6 ms·

My dad was a busy construction contractor. One summer he tore himself away from work and took the family to a week long boat camp out next to a big beautiful la

by delichon 10mo ago

My dad was a busy construction contractor. One summer he tore himself away from work and took the family to a week long boat camp out next to a big beautiful lake. It turned out that our campsite was actually in the lake by a few inches at high water, but dad saw a way to dam it off and keep it dry, so he grabs the shovel and starts digging trenches and building walls and ordering us around. About an hour into that, pouring sweat, he stops cold and says "what the hell am I doing?" The flooded camp was actually nice on a hot day and all we really had to do was move a couple of tents. He dropped the shovel and spent the rest of the week sunbathing, fishing, snorkeling and water skiing as God intended. He flipped a switch and went from Hyde to Jekyll on vacation. I've had to emulate that a few times.

irishcoffee 10mo ago
My spouse and I dealt with this on our honeymoon. We were both working 50-80 hour weeks for months leading up to our trip. The first day we got to this all-inclusive resort we spent the whole time trying to min/max and be as efficient and calculated as possible. It was a stressful, miserable day. Day two we looked at each other, had an adult beverage with breakfast, and relaxed for the rest of the trip.
- seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
  I have a hard time doing anything when in a nice resort. If it’s too nice, you just want to hangout at your pool villa all day and enjoy the view.
  - ghaff 10mo ago
    And if you're presumably paying a premium for a nice resort, why wouldn't you spend a lot of your time taking advantage of it?
    - seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
      Yes, if you want to get out and do things, better to go for low or mid range. You don’t want your room to feel like a huge sunk cost.
      - ghaff 10mo ago
        I tend to default to a midrange place as I'm not much interested in spending a lot of time by the pool. And when traveling on business, if meals weren't being covered, I didn't actually much care for resorts when I felt like a bit of of a prisoner in terms of meals etc.
- ghaff 10mo ago
  I'm not really a resort person. But I do subscribe to some travel feeds mostly in the vein of maybe finding some places/attractions/restaurants/etc. that I'm not familiar with. The number of hyper-scheduled spreadsheets I see is amazing. Doesn't mean I don't often have some itinerary and even book some particular, popular attractions/venues. But the 30-minute block scheduling is something I do for work (if that). ADDED: I'll just add that I created a loose spreadsheet for a ~week-long NYC trip with (I think) just one timed admission for a recently reopened museum and no times otherwise. I think I ended up dynamically scrawling over the printout with changes for most of the trip.
  - awesome_dude 10mo ago
    I have an upcoming trip planned in asia - never been before. My firm rule is - have a loose plan, aim for one activity per day, an emergency option, or two, if the weather plays up, and that's it. It's the type of plan that has worked for every holiday that I have taken that involves a different city to the one I live in.
    - qmr 10mo ago
      This is typically what I aim for. One or two core activities for the day. If it works out for more that's great but it's not expected or necessary. I've traveled with some people who seem focused on just getting pictures in front of as many things as possible which seems a poor way to really take in a place.
      - criddell 10mo ago
        My family went to Hawaii a couple of years ago and in the exact middle of the trip we took a day doing absolutely nothing and it was kind of great.
    - ghaff 10mo ago
      I think that's a good plan. I do tend to book hotels, planes, and usually longer trains. But, especially for a longer city trip, I loosely map out--even if just mentally--things I want to see and do but, for example, one museum a day is mostly enough unless another convenient one is small.
- macNchz 10mo ago
  Growing up in a quaint rural town where high-powered people from NYC liked to "get away", this is very common situation, and the inability to disconnect and adopt a slower attitude was, IMO, the primary cause of friction between the weekenders and the locals. They would physically get away from the city, but were unable to mentally release the blend of Type-A competitive neuroses that helped them get ahead in the city but just made them come off as obnoxious in this slower, quieter place. I've found myself in this mode before, too. A couple of years ago I was preparing for weeklong wilderness backpacking trip with some friends. I'd recently quit my high-stress job to take some time off, and I had a few new pieces of gear I wanted to test before relying on them on a longer trip. When I looked at the calendar, though, every weekend before we were to leave was already spoken for. I was worrying about it to my wife, trying to decide whether I'd just have to use the old worn out gear or risk it with the new stuff, when she stopped me: "why don't you just... go on Monday?" It took me a second to even get what she was saying—I was still so much in work-all-the-time-mode that my brain didn't even consider whatsoever the possibility that I could just... go off and go camping on a weekday. I was really baffled for a moment, and I've reflected on that a bit since, it's funny how you can be trapped in your own default operating mode and not even realize it.
