Daytona Beach? Nothin’ doin’

This year, my plans to head to Padre Island fell through. Actually, I’m lying. I never planned to go to Padre Island because a) it’s in Texas, and b) I don’t feel like being drunk for a week in a place crowded with horny 20-somethings.

College students are a marketer’s dream. We’re lazy, we’re poor and once we’re done with a term, we want to cut loose in a big way. Tell us it’s cheap, there’ll be as much alcohol as we could consume in two lifetimes and you’ll find an easy way for us to get there, and you’ve got us.

Throughout my college career, I’ve noticed several companies that offer trips to various places in Mexico, Whistler/Blackcomb, and of course, Padre Island. In my sorority days, I became very familiar with these trips because the companies figured our daddies would pay for trips to keep us happy. Of course, there were cases where they were right.

I never bothered to ask dad to pay for a trip like that. He’d snort and ask what I was going to do for a week in Mexico. Would I explore the rich cultural heritage? Would I be learning another language to enrich myself? Hardly, and he knows it. I’d go there and drink myself cross-eyed in horrible clubs that play bad music. I’d be subjected to constant hangovers (if I allowed myself to quit drinking for even a small period of time) and threats of being made to participate in wet T-shirt contests.

At one point, this sounded like the ideal Spring Break. Perhaps it’s because I’m a ripe 24 year-old (har, har) and enjoyed the many opportunities I’ve had to drink my weight in tequila, but it just doesn’t sound like fun anymore.

I mean, I can still drink my weight in tequila, but I’d rather do it in the company of trusted associates. I’ve had friends come back from Cancun to tell me about people who do scandalous things like vomit in public (which I can do here, far more cheaply).

If I must get that wasted, I prefer the company of people who will take care of me if I happen to slide under the table after vomiting into a garbage can. I’m close to home here. In Cancun, I’d be paranoid about unscrupulous, undersexed college guys and pickpockets. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy myself in a throbbing throng of drunk, sweaty students. I’ll wait for Brewfest, thank you very much, where I can take a cab home when the crowd gets to be too much for my delicate sensibilities.

This year, I think I’ll head north. Our friends in Canada provided me with a most pleasureable vacation this summer, due to lax attitudes about marijuana and my own sense of adventure. (“Jessica, those men are smoking crack! We have to get out of here!” “Oh Rose, you’re just being paranoid, you silly pothead!”) I’ll stay away from the Expo area this time.

Canada is cheap, easy to access, and offers all sorts of options for me to debauch myself. Of course, I’ll be bringing along my friends, and we’ll split a hotel room (thank god the exchange is so good right now), and we’ll have a decadent time.

Of course, by the time I’m used to living the good life, it’ll be back here to Portland with it’s inane drug laws and stupid school, which I simply must finish within the millenium. Perhaps I should retreat to a Zen monastery instead.