So the time was nearing and my parents asked some folks in our church if we could borrow their van (this was a full size van, before minivans existed). It was great, Jane and I each had our own bench to stretch out on. which minimized fighting and maximized sleeping. The only bad thing was that rather than a cassette player it had an 8-track player. Yes, this was in 1981 - the dying days of 8-track and disco. My family never had an 8-track - my Dad was prescient enough to know it was not a technology that would last (but he was not so lucky on the Betamax idea).

I had a sense of pending disaster when, on the day before or the morning of our departure, Dad was backing the van out of the garage and managed to swipe the passenger side mirror off. Oops.

The second “issue” came when we were piled into the van and ready to go. I think we were a block or two down the road when Mom casually ran through her final checklist of things that needed to be done before departure...

“Turn on the dishwasher...”

“What? We can’t leave with the diswasher running. What if it leaks?” So began a litany from Dad of possible disasters in our house if we were to continue on our merry way while the dishwasher ran it’s cycle. And there followed a fight discussion between our parents on whether or not we needed to turn around. Jane and I huddled in the back, scared that this vacation might not happen after all and that we’d have to go back to school on time. Common sense prevailed, however, and we continued on our merry way.

I won’t bore you with the details of our trek south through Washington (although we did pass not too far from the area near Mt. St. Helens and saw the piles of ash still on the side of the road) and Oregon. Honestly, I don’t remember anything in particular about those days of the trip. Maybe Mom, Dad, or Jane could fill in anything I miss in the comments.

And I don’t really have any specific memories tied to that vacation from northern California. I think it’s because, ironically, we ended up moving to northern California (Monterey) rather than back east, and so I have vivid memories of that area from our 18 months of living up there. Maybe sometime I’ll write about our day trip to San Fransisco/Oakland when Dad lost something valuable on the BART train and how we inadvertently got high at the A’s baseball game.

I will say that another thing that was consistent on the trip was the angst over meals. Dad would ask where we wanted to eat. Mom would say it didn’t matter, where did he want to go? Jane and I were happy for anything, but kept silent. Dad said he didn’t care either and to just pick a place. I don’t think they managed to pick a single restaurant without that 20-30 minute debate. It’s still that way today, a little bit. We’re all so laid back, we may have a preference but we’re willing to do what the others want. It’s not that we’re indecisive, it’s that we want to be considerate of the desires of the others since we don’t have a preference. It’s a vicious circle that involved much eye-rolling and sighing.

Back to the vacation...my main memories are in southern California. I think we’d all agree that we were a little underwhelmed with Hollywood and LA. We did the typical touristy things - Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the Walk of Fame, etc. We were even underwhelmed with DisneyLand. It’s much smaller than I expected - just the Magic Kingdom portion with a few extra rides thrown in. Plus, I was a jaded teenager who wasn’t excited to be seen having a good time with my parents in a childish amusement park.

Universal Studios was cooler, there’s a picture of me with one of the Battlestar Gallactica Cylons. (I’m not a complete geek, I had to look that up. And no, I will not be posting that picture.) I wasn’t happy about having my picture taken with him or at all, for that matter.

We toured the NBC Studios, saw where Day of Our Lives was filmed - this was exciting for us gals since we all watched Days... religiously. We saw The Tonight Show studio, but there weren’t tickets for the show that night available so we didn’t get to see Johnny Carson do his thing.

We went to Knott’s Berry Farm, which at that point in my life was the best amusement park ever. They had the best rides and we had a great time. And I was introduced to the new favorite flavor of mine - boysenberry. I think Mom or Dad got a boysenberry cobbler or similar dessert for one of our meals and I have loved boysenberry ever since. Funny what you remember, huh?

The most memorable portion of the trip came in San Diego. We enjoyed the tour of Dad’s ship - an aircraft carrier is enormous, their rooms are tiny, and that place is loud, all the time. I had a whole new respect for Dad after that visit, knowing that he had spent the better part of 3 years in that tiny little room with a roommate and under the flight deck with the constant booms and crashes of jets taking off and landing.

We went to the San Diego zoo where, before we could even enter the gates, a bird decided to poop right on my mother’s head. If we had had a video camera that video would have won us the $10,000 prize on AFHV. Of course, she was terrible upset. And we found it hilarious - being callous youth, my sister and I howled with laughter. Mom, I’m sorry we laughed. Well, not really, it was too stinking funny.

That was potential disaster #1 at the zoo. Disaster #2 occurred in one of the gift shops and involved my sister. She and I were bored, we’re also tactile - so we were constantly touching stuff and being told not to touch anything. I didn’t see the following event, just heard it. I was nearing my mother when we heard a crash. Dad asked, “Where’s Jane?” to which I shrugged, “I dunno,” like any self-respecting teenager would. And I helpfully pointed in the general direction of where I had left her, looking at a wall of refrigerator magnets.

It was, literally, a wall. With hundreds of tiny ceramic magnets shaped like zoo animals, of course. Apparently, Jane had pressed one of the magnets a little too hard and the wall came crashing down. Did I mention that the magnets were ceramic? Yes, there were many broken magnets - and these were days of “You break it, You buy it” rather than “the customer is always right.” So Dad shelled out an undisclosed amount of money for magnets that were not only not wanted, but broken. (On a happier note, my mother is very resourceful and a big believer in garage sales. She managed to sell just about all of them in various garage sales later.)

We also went to Sea World where we were happily drenched by Shamu #362 and my father was spat upon by a walrus. That’s all I remember about that. Heh.

One other family-insider tidbit I remember: beep-beep - and if one of the others feels like sharing what that means, they can in the comments.

So that’s the tale of the Jen Speaks Family Vacation of 1981. We moved to California in 1982 and then back east in 1983. Our move in ‘83 is a week-long tale as well, of our driving trek across the most boring parts of the USA - to one of the hottest summers I had experienced in my life to that point.