| Author | Message | ||
     Steveford |
I was talking to my wife about taking a trip up to Vanson leathers in Massachusetts when they have their annual open house/sale this Spring. She said great and then we can go to Cape Cod and go whale watching and then we can go to the Mystic Aquarium and then we can go and visit your sister in Connecticut and then we can... Is it just me or does everyone's wife turn a simple trip with a very simple goal in mind into The Vacation From Hell? | ||
| Pwnzor |
Dude... My wife and daughters... Disney... land or world... ARRRGHHHGGH!!! | ||
| Strokizator |
Don't get me started. My wife has a friend and together they are the Japanese version of Oprah and Gayle. Last fall we went to the garden center of the local hardware store where they had a display of different lettuce varieties. The sign said "Assorted Cactus $9.99". Obviously, to me anyway, somebody misplaced the sign. My wife looks at it and says." Wow, $9.99. That's a lot for lettuce". I rolled my eyes and said (probably sarcastically) "It's for CACTUS". Whereupon "Gayle" stuck her face into the lettuce and with a puzzled look asked "This is cactus!?!" Well, I lost it. I said "That's it! I can't take this anymore with the two of you!" My wife looked at her friend and said "Yeah, Naomi" and I think to myself "It ain't just her". | ||
| Steveford |
It always seems to go like this:   | ||
| Airbozo |
I feel lucky. I mention vacation and the wife says "somewhere we can be alone and do nothing". Shopping? Takes a train of Clydesdales to get her anywhere near a mall. ...and we both have an intense dislike for "The cult of the mouse". She was dragged there by fellow teachers last year after one of their training sessions and her and a co-worker sat in one of the eateries making fun of the characters with a ring of chairs around them "saved" for friends, so no one could get near them. Quite amusing. | ||
| Froggy |
Mystic aquarium is quite nice, it is well worth the visit. I went during the off season, basically had the place to ourselves. | ||
| 86129squids |
I get along great with my GF, better part of 10 years... She says I sing and dance like crap. When I ask her what she'd like for dinner, she ALWAYS says "Itdonmatter". Getting her to have an opinion is like pulling teeth. Still the best XX type person I've known, besides blood relatives. I knew she was a keeper when she rode with me, FIRST time on a motorcycle, from Maryville to Nashville and back on a Street Glide, part of a group going to support some friends trying to break into the music biz at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge... OTOH, I've dealt with plenty of dingbats and crazies. If you find a good one, hang on!! | ||
| Big_island_rider |
Like the difference between women shopping and men buying. Let me introduce you to a word that may not be in your vocabulary. The word is No. | ||
| Steveford |
We've been together for 10 years so I guess it can't be too bad. That is exactly it, the difference between women shopping and men buying! I just want to buy some leathers, not make the grand tour of New England. That might be fun but she's retired and I'm not. | ||
| Damnut |
I'm 10 minutes from Vanson. Let me know if you come down, I can show you a few places. I know of a place that has the best buffalo wings in New England. | ||
| 86129squids |
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| Steveford |
I will keep that in mind, thank you! | ||
| Etennuly |
Going on twenty eight years this May. I tell most folks we have been married 106 years.....but it seems like 358 years.....it just goes on and on. I'm sure the men die first just to get the hell out of it! Here is what she did to me for this year. I scheduled a vacation weekend to go to a very special Corvette weekend with my Club last July, nearly a year ahead of time. We are to be the very first Corvette Club to ever utilize the new road race course at the National Corvette Museum for a club event. It is a four day weekend of touring the factory, the museum, two days of autocross, one day of low speed on track and driving school, and one day of high speed unlimited haul ass on the race course. This is the weekend my dreams are made of. I signed up last year, I paid for my weekend deals. It was all good for six months, then the wife begins planning with her family to have a surprise birthday party for her mother involving all of the family members, and all of our children and grand children who don't want to be together for more than a couple of hours anyways, for a six hundred mile away deal. She knew when my Corvette plans were set because I had to get a special exemption from her due to it being our anniversary weekend. I even bought a motorhome for this very event. You know what happened next. Even though I put in for it six months earlier, prepaid and all, way sooner than she even began thinking of starting her program, I had to cancel this very special, once in a lifetime, Corvette weekend, I got my check back. I had thought of putting her down. A deep hole out along the fence line. I could have spent the insurance money on making a long trip out of it with the motorhome, trailer, Uly, and Vette. Hell, I would have still even got to see all of her family, I'm sure of it. But as soon as I canceled my limited number special event tickets, they were claimed by someone standing in line to get in on this, did I mention "very special once in a life time" event? I'm not bitter. At this time my thoughts are that if I smile at all at this family event it will be because of my grandchildren or because I shit myself in a tight crowd and because of my "newly advancing age"  she will have to clean it up. | ||
