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BY BOB HOLT
NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM
COMMENTARY
There is still time remaining for summer vacation, a time which all hard working Americans have been planning and looking forward to all year. Until they remember that it required them to leave the house.
A recent Associated Press poll (margin of error approximately 47½ percent) said that four out of five Americans are worried about the economy and terrorism these days, but aren't going to cancel their vacation plans. That fifth person just slipped into a coma at the kitchen table while figuring out his monthly credit card bills.
People often disregard budget concerns at vacation time. They say it's been a rough year, darn it, and we owe this to ourselves. This year many of us have had unemployment concerns, been deeply troubled by the war, and even faced the annoyance of Snooki. So we're not going to let a minor inconvenience like a third degree burn from a smoldering mass of credit cards in the wallet of our back pocket spoil our vacation enjoyment.
Due to these economic pressures, many of us have just begun new jobs where we rank rather far down on the seniority list used to decide preferred vacation time. We are often left with the highly coveted week of November 1 to 7 to work on our tans at our summer beach house.
Such financial worries are going to make you reassess what you want from your vacation. For instance, maybe sixty percent of your enjoyment comes from simply not having to go to work. Twenty five percent could come from the thrill of flying to an exotic location.All right, maybe one percent might come from being with family members, and the other twenty percent of your pleasure comes from relaxing and eating like a warthog. If this is the case, chances are that you are not a math major and you are going to go over your budget.
That budget comes from totaling up all of the expenses you will need for your intended vacation plans, and then doubling it. Often overlooked expenses such as hotel damage and bail money are not always included in your original vacation plans.
And planning a vacation is not as easy as it used to be these days. It seems like only a few short years ago you could take a plane trip to Hawaii and rest assured that in a few hours your luggage would arrive safely in Boise, Idaho. But such comforts are a thing of the past.
To enjoy a plane trip today, it is advisable to be at the airport four hours before your scheduled takeoff, which is now running approximately three hours behind. Your standard airlines today such as Spirit or JetBlue are all facing cost cutbacks. Their payroll can only afford one flight attendant playing on the emergency chutes. They are seeing a sharp decline in overseas travel. For safety precautions, many airlines are only permitted to fly from Philadelphia to Atlantic City.
So maybe the only foreign cuisine you will see on vacation will be at West Berlin's International House of Pancakes. That's not necessarily a bad thing. There are plenty of sights to see right in your own backyard in New Jersey, which are usually gnats and mosquitoes.
If you'd rather drive locally, one way to keep your expenses down would be to spend four days and three nights at your nearby shopping mall. Many malls today still have fountains and waterfall displays in their center sections. Teenagers have been known to survive at these scenes by cutting through the actual authentic phony flora and fauna, and subsisting merely on Cinnabons.
And you can contribute something to your community while you're relaxing by volunteering to help the Spandex police who patrol the Fashion Bug in search of blatant pants violations.
In the South Jersey area, you can attempt to scale the great Mount Laurel or Mount Royal. You can scale Mount Laurel by successfully negotiating Route 73 to reach your hotel without needing to execute too many of the native hand signals. People have had better luck at actually trying to climb one of those exceedingly useful noise barriers in order to escape the traffic.
And if you really enjoy the excitement, natural beauty, and nauseous exhaust fumes of rush hour traffic, you can extend your local sightseeing tour to a trip over the Walt Whitman Bridge. There you can admire all the scenic billboards along the way, many of them reportedly donated to the state by Tony Soprano.
Meanwhile, a trip to Jobstown, New Jersey may improve your future employment prospects after your priceless MasterCard vacation bills clock in at $11,465.32. This will limit your activity level to a trip to Leisure Village in Ocean County.
No matter where you go, the important thing is that you have a good time, right? And no one is injured or arrested. And you'll probably go again next year, right? Mark your calendar now for November 1 to 7.
