as long as they’re happy, I can take victory from that.

I just wish that I didn’t have to feel like I have to be the one who constantly has to sacrifice everything, because I already feel like I’ve sacrificed just about everything that makes me, me, and there’s really nothing left for me to sacrifice left, except for whatever it is that prevents me from being a complete husk of a living organism.

This girl is living my dream and I’m so jelly

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

BI: Philadelphia fashion photographer capitalizes on constantly oversold route, extends Italian vacation several days and makes over $3K in flight vouchers while getting free hotels and food

Let me tell you how envious I was feeling when reading this story.  This girl managed to accomplish something that I’ve tried to do in the past to no success, and on a scale that I could only dream about.  Having the flexibility and lack of commitments enough to where she could just say fuck it and stay in Italy for as many days as American Airlines constantly kept overselling their Naples to Philadelphia route, and volunteering to take the bump; this is the stuff that my dreams used to be made of.

I’ve actually never been able to accomplish this even once before, even at the piddly domestic level.  Even if there’s been opportunities to volunteer my position for even a nominal, $300-400 flight credit, either I’ve been beaten to the punch or my flexibility wasn’t prohibitive enough for me to go for it, and I’ve always sat in terminals or on flights, fantasizing over the what-if, I could accomplish it, and get some large amounts of house money in which I could then parlay into bigger and better trips, or even some first-class accommodations instead.

One holiday a long time ago, I booked on Thanksgiving day itself, thinking that being a holiday, and before the all-important Thanksgiving Dinner time, I would be a shoe-in for a credit scenario; frankly, I didn’t want to make the trip in the first place, and I figured if there was ever a chance I would get to reach for the stars and take a shot at one of my travel fantasies, this would be the opportunity.

However, it’s apparent that the maniacal traveling is done the day before, or the Sunday before, and when it comes to Thanksgiving Day itself, fuck, I could’ve stood-by for the flight and made it on the flight, it was so desolate, but instead, I was the schmuck who paid for a full fare, thinking it would be oversold, I could forfeit my seat, get $500, and be absolved of having to travel up for a holiday.

All the times mythical wife and I have traveled internationally, we’ve always talked about what we’d do if the opportunity ever presented itself, but usually one or both of us were working too stringent of jobs to risk missing, especially since remote work never really existed for our lines of business until COVID, or we had to be cognizant of animal care, or some other reason, so we never really had a serious shot at cashing in on this ourselves.

And now that we have kids, this dream is basically non-existent anymore, unless the kids were already with other family, they weren’t burnt out yet, and were demanding that we tried for it, which I don’t imagine is going to be happening any time soon seeing as how we travel on airplanes maybe twice a year, if even that.

But yeah, I’m so jelly of this girl for what she was able to accomplish.  Not that I’m particularly a fan of American Airlines, but I would gladly take their money if they were offering it up in $1,200 increments to forfeit my seat, and feed and house me.  If I were in her situation, I would do the exact same thing, and be at the airport praying for another oversold notice, and be jumping up and down raising my hand to be the people to continuously volunteer to give up my seat.  I can only try to not be in denial of how much I’d like to live vicariously through her freedom and independence in these circumstances, and the amount of free travel she’ll be able to eke out of $3,550.

Thoughts on Cruising with Virgin for the first time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I recently went on an adults-only vacation, probably the first one since well, we had children.  Sure, we’ve had a quick jaunt away here or there, but nothing like a four-night cruise on an adults-only line, where we had no real objective other than the pursuit of relaxation and feeling not just like parents.

So let’s get it out of the way now, yes, which meant that we were Virgin virgins, as we had never cruised with Virgin Cruises before.  We’d both heard lots of good things about them, and it seemed as good of an endeavor to embark on before mythical wife has to start preparing for the next school year.

It was kind of weird preparing and embarking on this trip, seeing as how like I’d said, we’d never really had such time away from the kids under these circumstances.  We got to fly somewhere instead of driving because the cost of two adults is way more feasible than flying five humans, where none of them are lap-rider eligible (read: free) anymore, and we had nothing but carry-ons instead of the maximum baggage allowance allowed to travel with.

I got to enjoy a legit Cuban sandwich and coffee in downtown Miami before we departed which is definitely worth mentioning considering how neither seems to be capable of existing outside of Miami and presumably, Cuba itself, but from the very start, Virgin Cruise Line seemed to be a breath of fresh air compared to other experiences we’ve had cruising in the past.

As all sorts of identification, passports, and documentation are logged in advance of travel, we basically show up to port at a general assigned time, and then we’re through in a jiffy with minimal waiting.  There was little feeling like cattle, slowly moving through the pen before we’re on the ship, and we go straight to our stateroom, where a nifty tablet is waiting that controls everything, and fresh canisters of water, as if they know the process of embarkation can be a pain in the ass and it’s important to replenish the hydration of being in South Florida.

