Nerds on Vacation

Way back in March I planted the seed in my family's head that we all needed to go on some sort of Australian driving adventure. At the time I assumed it would be some sort of epic trip - miles and miles and miles of dry desert wasteland passing by the windows as we all slowly went insane inside the car. As I mention in that post, while I was initially keen on the idea I very quickly decided the idea was truly bonkers and I secretly hoped they all might forget about it and instead surprise me with 7 nights at a luxury resort in Thailand.

But then I do suffer from foot-in-mouth disease, don't I?

When DH said he could take 2 weeks off of work this summer, I stupidly piped up with, "Oooh, maybe we should resurrect the road trip idea!" Moron. Why do I not read and remember these blog posts? Anyway as you can imagine DH took to this idea like white on rice, and in the past few weeks he has bombarded me with spreadsheets. Spreadsheets which track our costs, the dates we are going to be places, the various activities we might or might not do in our various stops, and so on. This holiday has been sponsored by Excel. (Actually. No. By Open Office Calc. We're an open source/Linux kind of family.)

Adventure travellers? Yes. Happy to play things by ear? Yes. Willing to push boundaries, get our of comfort zones, etc etc? Also yes. Big fat nerds who plan vacations via spreadsheets? OH HELL YES.

So this is how I find myself spending two weeks driving all the way through the states of Victoria and New South Wales over the Christmas period. Documented purpose of the trip? To see the Harry Potter Exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

Did I mention we are an entire family of nerd travellers?

Did I mention the spreadsheet has stuff like Questacon, the Jenolan Caves, the Mint, Parliament House, and myriad other nerd-centric activities on it?


I have of course already planned the trip to Costco to stock up on various dry goods (and the world's largest bag of gummy snakes, which are necessary for long car rides). I've got my own spreadsheet for packing purposes. I've thought about which books on CD I want to get from the library, I've already worked out how to tether my mobile phone and laptop so I can literally blog from the open road, and I've also worked out the best way to recharge my phone batteries. I've even downloaded some travel and map apps. Oh, and I've also purchased the "I wish I did not need it but my sanity needs to not end up in tatters" emergency double screen, double headset portable DVD player and worked out how I'm going to connect a third headset to it (USB port.) Plus we've worked out what public transport in Sydney is going to cost, how long it will take to get from our flat to the Manly Ferry...you get the idea. The only thing I have yet to work out is how to afford this crazy idea - not so much food and lodging but all the fun stuff we want to do (it's almost $1000 for all of us to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge, but it's on my "MUST DO" list...so...Universe, work this one out for me please!).

In short, the emzee family are headed off on the road trip of a ...lifetime? Maybe not, but certainly we plan on making memories, which is the entire point of this exercise (that and the whole Harry Potter thing.) That the kids will fight, that I will crack it once in a while, that we will likely consume too many calories, spend too much money, and in general go a little mental on this trip? All likely. That we'll eat a lot of lolly snakes, laugh a lot, take loads of pictures, and finally, FINALLY get to spend some time as a family, away from the madness of our jobs, our home, school and our daily chaos? ABSOLUTELY. How do I know this? It's on line D45 of the Holiday Activities Spreadhseet.