Where did you go for vacation when you were 22 or 23?  I think my vacations all revolved around weekend camping or maybe a trip to a friend’s cabin in Sisters.  Only when I was almost 25 did I have a job that gave me enough vacation time to take a full week off.  Even then, we put $80 in the glove compartment as our return money.  When we were out of money in our pockets, that meant it was time to return from the roadtrip to Utah. Why, you ask, am I posing this question? 

Well, the NY Times ran a story about lack of vacations which included the “woes” of two Portlanders who can no longer afford their summer vacation. These two individuals work as a blogger and a barista.  That’s cool.  They probably have enough scratch to go have some fun and also pay the bills.  What struck me though was that they’re whining because they couldn’t do a vacation that included the following – “…set out on a Kerouac-esque journey to traverse the country: flying to Boston, then to Chicago, and also taking a road trip to Montana, to revel in “the wide open spaces” of the West.”  In the end, “They ended up just splitting the cost of a dinner date at a pasta place near their home.” 

Wait a minute.  The article states they kept trimming down the vacation plans due to cost of plane tickets.  So, they had enough money initially to begin planing such an extravagant trip, but settled for dinner?  Seriously, where did the funds go?  Or was this just a dream and now they want to whine?

Holy crap.  I’m have money in the bank and I couldn’t afford such a trip.  The only people I knew in my early 20’s who were traveling extensively were the true road warriors who would work their asses off at 3 jobs for a year and then go trekking through europe for 6 months.  And those were few and far between.  Granted, everyone had a friend who was a trustafarian and could do almost anything, but again, they were few and far between.

This story reminds me of the WWeek story awhile back of post college Western Culinary institute students whining about loans and lack of jobs.  Kids, it is cool to whine, that’s ok.  I know I whined when I was your age about loans and lack of jobs, but don’t do it to the paper or the blogs.  It makes you look like overprivileged douchebags.

Thanks to Bojack for the link to the article.

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