Admittedly, I had some concerns and thought that it would temper my enthusiasm when doing some recon prior to the trip, because there were some things about the branding, the presentation and general vibe I was getting, that Virgin Cruises might be a little on the douchey side; I mean, the ice cream joint on ship is literally called “Lick Me til Ice Cream” which is about as cringey to type out as much as it is to see it on a fucking wall (but it didn’t stop us from going there a few times and enjoying some decent quality gelato), and the cruise line’s general importance placed on drinking and partying.

But a lot of those preconceived notions were put to rest pretty early on, and other than like, the temperature of our stateroom, and the occasional clunkiness of the app, I really don’t have anything bad to say about the entire experience, and I can say without hesitation that we had a fantastic experience, and we would without hesitation do it again in the future, which is all but guaranteed, seeing as how we’ve capitalized on their future voyage bait of a large amount of on-board credit for putting a deposit down for a future cruise.

Continue reading “Thoughts on Cruising with Virgin for the first time” →

Does nobody move for ‘excuse me’ anymore?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

During my last family trip, I observed a noticeable amount of instances where saying ‘excuse me’ to people, resulted in absolutely no response at all.  And it’s not like I’m taking any off-path routes to get from point A to B to C, I’m talking about very general, public and heavy-traffic walkways or paths, where people clog up traffic, I want to get around them, and they have the space to move elsewhere, but for whatever selfish reason, they exist in the way.

I say excuse me, in a normal, neutral tone, and in some instances, people glanced over at me, and in other either people pretended like they couldn’t hear me, or proceeded to completely no-sell the fuck out of me.  It’s at this point, I say excuse me in a louder, more insistent tone and this usually does the trick to get them to acknowledge my existence, and when I usually just proceed to move at them, will they actually move.

It’s not like I was walking by myself in most cases, and could just as alternatively take longer, wider routes to avoid being close to people in the first place.  In most of these cases, I’m wheeling a stroller, luggage, or, in a rush carrying a toddler that needs to go to the bathroom, but for whatever reason it is, it just felt like a conspicuously high number of instances where it just seems like people have dropped common courtesy of moving the fuck out of the way when people say excuse me.

And when I have to repeat myself, louder and more hostile sounding, all these cocksuckers look at me like I’m the asshole for trying to get somewhere, where they’re the conceited selfish shitheads blocking walkways and thinking their inane conversations or needs are higher priority than others.

It’s not lost on me that this is sounding like an old man yelling at the sky kind of rant, but what’s really wrong with hoping that people have common decency to continue honoring the simple and basic human interaction of moving out of the way when someone says excuse me?  It’s not like I’m barreling through with the intention of initiating contact and shoving people out of the way, I’m simply alerting people that I need to get around them, and to pardon any potential contact and give them a heads up to move if they can.  Fuck me, right??

The Holiday Famiry Road Trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In an attempt to tackle numerous birds with a single stone, my entire house packed up and hit the road, so that we could visit family, see some sights, and let the kids and the au pair see some things outside of our everyday life in Georgia.  All of the driving necessary to hit all of our destinations was daunting, but with hopes that breaking up the trip with strategic stops, and having an iPad full of kids’ movies and television shows to distract, it wasn’t really that bad aside from the sheer time and boredom of the driving aspect which is I guess the burden of dads everywhere in the world when it comes to a famiry road trip, but honestly I can’t complain.  The kids were great on the entire long stretches of driving, and we didn’t have to stop nearly as often as I feared we might have.

As for the trip itself, it was pretty good from the standpoint of getting to see a lot of family, and taking the kids and au pair into Washington DC to see some sights.  Say what I might about DC as a former resident of the area, but places like their zoo and all the museums truly are top-notch.  And the gentrification fairy certainly has done some work to the place since the last time I really went exploring or got lost in the city itself.

Pour one out for the husk that used to be Chinatown, which is apparently limited to like two restaurants and the big red arch that remains.  It’s also hilarious to see all the American and chain businesses that seem like they’re required to have Chinese writing on their storefronts, so like you’re seeing a Chipotle, with Chinese characters that probably say like Mexican food or something on it, since I doubt there’s specific characters to describe a burrito.

I took our au pair to a Caps game since somehow she’s inexplicably a hockey fan from South America and is apparently a New York Islanders fan, and since they were playing the Caps during our trip, it seemed like a layup to be able to gift something of a dream experience for her to be able to see the Islanders in person.  Unfortunately, the Islanders took the L, but she got to witness the general apathy and low-excitement of the DC sports scene, where the entire crowd basically waiting for Alexander Ovechkin to do something, and the guy looking like he’s playing hurt, based on the Undertaker-way he was coming into the game only at optimal scoring chances, and shooting from the same spot on the ice a few times before coming right back off.

