New Life: April 21st Beach Vacation

We packed up and left for the beach on Wednesday afternoon. It typically takes us about 4-4.5 hours to get to Myrtle Beach. We have rented a condo in North Myrtle Beach with some friends, in a hotel we’ve never stayed in before. All the reviews seem to be very positive for the place so I am hopeful that it’s nice. But even if its not, how bad could it be? I am at the beach, on vacation, with my family. I think I’ll be fine no matter what the condo is like.

The drive in was uneventful which is a good thing. I always get nervous about having vehicle problems. I am not very kind to my vehicles by way of servicing, so there’s no telling when something may go wrong. But nothing went wrong. All was smooth right up to the point where we arrived at the beach.

I followed the navigation system right to the location we had plugged in, but the hotel was not there. Hmmm. We double check the address and call our friends who are already at the condo. Yep, the address seems right. Our friend starts giving my wife visual clues to help us locate the hotel. Nope, none of the visuals are around, something is not right. So, I sacrifice my man card and go into a hotel and ask the front desk where the hotel we are looking for is located. The guy looks at me and laughs and says, “Man, you’re way off. You’re not even close. You gotta go back out to hwy. 17 and drive another 15 miles to North Myrtle Beach.” “Uh, ok, thanks” I said.

It would appear that we had entered the address as just “Myrtle Beach” not NORTH Myrtle Beach. So, we re-enter the address and finish the last leg of our journey.

We arrive at the condo and are greeted by our friends. The Condo is nice. Nothing super special, but it’s clean and plenty of room for the kids, so I am happy. I am tired so I just chill in the bedroom and watch some TV while Adrienne catches up with her friend and the kids play. Later on I realize that it seems a bit warm in the room so I leave the bedroom door open to see if it helps. Nope, it’s still hot.

As the night went on it got hotter and stuffier. I went to find the thermostat and check the setting. It was set on 63˚ so it should have been cool, but I turned it down more anyway. After a while still no change. I went back out and turned it down again. If I could have gotten it to 0˚ I would have, I hate a hot room.

I finally fell asleep in the hot room around 2:30am, the room never cooled off. As it turns out there was a problem with the unit, duh, and they sent a tech up to fix it. She’s nice and cool now J

This morning we went down to the beach and pools and relaxed a bit. The water is ridiculously cold, at least to me, but the kids still get in it. I finally got in, but never managed to go any further than knee deep. It was nice to sit back and just watch the kids for a bit. Its crazy how big my boys are getting. Austin and Dylan are not even boys anymore, they are young men. I look at them and contemplate things like; I hope I did right by them. I hope I have given them the tools they need to be good men and make good decisions. I know we as parents can only do so much, but it is such an important job.

At noon I had to go back to the room for a conference call about a TV show I am trying to sell. I promised Adrienne it was the only “business” I would do while we were on vacation.

The conference call went very good and I am once again hopeful that something may happen in that area of my life. If it does, maybe that will be another blog J

After the conference call I left my phone in the room and I went back downstairs to the pool to hang out with the family. I’m looking forward to a relaxing time away from things. No email, no phone calls, no work. Just hanging out.