Vacation. All I Ever Wanted.

John emailed me the other day to ask about what kind of vacations I might want to do for next year. He was thinking about trying to get things lined-up in order to ask for vacation time as early as possible.

We had a few options and he wanted to know my thoughts. One option was whether we wanted to go to Cyclocross Nationals, which is in North Carolina this year. I've never been to the East Coast before, so that could be interesting and I think John would really like to go. I haven't been all that great at cyclocross the last few years, so it's not something I feel like I need to do, but we could go through Louisville and ride there and check out other areas to ride/hike and run around in North Carolina. Asheville is supposed to have great road cycling and I would love to see the Smoky Mountains. It's in the "possibly" pile right now.

 As you probably all know, I love going to a new place and discovering it by riding, running and hiking around it. seeing a new place gives me such a different perspective. I think John likes that too, but I'm not sure if he loves it as much as I do. Which leaves us to another option. RAGBRAI. John does love RAGBRAI. He is much more social than I am, so one of the parts about RAGBRAI, that can be a  little stressful for me, doesn't bother him at all. I do like RAGBRAI, I just don't love it. I get sooo overwhelmed by being surrounded by people, many of them drunk, and I have a harder time sleeping at night with the many drunk people partying close to our tent late at night. So, by the end of RAGBRAI, I am usually very sleep deprived (read: cranky).

I think John and I mesh pretty well, but we aren't exactly alike, and if we were, I'd probably be bored out of my mind with him, and so, like every other couple, we make compromises. There are things I do love about RAGBRAI. I love having a week of nothing to do but ride my bike all day on roads that don't have a lot of traffic. I also like the spectacle of all the craziness in every town and the cheesy photo ops. For me, I think it would be great to ride a few days of it every year. Because I know John loves it and I do like it and I want John to do the things he loves and I want to share that with him, I have no problem doing RAGBRAI for a full week next year.

In addition to RAGBRAI next year, I wouldn't mind taking a 3 day weekend up to Hayward , Wisconsin to do some cross-country skiing, especially if we don't get a lot of snow down here in Iowa. My birthday is on a Saturday this year. So, it might be fun to go to Madison, Wisconsin for a long weekend of road riding and mountain biking.

My fantasy vacation for next year, would be a trip to Utah to check out most of the National Parks. We could go for a week around John's birthday, or if he doesn't want to miss any cyclocross races, we could shoot for early September and include it during Labor Day weekend to give us an extra day. I have heard so many good things about the hiking, road riding and mountain biking in Southern Utah.

It will be interesting to see where we end up playing next year.