In the past, I used to hold onto something of a kinship with the general area, and have a sense of pride of being a former Virginian.  I liked knowing that I still knew the area very well and could get around without a map, take Metro without needing guidance, and generally co-exist with the denizens of the area without much complaint.  But during the span of this trip, there were several instances of where I came to the realization that I’m just not one of them anymore, and not just that, that I don’t really like it up there very much, and often wondered how I was able to live up there for like 12 years.

People, in all of the DMV, are just so much more conceited and petty and just generally more selfish than what I’m used to living in the South.  It’s hard to explain, but there’s always the smallest of micro-aggressions that I witness that remind me that I’m not in the South anymore, whether it’s holding doors open, being in the way on sidewalks or being at restaurants and being completely unwilling to offer up extra chairs or space.  Like we’re at a restaurant with six people, and there are only 4-tops left, but both adjacent tables have people with extra chairs; perhaps it was presumptuous to assume anyone would’ve offered them up to my party, but down South, people are just a little friendlier and a little more aware of others, as opposed to the people around us who insisted their coats or their empty bag of takeout needed their extra chairs.

Mythical wife actually wants to ultimately end up back there, as she has lots of friends up in Maryland, but I have very little desire to move back up there, even if 75% of my general family lives up there.  It’s not like they’d all automatically become ready babysitters, nor would I want to put that responsibility onto all of my cousins or my parents, and then I’d be stuck up in DMV paying DMV land values and being subject to all the shitty people and worst of all, the motherfucking traffic.

Because that was absolutely one of the worst parts of the trips, was the aforementioned motherfucking traffic.  It was bad when I lived up there with the seemingly endless construction of the I-495/I-395/I-95 interchange, but because VDOT apparently needs to always have a 20-year project on their docket at all times in order to justify their existence, they’ve decided to turn I-495/I-66/Rt. 123 into their personal battlefield now, and getting stuck on a route in which I remember cruising back and forth through in the past just made me feel homicidal whenever I was caught in some standstill traffic.

In fact, while up in DMV, there was literally not a single instance where I got into my car and didn’t get stuck in some catastrophic traffic jam.  Going to Gaithersburg, traffic.  Coming back from Gaithersburg, traffic.  Going to my mom’s place, traffic.  Going to the nearest Metro station to pick up wife and au pair, traffic.  After my family gathering, my house was going to head back to Richmond in order to shave an hour off of the big drive the following day, and one of my cousin’s said that I shouldn’t expect any traffic on the night of December 23rd, but naturally, there’s some catastrophic traffic jam in fucking Quantico of all places, as if my time in the DMV area just had to get one last fuck you before I left.

People seem to think Atlanta traffic is, which it is, but I still think traffic up there is still way worse.  Atlanta traffic is primarily aggressive drivers and poor infrastructure, but the DMV area has infrastructure and a reliable train system.  Their traffic is on account of bad drivers who are all pussy-whipped into overly-safe-into-becoming-dangerous drivers by the Commonwealth’s egregious ticket fines and the area’s constant tampering with the road system buoyed by their $4B+ road budget.  The overall result is me wanting to blow my brains out every time I got into the car, and most definitely not wanting to be in the area, as a residence especially.

But like I said, this trip was not entirely about me.  It’s important that my kids meet and have exposure to my family, and it’s important that our au pair gets to actually travel and see places and experience things outside of her daily routines, so if it means accomplishing those things, I’ll take some traffic on the chin for the greater good.  As much as I bemoaned the traffic and aggravations of DMV living, seeing how happy my kids are around their grandparents and extended family, and seeing how happy the au pair was when she got to see her favorite Islander players in person, I really can’t ask for better gifts than those.  This is why I often insist on getting nothing for the holidays, because some of the best things just aren’t tangible things.

Dad Brog (#120): the 2023 Famiry Disney Trip

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Typically, I imagine a lot of people look forward to taking a week off and going down to Disney World with their families.  But a lot of people also aren’t stodgy curmudgeons who is always financially paranoid and also knows just how much work two toddlers are regardless of how many adults are going to be involved in the trip, so personally it’s not so much that I was gleefully looking forward to taking a week off at the Happiest Place on Earth™ as much as I was just mentally trying to psych myself up for the sheer amount of, lift, that would entail on a trip as such.

