So the best vacation I’ve had since I’ve been Married and Back in the US was the only real “getaway”* vacation I took in the past six years or so, when we went to Florida for a week in 2003 (or was it 2002? I forget). That was when I was working back at Cisco, and someone on an internal mailing list was selling a week vacation off the left coast of Florida for some really low price, as it was a timeshare, they staked out the week and couldn’t go.

It was awesome. A week next to the beach and the ocean (though I went swimming in the ocean like once; truth be told I don’t like the beach, and am kinda freaked by the ocean and all its ‘can’t see the bottom’ and jellyfish), resting in an apartment-like cabin thingy. We spent most of the week swimming, relaxing, reading a LOT, waching Daily Show on cable (we don’t have cable), hitting the city once every two nights or so, going watersliding once, and just generally not doing much at all.

Part two is coming up soon! I’ve been working at Netapp for about a year and a half. The job is awesome, it plays well, but it is totally stressful (and I just got a kind of promotion to the most spotlighted, visible and thus stressful group). Recently some people have been leaving the company for stress and the like, so we’ve been kind of commanded to take some vacation days if we’ve been sitting on them. That push was enough to get me started looking for The Next Vacaion.

Since we had so much fun at that timeshare, I decided to look for other people giving up timeshares because they couldn’t go to it (this time in the Mountains, cause we did the Ocean last time), because after looking for rentals and the like for those sorts of hotels was pretty expensive; the good ones were $120-140 per night at the places we were looking at.

I poked around Asheville for a bit, because I love Asheville and was thinking of that area or the vicinity originally. Then, on a hunch, I poked into Gatlinburg, one of my other favorite mountain towns (on the other side of the Smokies from Asheville). Anyway, I headed to eBay and happen to come across a full week awesome timeshare vacation auction that was ending in four hours. I picked it up, and in a few weeks we will head to the mountains for one internet-free vacation of relaxing, reading, nature/hiking and the like in a relaxity resort town. Now I just have to find more info about the town to find cool things to do. I see a lot of hiking, and perhaps even some canoeing if possible.

I thought it was kinda funny, that I basically have found my niche in vacationing in the broken vacation dreams of others. Maybe next time I’ll find someone auctioning a week in California or Hawaii. In a few years, after saving up some scrilla, I want to take an extended walking tour of Japan’s islands, perhaps even taking off a month to make the Shikoku pilgrimage or just loiter around Sado-ga-shima.

The kinda weird thing is that, two weeks ago, I was thinking, “Yeah, I think I need a vacation sometime in the next few months”. Now that I’ve set one in stone, I’m literally counting down the days to departure, feeling listless at work and forlonging at home…

* Getaway = something more than taking off some days but staying at home. No Internet is a Plus. I’ve gone to Japan some three times since I got back, but each time I spent 50-70% of the time running around for the “must do/must meet/must see/home” stuff than the “relax” stuff. I’m taking another in the end of January when we go skiing in Breckenridge with my folks (though that may involve a lot of pain, as I haven’t skiied for 13 years, and haven’t snowboarded but once).