It’s that time of year – I don’t mean the holidays, although the season is in full swing.  In late November or early December I begin to plan the family trip in April, during the boys’ vacation and just days after Donald’s office has finished the last tax returns.  I don’t call it our family vacation, because it’s not always about rest and relaxation. There may be some element of family visiting, or, as in this coming April, looking at colleges.  I like to put it under the category of “travels” – sometime an adventure, sometimes a bust, but always an enlightening experience about another place and about ourselves.

I’m the planner.  Normally, I pass the general idea by the boys and the specific dates to Donald.  I spend quite a lot of time trolling the internet for deals on transportation (plane, train or car rental) and accommodations.  Both of these have evolved over time, from the cheapest I could possibly find, to not quite the cheapest, to decent.  Of course, I’ve learned the hard way that the frequent flyer miles often have strings, and that time is sometimes more valuable than pure price. Still, it’s the challenge that gets me rolling.

 Getting places – a big part of the experience: packing (I pack; Donald repacks); the boys have a formula: for example, 5-5-5-5 (underwear, socks, pants/shorts, tees) for 5 days of travel. We’ve done a few longer car trips, eight hours to central PA; ten hours to Niagara Falls. Sandwiches and snacks, of course, and entertainment. The boys are good passengers, and often sleep. When awake, God bless the Ipods, Gameboys and DVD players (we’ve busted a lot of myths with MythBusters).  Earphones are a definite improvement over three hours of audio for “Lord of the Rings” — wearing for us in the front seat without benefit of the gorgeous visuals.

 Planes – we’ve got the airport rituals down pretty well by now, and tend to check what we can, and carry the necessities in backpacks, the Blue Bag and the Yellow Bag.  Every trip to the airport, I warn the family, ‘expect the unexpected”, which hasn’t come true as often as expected, but often enough.  We weren’t able to reserve seats on a flight from Newark to Vancouver, and at check-in, we got four separate seats, none of us near the other. I asked the clerk if she would move me next to my six year old son (booked as a child), and she said “Can’t do it. The flight is full.  Just ask some of the other passengers when you get on board.” There’s self-service for you.  Delays, of course, although we haven’t yet experienced the ultimate – sitting on board a grounded plane for hours. It could happen, I tell the boys; I don’t think they really believe me.

 Accommodations are another part of the fun. We’ve moved on up from the most basic hotel/motels, with a flirtation or two with Hotwire for a mystery hotel.  But I know in the end, it’s all about location.  And then breakfast; a pool is nice. We have always squished four in a room, asking for a rollaway when available. But the times, they are a changing’, the boys are bigger, true. But it’s mainly that no one wants to sleep with my younger son, who is a thrasher, and there’s the issue of the TV. Since I now know that TV is a kind of relaxation pill for my guys, I will consider a suite with a second room and TV. It’s that important.  In order to recover from the touring and strange, new sites, they must have their TV.

 The destinations: mostly my proposals, but usually with some family fun in mind – a ball game or hockey game, if the home team is in town. We’ve had some excellent adventures, many unforeseen.  Some places I think would make fodder for future blogs, and/or some kind of travelogue thing I might write down the road. But here’s the thing: wherever we go, we are us. And I do my best to help the boys understand that people are judging us just as we are judging them — by our looks, our voices, and our actions.  Still, it often seems we are floating in a kind of bubble, passing throngs, apart. But I have found that’s not always true.

 In New Orleans, before the flood, we had a good old time visiting the French Quarter, where Donald and I had been some twenty years before. Yes, I’d read it wasn’t entirely safe; that it was full of conventioneers and Bourbon Street had become rather sleazy. Well, that was true: the X –rated peep shops and the shouts from men on the balconies to women to lift their shirts; we turned back after a while.

But there was also the terrific Aquarium, where we were amazed to see a white alligator, living quite happily in captivity (their color doesn’t allow babies to survive long in the wild).  One of the docents spoke to us at length about how the wetlands south of the city were eroding, and how the conditions were ripe for a disaster, should a hurricane come through. We nodded our heads: that would certainly be bad. Afterwards, waiting at the street car stop, my younger son was serenaded by a street busker, a small, elderly, bearded, dark-skinned fellow who assured us he had sung with  the greats.  “Go, go, Brushie, go…..Brushie, be good,” he sang through  missing teeth to my son’s embarrassment. We gave him change for five minutes music.

 Four months later, Katrina.  As we talked about the news at the dinner table, we remembered our trip, the city we had seen.  What had happened to that white alligator, and all the other creatures in the marvelous aquarium?  And that little old man who earned his living on the street, where was he now?  The man who seemed to have so little besides his music, we wondered, had he survived?