I mean, two of the things that are basically atop of my general pet peeve list these days are crowds and being up against a clock, and Disney trips are typically nothing but dealing with gargantuan crowds and always being up against a clock since there are fast passes, lightning lanes, genie passes or whatever else that puts clocks on top of everyone’s heads.  Not to mention despite the fact that the weather is just now finally starting to cool off in Georgia, we head down to Florida, where it’s still going to be 90F+ every day, along with the daily Florida rains to contend with, and it’s like asking myself, why do we keep coming back to Florida over and over again?

Regardless, I don’t want to be a total curmudgeon that brings down those all around me, so I did my best to be optimistic that things were going to be okay, and I deliberately planned absolutely nothing at all for myself, since trips like these really are for my kids above all else.  Because if I had any real allusions that I would have any actual time for anything that I wanted to do, I would be cranky in the very likely chance that they did not occur.

Overall, it was probably for the best that I went into the trip with such gameplan, because by simply rolling with the general agenda that mythical wife had set up and just reacting to what was in front of me, I can say that I think the trip went well, I didn’t burn out too much, and most importantly, I think my kids had a really great time, and I can take some really positive and core memories out of the trip as a whole.

Sure there were a few moments where I get fried where I feel like I’m the only one watching the kids while everyone around me is constantly shopping or indulging themselves while the girls grow restless and cranky and I’m the only one seemingly caring, but frankly this is often the case regardless of if we’re in Disney or Florida or anywhere really.

It’s the moments where I’m with my kids and I see them getting enjoyment or having fun in ways that aren’t available to them back at home, that make trips like these worth it, no matter how much angst or frustration I deal with at any other point during them.  Seeing my kids’ faces light up when they meet their favorite (current) Disney princess, or they get to eat something that we normally don’t let them eat at home, these are the true core memories that emerge from a trip while any of the fleeting frustration or grumpiness about daily changing sleeping arrangements get dumped into forgotten memories by the end of the trip.

But my god, I think the pinnacle of this trip for me, was seeing just how mind-blown and enthralled both of my girls were, when they experienced the big slide at our resort.  I had no real intention of letting either of them go down it, thinking they were too young or too small to handle it.  I figured the baby slide that was like 6 feet and a gentle, straight slope would be the highlight of their trip, and they seemed to like it fine, going down it like 30 times each, with me catching them at the bottom of it every time.

Then I noticed that some kids not much bigger or older than #1 coming down the big slide, and I’m asking the lifeguard if there was any age or size restrictions on it, to which they responded that there weren’t, other than kids like mine needing life jackets for safety reasons.  I stood at the bottom of the slide watching kids come down, and sure enough it wasn’t long before not just #1, but #2 wanted to try the slide, so it was the moment of truth to see if they could handle it or not, since we had the au pair who could catch them at the bottom while I took them up top.

Surely, one or both of my kids would be traumatized, or be that kid at the water park who puts on the hand brakes and gets themselves stuck and makes a scene, right??  I let #1 down the slide first, and she did a little bit of braking for herself, but otherwise went down the slide without any other incident.  #2, I had more concern for, being smaller and fragile, but when I set her on her way, watching her go down the slide, the smile on her face, man, was totally one of those things where if I could bottle that kind of joy and enjoyment and sell it to others, I would be rich three times over.

After sliding down myself to get my kids’ opinions on the slide, they were absolutely beside themselves and practically begging to get back up the stairs and go down the slide again, and again, and again, to which the au pair and I obliged and took turns at taking them up while the other caught them at the bottom.

After the 6th or 7th trip down the slide, I’m asking myself, why bother with exorbitant admission into the parks, when they’ve clearly found the highlight of their trip from one of our resort’s amenities?

Either way, that was probably my favorite memory of this year’s Disney trip.  I know that in future years, things will continue to get easier as my kids grow, and their sleeping arrangements change and settle, and we’ll need less and less assistance, but I can still say that this year’s trip wasn’t nearly as exhaustingly clunky as the one prior.

But of course, nothing can go too smooth, and despite the fact that the travel was going fairly smooth, it naturally came crashing to a literal stop, as it wasn’t until we started getting closer to Atlanta did we start to hit catastrophic traffic not just once, but two times, once in fucking McDonough, which is basically like the Gwinnett County that’s south of the city instead of north of it, and then naturally there’s a great big old nothing-caused turd of standstill traffic traversing through the actual City of Atlanta.

And I still don’t know what it was, although I suspect it might’ve been an excess of sun exposure, but I got waylaid pretty hard at the very end of the trip, dealing with a fever and body aches on the drive back, as well as throughout the weekend concluding our trip.

Overall, I’d say the trip was still pretty good though.  Several good memories were made with my family, and fewer things snap me out of grumpy moods than seeing my girls being filled with joy.  One of these years I’ll actually get to enjoy Food & Wine again, but I wouldn’t trade fun time with my kids for anything, so no regrets with forfeiting something I’ve done countless times already for the comfort and safety of my kids.