Down to Zero

June 08, 2008

Filed in: Alaska, The Home Front, The Way We Live Now

Way back in February when I booked our now rapidly approaching Alaska trip, I was sure as shootin’ I’d have a couple of juicy writing assignments under my belt to finance this thing by the actual time of departure, if not a book deal.

In between then and now, the economy tanked and tanked and tanked some more, gas costs spiked to their highest levels in recorded human history, and it is now more difficult and uncomfortable than ever before to fly across country. Lovely.

And, as you might already suspect from various and sundry previous postings, I have had not one shred of a second to seek out writing gigs or any other forms of remuneration for this ultra-ultra-expensive jaunt. So yes, in the middle of a recession, we are slamming the entire thing on a credit card. [Confidential to T: for now, honey, just for now.] How very American of us, is it not? The 50th State indeed.

If it all seems like sheer folly to you—and yes, it does to me too, to the extent that it’s keeping me up the 2 hours at night that aren’t already reserved for other worries—rest assured it’s nothing new for me and mine:

* When I went cross country in 1985, I was quitting a job that paid $14,000 a year, so not a lot of cash heading into that trip. My friend D and I traveled to 37 states in 3 months with a gas card and one credit card between us, which we didn’t use. We tented it the entire way (well, we hit two hotel rooms in 90 days). When we got back, we were well and truly broke, down to zero. We found crummy jobs to replace the crummy jobs we’d left, and life went on etc.

* Five years later, when T and I quit our jobs and took off to Italy for five months before we got married (one of the first words I learned in Italian was fiancé, fidanzanto or something like that), the booming ‘80s economy turned suddenly sour in our absence. Our friends kept writing letters (yes, people did such things way back in the ‘80s) saying, don’t come home, the economy sucks. We did indeed fly home, completely out of money, with no jobs and a wedding to stage. And once again, we faked it through somehow.

* One vacation a few years after that in the Adirondaks, I called in to the office to find out I’d been let go. [That boss was the spineless and gutless type (sorry, P).] Another year, same place, T had found out hours before we were to head North that he’d been laid off himself, but we decided to fake it and not tell anyone (sorry, M and T). 

Now we’re taking what’s absolutely the most expensive trip of either of our lives in the middle of a deep, deep recession and the beginning of what I’m personally convinced is a permanent oil crisis. So it goes. As the Alaska charges pile higher and higher on the credit card and the economy dives further and further down, I can at least look back on our ignoble cash-strapped vacations past and say, well, we’ve survived worse. We didn’t die, we didn’t go bankrupt. We just worked our butts off upon our return.

Looked upon that way, the only thing that’s troubling is that my butt already feels worked off. Of course, it doesn’t look worked off, or on, so… there’s (dare I say it?) wiggle room there.