  - travisjungroth 10mo ago
    It’s like those animals that walk in little circles the size of their last pen.
    - throwway120385 10mo ago
      Except the pen is 1/3 of our adult lives.
      - temp0826 10mo ago
        Which 1/3 is that? It's black iron prisons all the way down
  - Tade0 10mo ago
    I've settled in a city 60% smaller than the one I grew up in. It's still a full-blown city, but there's way fewer of those competitive types - they all moved to where I came from.
- ergocoder 10mo ago
  I was like this but maybe not as stressful as you described. Still, I wanted to do stuff and see stuff during vacation. After having kids, my habit changed. Now we enjoy going to local parks and walking around with no goals during vacation. This wonderful attraction? Nah we don't need to see it. If we can walk there, then maybe.
  - throwway120385 10mo ago
    When we were planning a trip to Hawaii the first thing I researched was where all the local parks with playgrounds were. That way if we were driving and my son was getting bored or we needed to stretch our legs we knew where something was. There's usually a town, village, or city park nearby no matter where I've been. Even driving to Crater Lake through rural Oregon there were some great parks in the towns we drove through. Same with the drive out to Yosemite. This was the case up until we got within an hour or two of the park itself. Some of the most enjoyable parts of those trips were hanging out with my family in a local park.
bee_rider 10mo ago
Where’d you sleep? Going wit the flow and enjoying life is admirable but that sounds like a pretty terrible camp site tbh.
- throwaway0665 10mo ago
  They moved the tents.
  - Archelaos 10mo ago
    Yep. Slow reading of HN comments also has its benefits.
    - teekert 10mo ago
      I guess this person sees the same mental image as me: Tents with wet floor, moisture sucked into everything inside. A tent that’s been in a lake sounds like a throwaway to me. But maybe what you see as a tent is different from what I see. For me the story was also a bit weird. “Just take the tents out of the water”. Ok…
      - HPsquared 10mo ago
        Tents often are waterproof for the first few inches.
      - jibal 10mo ago
        Even if that were true (and it obviously isn't), what then would be the point of expending tremendous time and energy to "dam it off and keep it dry"? These are alternative ways to keep the tents dry ... which entails that they were never soaked in the first place. > A tent that’s been in a lake The tents were never in the lake. A few inches of the campsite was in the lake at high water. > sounds like a throwaway to me Do you have any experience with this? I've been on trips where tents and even sleeping bags ended up in a river. They don't dissolve ...they can be dried in the sun. And a tent with a wet floor can be wiped down. > “Just take the tents out of the water”. Those words don't appear anywhere. Try looking at the actual words and not just your mental images.
fluoridation 10mo ago
[flagged]
- lugoues 10mo ago
  We can get stuck in our minds and lean too much on prior skills instead of fully assessing the problem at hand. More likely than not, given he was a contractor, building a trench and walls seemed like a simple solution to something he has probably dealt with many time and didn't think twice about it.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  - fluoridation 10mo ago
    I just don't understand how it could occur to no one in a group of three or four people for a whole hour. Like, even if the barrier had been fully built and worked perfectly even after considering the tide, they would have been making camp on fully soaked ground. Just what everyone wants first thing in the morning: to trudge through mud.
    - jvanderbot 10mo ago
      I think it did occur to everyone and that's part of the conclusion of the story - instead of stubbornly battling the situation we should brace it and adapt to it.
- matsemann 10mo ago
  What did you get out of this comment? What do you think a reader gets? Maybe follow the spirit of the article: slow down and pounder, be curious, maybe you would have gotten the right take away instead of being antagonizing towards someone's fond memory.
  - fluoridation 10mo ago
    [flagged]
ErigmolCt 10mo ago
Slowing down isn't passive, it's a conscious choice
- pardon_me 10mo ago
  It often takes energy to relax.
AuthAuth 10mo ago
Your Dad is a beaver, he heard running water and instinctively began to build a dam.