| Big_island_rider |
Etennuly, Let me introduce you to a word that may not be in your vocabulary. The word is No. My wife read your post and said "That's crazy, I would never do that to you". | ||
| 86129squids |
Vern- good GOD, that's really horrible. I've gotta recalibrate everything I know about you and Sandy...  Didn't you mention she'd be coming to Glitchfest? I'm quite aware that the countryside out there is MUCH less populated than around here... I completely agree with Big Rider's post! Whatever the case may be, here's hoping your domestic life recovers and remains tolerable. Maybe she was temporarily insane. | ||
| Pwnzor |
Vern, I have one question. Why wasn't your wife going with you to the Corvette thing? I wouldn't want to do something like that without my wife... maybe I'm weird. I got up this morning at 4:15 so that we could be in Carrollton (the armpit of Georgia) for an all-day dance competition. My 11 year old daughter is dancing at 9:15am and again at 4:30 pm. I wanted to be working on the Blackbird today, but how can I not go to this thing? She's been training for it for 2 months. I wouldn't rather be anywhere else right now, even though it's like Dance Moms on steroids all around me. | ||
| Big_island_rider |
Maybe she was temporarily insane. No such thing as temporary, only insane-er.  } | ||
| Slaughter |
I hold the light, hold the camera and hand Sunny the tools:   | ||
| Etennuly |
Well, I thought we were just venting on how our wives changed our vacation plans. How it happened sucked for sure. It was her fault because the surprise party was her idea, but that is as far as that can go. I feel the need to defend our situation. The surprise birthday party came down to coordinating as many as forty people to get together on one weekend six hundred miles away. A holiday weekend works best because everyone needs to take at least one day off from work for the trip. There are ten grand kids that need to be off from school, there are military passes needed. Everyone has animals to take care of in their absence. It is all a lot to consider to honor her mother's 80th birthday. This the only best last chance to do it with this many siblings and spouses and children etc. So far everyone is going to be there and I don't want to be labeled "that guy" when the pictures are taken. It is truly a quite special Corvette event. She has been invited to each and every Corvette club meeting and event that I have attended, Buell events, motorhome/camping, sports, shopping, and travel event that I have inspired in our lives. The Corvette program means little to her, she just isn't interested in it, she wasn't when I had my last round of Corvettes twenty years ago. She did not have enough interest in going to a Buell event, though invited to all of them, to actually go until I bought her a Buell. She has been to Buelltoberfest twice. Not her bag.....but damn it I cannot sell that Blast! She likes to ride it to work once a year for to maintain her bragging rites to being a Buell rider. And to be fair she works full time having •••••• retail hours that get spread over seven days a week with floating days off and she works most evenings. I drove and worked on race cars for ten or eleven years before I got married. I quit racing(which I deeply loved) because I saw that if you are as serious about it as I was, it makes for bad marriages and kids without parents etc. To say "no" to probably the last time that her family will get together in this way would be counter to how I feel about it actually. I did a lot of prep work on the car, qualifying autocross stuff, buying and setting up a motorhome and trailer for the deal, calander planning and all of the stuff that goes with it. But then it is just another race event, special or not. It will go on without me. I will survive with out it or the cool pictures, shirts and dash plaque, but mostly the feel of being there and doing it. The second time for the event will come around next year, but yeah, it made me mad as hell when I found out what the dates were for the family thing. We tried to work out going to both for me, but the dates just clashed. One of the biggest problems with organized racing events is that the best, biggest, most profitable, fun ones happen on holiday weekends. All year the only family events that I made it to for the ten or so years I raced was Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. This has been one of the best things for me about Buell events, for the most part they are on "off" or non-holiday weekends. I try to save the holiday weekends for family. Even if just one of the kids come home for a cook out. The rest of the weekends I can go off and play, but at least one of us has to stay to take care of the critters, so we do a lot of split events. | ||
| Pwnzor |
