Vegas, baby, vegas...

My coworker/former roomate/neighbor/yard sale and hamfest buddy bsom is en route to Vegas - by car. He's blogging as he goes, and already has a few cool pictures up.

I mentioned to one of my coworkers that I'm a little envious, and they asked me "well, what's stopping you from doing that?". Well, I don't have 3 weeks of vacation, but other than that - well, a few things.

The thought of driving cross-country, or something like it, is kind of a cool idea- a whole world of unexplored places in front of you, freedom to go where you want and see all kinds of things, a chance to blog about something other than work and school and how I don't have enough time to blog.

But there are a couple reasons I don't think I would enjoy it as much as the idealized picture I have in my head of how cool it would be.

The first thing is that a vacation like that would involve spending lots of money. Gas, food, lodgeing, food, and the other things necessary all cost money, and I hate spending money. Given that I have somewhere around a quarter-million dollars of debt (when you look at mortgage, car payment, and student loans), it's hard to justify spending money on things that aren't even things. At least when I blow money on stupid stuff like clothing or electronics or kitchen gadgets, I get something concrete. Sure, with a vacation, you get memories, and those are supposed to be priceless - but unlike, say, a ps2, I can't sell memories on eBay when I get sick of them.

The second reason I would be reluctant to do it is that I have mixed feelings about long drives by myself. Sometimes, if I'm in a good mood and the weather is good, I love them - music blaring, wind in my hair, open road behind me, 207 horsepower V6 in front of me under a bright yellow hood. But sometimes I hate it, because long periods by myself make me think about stuff - about choices I've made that I regret, about opportunities I didn't take advantage of, about my tendency to avoid conflict or risk that will probably keep me single and underemployed for the rest of my life, about the fact that we all will die someday and can't really do anything about it.

The other thing about travel that I don't like is that it means change, it means meeting new people and keeping a different schedule. I don't really deal well with change, and I'm not really comfortable around people I don't know. Paying a bunch of money in order to have to deal with people strikes me as akin to flushing it down the toilet.

So I'll just have to live vicariously through bsom's blog.