#1 - Trip, what Trip?

It's hard to follow up a trip to London, Paris and Rome. At the beginning of the summer I asked Joe where he wanted to go this year. He said Beijing. What was his second choice? Australia. How about Boston, I asked. Do I need a passport? No. Um, how about Tokyo. Then back to Paris? Clearly, I had created a monster.

So I took a different tack. Delay and confuse. Silent treatment. No more questions from me. Dad, are we going on a trip? Yes. Where are we going? You know, we're all going to Lake Tahoe at the end of August. That's not what I meant Dad. What do you mean Joe? Are we going somewhere next week? Well I'm going to Mexico City on Monday if that's what you mean. Daaad. What, Joe? Junior Guards is over and I'm not doing anything next week. Do you want to come with me to Mexico City? Yeah! Sorry, you can't. DAD!

And so it goes. My tentative plan is to change the subject for another five days and then wake Joe up at 5:20 AM on Thursday and tell him that he and I are walking out the door in 20 minutes and that his bags are already packed. He'll know he's going to Boston when we get to the gate, and even later if I can swing it.

How much I will tell Joe about what we're going to do on our trip to Boston, Stowe and Montreal remains to be seen. Unlike Europe, I haven't yet pre-programmed every last tenth of an hour yet. Yet. Boston in a day seems eminently doable. Vermont doesn't really strike me as the kind of place where you can be on too much of a schedule, but in the words of Julie Andrews, if we're going to climb every mountain, including Vermont's highest, Mt. Mansfield (with some help from the Gondola), and stop by the Trapp Family Lodge of The Sound of Music fame, and go to the Ben and Jerry's World Headquarters, and fly fish and do the alpine slide and ride the Stowe bike trail and swim in the river, and go through a covered bridge, then we need at least a little hop in our step, if only because we're on to Montreal that night. And what's with Montreal? Joe wanted France, I'm giving him Montreal. Better exchange rate. We'll follow the Freedom Trail with some Freedom Fries.

Our gear, same as before, same as always. One backback, one sound. I'm bringing my laptop so that I can keep the blog up to date, plus it doubles as a DVD player. Everything else we can figure out as we go along. Well maybe a moment or two before...