That's a perfectly reasonable explanation. Life is full of choices, some harder than others. That was a hard one. Presented with the same choice, I'd be going to the family thing too. I'm still here at the dance competition. Almost 3 more hours to wait before we can even start to wrap things up. | ||
| Etennuly |
You are such a brave man! | ||
| Big_island_rider |
Etennuly, I get it. I raced sailboats all my life. Got three boxes of trophies collecting dust in the attic. My wife raced with me and some of those trophies are hers too. None of those are as important spending quality time with family. Your first post did not contain the same detail or emotional tenor as you second. It is easy for me to be flip about your situation as I do not have to live in it. As for me, I dislike, in the strongest terms, her mother and most of her family. She knows this and agrees with me (part of why it was so easy to move to Hawaii). If she wants to visit her family I just say "Have a good time" and make the flight reservations. She does not expect me to go. So good on you for being a good man and husband by putting your hobby aside to be a part of a very special event in your wife's life. | ||
| Swampy |
My wife only likes to see the sights at 30,000 feet. I like looking at the mountains from ground level...I know better than pointing out the window and saying "Look, there's a deer" Car trips are non-existant, the lake house is 2 hours away and the trip is so painful for her I end up going alone... Flame off You do realize they are entirely different animals then men...right? | ||
| 86129squids |
Vern- I love you, man!  Thanks for clarifying things. MeMaw's 80th with all the pootin's (kids), and all the logistics to get evernyone there, is definitely of paramount importance. Good on Sandy to think of it, late, and giterduun. Corvettes are awesome cars, but so are 280Z's- NOT ZX, not later than '78...  She OWES YOU now.  | ||
| Pwnzor |
Oh yeah... It's definitely a "get out of jail free" card... | ||
| Iamike |
We could start a 'vacation creep' thread. Last Fall I started talking about taking a trip to Alaska. We have some friends in Anchorage that are in the military. 2015 will be their last for that assignment and they had said that if we want to visit we need to come. So the wife & I start talking about it and I decided that I was going to drive up there (no cycle this time, unless I carry the DR650 on the back of the Jeep). She doesn't have the vacation time so she is going to fly. I have been looking for a co-driver so I talk to my youngest daughter about going too and if here boyfriend (still a student) would like to go along with me. Then the other daughter decides her family would like to go too. The other day I see a FB post from the one's boyfriend who states "I'm going to Alaska and ride my bicycle across Canada for three weeks". I think to myself "Hmm, I wonder where the 3-week bicycle came from?". So I call her for clarification and she quotes my IM to her,'Does Zac have a passport since he will need it to ride with me across Canada to Alaska?' She takes after my wife by not being able to have a linear thought process when talking about something and if you aren't completely specific, no telling what may be interpreted. | ||
| Court |
Is there a decent neighborhood in Naples? Lots of nice $500/night hotels but all the reviews says "bad neighborhood" Wazzup? | ||
| Doz |
Steveford..and others! Lessons to be learned here. When it comes to bikes or equipment-leave the women at home. It's a guy/road trip opportunity. Same goes for what you buy-leave the women out of it. When it comes to birthday/holiday gifts-get your own......all this from a guy that has been divorced twice (but I got all my bikes & stuff) | ||
| Steveford |
Here's a road trip one: I had to drive down to a suburb just south of Washington, DC to pick up a subwoofer and some speakers and it was during some Summer 3 day weekend (probably Memorial Day). I ask my wife if she'd like to go along, she said okay and traffic was just brutal as you might imagine. I'm in Pennsylvania so that means I take I-95. I get the stereo gear, load up the car and am getting ready for another 4 hours of dealing with a million homicidal maniacs on the road and can't wait to get home in one piece and collapse. As I'm going along she pipes up with, "Oh, good, now we can go to the Lincoln Monument"! Going to Vanson without a passenger does seem like a very good idea. (Message edited by SteveFord on February 22, 2015) | ||
| Ratbuell |
I will preface this post with the fact that I no longer have one of those wife-things. That said. Vern - she should buy you tickets to next years event...NOW. It's not the first, but it'll have to do. 80 is a big deal, judging from my dad's health. Now, even though I no longer have that wife-thing...I still enjoy trips with those whom I love (and who presumably love me...but we won't go there for the purposes of this thread). If she wants to see the monuments....let HER drive. You can nap. Drink. Whatever. Just enjoy the time together - it might not last forever. For buying - if she calls you on it, remind her of how much crap you've bought her over the last year. They honestly don't always realize it...or think about it "that way". And in closure, I will quote one of my favorite celebs - Walter, from Jeff Dunham's entourage. "They say wives age like fine wine...mine's aging like milk." (Message edited by ratbuell on February 22, 2015) |