irishcoffee 10mo ago

My spouse and I dealt with this on our honeymoon. We were both working 50-80 hour weeks for months leading up to our trip. The first day we got to this all-inclusive resort we spent the whole time trying to min/max and be as efficient and calculated as possible. It was a stressful, miserable day. Day two we looked at each other, had an adult beverage with breakfast, and relaxed for the rest of the trip.

seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
I have a hard time doing anything when in a nice resort. If it’s too nice, you just want to hangout at your pool villa all day and enjoy the view.
- ghaff 10mo ago
  And if you're presumably paying a premium for a nice resort, why wouldn't you spend a lot of your time taking advantage of it?
  - seanmcdirmid 10mo ago
    Yes, if you want to get out and do things, better to go for low or mid range. You don’t want your room to feel like a huge sunk cost.
    - ghaff 10mo ago
      I tend to default to a midrange place as I'm not much interested in spending a lot of time by the pool. And when traveling on business, if meals weren't being covered, I didn't actually much care for resorts when I felt like a bit of of a prisoner in terms of meals etc.
ghaff 10mo ago
I'm not really a resort person. But I do subscribe to some travel feeds mostly in the vein of maybe finding some places/attractions/restaurants/etc. that I'm not familiar with. The number of hyper-scheduled spreadsheets I see is amazing. Doesn't mean I don't often have some itinerary and even book some particular, popular attractions/venues. But the 30-minute block scheduling is something I do for work (if that). ADDED: I'll just add that I created a loose spreadsheet for a ~week-long NYC trip with (I think) just one timed admission for a recently reopened museum and no times otherwise. I think I ended up dynamically scrawling over the printout with changes for most of the trip.
- awesome_dude 10mo ago
  I have an upcoming trip planned in asia - never been before. My firm rule is - have a loose plan, aim for one activity per day, an emergency option, or two, if the weather plays up, and that's it. It's the type of plan that has worked for every holiday that I have taken that involves a different city to the one I live in.
  - qmr 10mo ago
    This is typically what I aim for. One or two core activities for the day. If it works out for more that's great but it's not expected or necessary. I've traveled with some people who seem focused on just getting pictures in front of as many things as possible which seems a poor way to really take in a place.
    - criddell 10mo ago
      My family went to Hawaii a couple of years ago and in the exact middle of the trip we took a day doing absolutely nothing and it was kind of great.
  - ghaff 10mo ago
    I think that's a good plan. I do tend to book hotels, planes, and usually longer trains. But, especially for a longer city trip, I loosely map out--even if just mentally--things I want to see and do but, for example, one museum a day is mostly enough unless another convenient one is small.
macNchz 10mo ago
Growing up in a quaint rural town where high-powered people from NYC liked to "get away", this is very common situation, and the inability to disconnect and adopt a slower attitude was, IMO, the primary cause of friction between the weekenders and the locals. They would physically get away from the city, but were unable to mentally release the blend of Type-A competitive neuroses that helped them get ahead in the city but just made them come off as obnoxious in this slower, quieter place. I've found myself in this mode before, too. A couple of years ago I was preparing for weeklong wilderness backpacking trip with some friends. I'd recently quit my high-stress job to take some time off, and I had a few new pieces of gear I wanted to test before relying on them on a longer trip. When I looked at the calendar, though, every weekend before we were to leave was already spoken for. I was worrying about it to my wife, trying to decide whether I'd just have to use the old worn out gear or risk it with the new stuff, when she stopped me: "why don't you just... go on Monday?" It took me a second to even get what she was saying—I was still so much in work-all-the-time-mode that my brain didn't even consider whatsoever the possibility that I could just... go off and go camping on a weekday. I was really baffled for a moment, and I've reflected on that a bit since, it's funny how you can be trapped in your own default operating mode and not even realize it.
- travisjungroth 10mo ago
  It’s like those animals that walk in little circles the size of their last pen.
  - throwway120385 10mo ago
    Except the pen is 1/3 of our adult lives.
    - temp0826 10mo ago
      Which 1/3 is that? It's black iron prisons all the way down
- Tade0 10mo ago
  I've settled in a city 60% smaller than the one I grew up in. It's still a full-blown city, but there's way fewer of those competitive types - they all moved to where I came from.
ergocoder 10mo ago
I was like this but maybe not as stressful as you described. Still, I wanted to do stuff and see stuff during vacation. After having kids, my habit changed. Now we enjoy going to local parks and walking around with no goals during vacation. This wonderful attraction? Nah we don't need to see it. If we can walk there, then maybe.
- throwway120385 10mo ago
  When we were planning a trip to Hawaii the first thing I researched was where all the local parks with playgrounds were. That way if we were driving and my son was getting bored or we needed to stretch our legs we knew where something was. There's usually a town, village, or city park nearby no matter where I've been. Even driving to Crater Lake through rural Oregon there were some great parks in the towns we drove through. Same with the drive out to Yosemite. This was the case up until we got within an hour or two of the park itself. Some of the most enjoyable parts of those trips were hanging out with my family in a local park.

