By: Revanche

Summer travel recap

August 9, 2022

This was not a good year for summer travel for so many reasons. COVID with little or no mass/public mitigation measures in place, the excruciating wait for under five vaccines, the rise of monkeypox, high demand impacts on the travel industry, just to name a few things off the top of my head.

We debated for months. We’ve been doing so much to mitigate risk personally: vaxxed, boosted, masking, limiting interactions and socializing. We’ve had to accept increased risk with in person school and will have to accept even more increased risk with childcare when the time comes. So mostly I wanted to cancel. But my heart ached. It’s been 2.5 years of being super extra cautious. It’s been 2.5 years of traditions on pause and loss of time with loved ones. How long could we, should we, keep waiting?

We had a family wedding (vax required, outdoors only, no tents, great air circulation, guests were told to test before and not to come if they had any symptoms) to attend. I hadn’t seen much of this family in ten+ years. We also had our SDCC badges from the last time we had an in person convention. I was deeply hesitant about that aspect of the summer. Superspreader event, anyone?

The wedding was for one of the few family members I am very close to and keep in touch with. I deeply miss our summer family visit. This was historically the one time of year I get to completely relax with people I love and trust and have actual honest to goodness fun with. Missing the last two years of travel meant missing precious time with loved ones who supported me during some of the darkest times of my life.

We knew that this year would be nothing like prior years but we finally decided it was worth trying to see family, as cautiously as possible.

As soon as we landed on “ok let’s try”, the BA.5 omicron variant exploded (or at least it seemed that way). The number of my friends and family falling to it in the months leading up to July after years of being careful, was disheartening and stressful.

We had to find a balance between keeping everyone as safe as possible and making the most of what time we can get with family.

Newsflash: The car rental situation these days is completely and utterly cheezits. I had booked our rental 6 months ago and they still overbooked inventory and tried to smash us into a smaller car.

Not news: the amount of work that goes into these trips creates a dump truck full of stress and anxiety. I checked our bookings at least 98 times before departure, convinced I’d gotten one tiny bit crucial detail wrong. Never found a mistake and yet I was positive it was an oversight and we’d be screwed on arrival.

We took this trip as an opportunity to have Sera stay with her new sitter for the first time. There were so many things we’d need to deal with, on the road and at our destination, it felt unfair to drag her along only to leave her shut up in the hotel alone and sad. This decision was stressful at first but it was the right one. She finally got time to socialize with other well trained dogs, with sitters who have a lot of experience with reactive dogs, and she really seemed to enjoy it. She was completely wiped when she came home, but in a content way, not stressed and clingy.

How it went

The drive was miserable. Smol hated it, I hate it every time. But flying is not an option, so… Road trip. JB is being more and more helpful with entertaining Smol which is a real boon. It used to be entirely on me to keep wee JB entertained on our family trips, because we don’t give them electronics, and it’s a Whole Lot of Work. Thankfully, the span of the trip, Smol got a little better at taking naps on the fly, in the car.

We stayed in a combination of hotels and Airbnb. I was very hesitant to use the latter as their reputation has been terrible in recent years but after much searching, we didn’t have another choice. There also wasn’t nearly enough masking in the hotels so we only brought Smol Acrobat directly to the room after we had run our large air purifier and they weren’t allowed to linger in the hall or the public areas.

We rapid tested ourselves every day and masked everywhere, inside and out. We only stopped to use the restroom in public places, we didn’t dine-in anywhere. We packed all our own food for the drive down, though we did load up on fresh fruit at one fruit stand, and bought takeout when we ran out of supplies.

At the wedding, we masked the entire time, and took turns eating at the reception. That was an unexpectedly highly emotional day for me. My dad didn’t show up (thank everything). Only his cousin seemed to be unaware of our rift or acted like he didn’t know the truth. There were a couple super awkward moments when he commented that my dad couldn’t come because he was sick (a lie) and that he guessed we wouldn’t be seeing him after the wedding. I just smiled and said nothing. It wasn’t a direct question! My cousins are aware and the ones I talked to about it expressed their support. I was also able to lay groundwork for a future where I will not take care of him later: he knowingly destroyed my health with his lies, there is no cure for my condition, and in summary, I have nothing left to give him. (I always hated the Giving Tree book because I think that the boy is unbelievably selfish and the parallel suddenly strikes me now.)

It was surprisingly cathartic to tell the truth about my health, and how deeply it impacts me today, because I’ve never shared that with them. There are logical consequences for his decision to use me and throw me out like garbage when I stopped providing money. Even if, as Caro rightly pointed out, I’m not obligated to help my abuser anymore, it was important to me that they hear it in terms and from a perspective they would understand. Unfortunately, accepting abuse has been a common theme in our culture, so that influences my feelings of guilt.

It was and still is a lot of emotion to handle. I’m still working through a lot of it.

Some of our family members tested positive for COVID before we were due to see them, but recovered fully in time for us to spend a little time with them in person at the end (outdoors, masked). It wasn’t nearly enough but we were grateful to get that much, all things considered. I needed that hug very badly, and I needed to know they were ok, big picture, very badly.

JB was aces at masking and so was allowed to enjoy some of the convention with their uncles and aunties.

Smol Acrobat, and PiC and I, spent much less time at the convention since we had to protect Smol. Most of our time was child wrangling because Smol was unexpectedly interested in all the proceedings and expectedly totally disinterested in eating enough nutritious food to sustain life. They also weren’t good at napping on the fly so that was a struggle of tiredness for both of us every day.

But we all got to (cautiously, and very anxiously on my part) enjoy something during the trip and we’re grateful for that. I was also really glad that so very many people were properly masking at such a big event. We assumed that the ratio of proper masking to not would be half and half and we were fully prepared to turn right around and leave if so. It was more like 99:1. I could keep track of the number of unmasked people, amidst the sea of masked, inside on any given day which wouldn’t be possible with low compliance. It was also not nearly as crowded as in years past and that really helped too.

I pause to note: This whole endeavor was not low risk. This fact ate at me the whole time but we did the best we could while making the choice to try to regain a couple of the most important life experiences for our kids and ourselves. Seeing my family during that week was so important. Having my kids spend any time with their San Diego grandma was so important. I’m very worried about her health and was terrified something would happen to her during this time of awful and y’all. I can’t. I cannot take more losses.

Our travel costs

1. Lodgings. Hotels, $0 (paid for with points); AirBnB: $2000
2. Gas, $200
3. Car rental and parking: $1750
4. Gifts for other people: $120
5. Gifts for us: $50
6. Badges for 2 adults and 2 free children (paid for in 2019), $623
6. Dogsitting, $900
7. Misc expenses and stupid tax, I actually don’t recall any stupid tax but probably around $400 for food and take out.
Total: $6043

This was three times as expensive, or more, than a usual year. The dog boarding and rental house did us in, and the car rental cost four times as much as prior years as well. I knew we were taking it on the nose but we would have been scrambling very badly without that rental house. And in the end, we made a lot of memories this year. We got to reconnect and breathe deeply again even if only briefly.

I won’t say that’s worth ANY price, just that I won’t regret this price.

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