bee_rider 10mo ago

Where’d you sleep? Going wit the flow and enjoying life is admirable but that sounds like a pretty terrible camp site tbh.

throwaway0665 10mo ago
They moved the tents.
- Archelaos 10mo ago
  Yep. Slow reading of HN comments also has its benefits.
  - teekert 10mo ago
    I guess this person sees the same mental image as me: Tents with wet floor, moisture sucked into everything inside. A tent that’s been in a lake sounds like a throwaway to me. But maybe what you see as a tent is different from what I see. For me the story was also a bit weird. “Just take the tents out of the water”. Ok…
    - HPsquared 10mo ago
      Tents often are waterproof for the first few inches.
    - jibal 10mo ago
      Even if that were true (and it obviously isn't), what then would be the point of expending tremendous time and energy to "dam it off and keep it dry"? These are alternative ways to keep the tents dry ... which entails that they were never soaked in the first place. > A tent that’s been in a lake The tents were never in the lake. A few inches of the campsite was in the lake at high water. > sounds like a throwaway to me Do you have any experience with this? I've been on trips where tents and even sleeping bags ended up in a river. They don't dissolve ...they can be dried in the sun. And a tent with a wet floor can be wiped down. > “Just take the tents out of the water”. Those words don't appear anywhere. Try looking at the actual words and not just your mental images.

fluoridation 10mo ago

[flagged]

lugoues 10mo ago
We can get stuck in our minds and lean too much on prior skills instead of fully assessing the problem at hand. More likely than not, given he was a contractor, building a trench and walls seemed like a simple solution to something he has probably dealt with many time and didn't think twice about it.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- fluoridation 10mo ago
  I just don't understand how it could occur to no one in a group of three or four people for a whole hour. Like, even if the barrier had been fully built and worked perfectly even after considering the tide, they would have been making camp on fully soaked ground. Just what everyone wants first thing in the morning: to trudge through mud.
  - jvanderbot 10mo ago
    I think it did occur to everyone and that's part of the conclusion of the story - instead of stubbornly battling the situation we should brace it and adapt to it.
matsemann 10mo ago
What did you get out of this comment? What do you think a reader gets? Maybe follow the spirit of the article: slow down and pounder, be curious, maybe you would have gotten the right take away instead of being antagonizing towards someone's fond memory.
- fluoridation 10mo ago
  [flagged]

ErigmolCt 10mo ago

Slowing down isn't passive, it's a conscious choice

pardon_me 10mo ago
It often takes energy to relax.

AuthAuth 10mo ago

Your Dad is a beaver, he heard running water and instinctively began to build a dam.