Vacation - Plans Always Change
June 16, 2008
As I peck the keyboard here in Rome Italy, its 6:20 pm Eastern Standard Time on Saturday, June 14, 2008. Or, where I’m at its 12:30 am Sunday and I’m just getting back from the bar – I was watching a soccer game I tell you – and I can’t sleep.
The day starts tomorrow with a drive of 165 miles from Rome to Sorrento where we’ll stay for four days. But I don’t want to bore anyone with my vacation itinerary so I will stop with that drivel (you can thank me later, Pete).
What I’d like to communicate is what I did today in Rome – but let me fill you in on how it first came about.
My family and I have had this trip to Italy planned for over a year. In January of this year I planned the itinerary: land in Milan, travel to Cinque Terre, Orvieto, Rome, Sorrento, Cortona, and end the trip in Padua/Venice. Padua holds a dear spot in my heart because a long time friend Massimo Zanetti lives there and we’ll get to fish together at least one day – again in the country of my family’s origin.
Well, a week prior to “our” trip, I received an email from Yamamoto’s ezine that stated GYCB would be present at the European Fishing Tackle Trade Exposition (EFTTEX) in Rome in the middle of June. Knowing the importance of this show – it’s the ICAST of all Europe – I quickly checked “our” agenda to see when we were in Rome. Yes, we were to be there at the exact same time.
First thing I do is call Ron Colby and ask him if he can get me in to the show. He replies he’ll talk to Paolo (Vannini) and see what he could do but it shouldn’t be a problem to get me in on a media pass. “Cool,” I think.
This all happened at work and I’m all excited to go to EFTTEX when it dawned on me – “What is my wife going to think when I get home and tell her?”
All the way home I try to figure out a way to break the great news to her. It doesn't matter how many excellent scenarious I come up with: She’s going to think I had this planned all along.
I get home and she can sense that something is "up" – she’s a woman and they have more sense(s) than us men.
She asks me why I’m so happy and I tell her I had a decent day at work – I think she buys it. We talk for a long time (maybe 3 minutes) and I finally share with her the good news. “Honey, when we’re in Rome, the EFTTEX show will be there and I’ve been invited to go as media.”
“EFTTEX?” she replied. “What’s that? What’s the media have to do with that?”
“EFTTEX is the European equivalent to ICAST,” I said. “And I just found out today from Ron that the show will be there the exact same time as when we’re there in Rome. Isn’t that cool?”
That’s when “The Eye” hit me. You all know it – you women reading this know you possess it. It’s the look that can mean a myriad of things but mainly it’s the “You’re feeding me a line of BS and just tell me you’ve had this EFTTEX thought in your head since last year when we first started planning this trip.”
I knew I was pinned.
But, like any good boy scout – okay, I never made it past cub scouts – I had a back-up plan.
I instantly provided the Yamamoto email (printed out only hours earlier) that showed the date and time and telling “me” that EFTTEX was scheduled for Rome, Italy June 13-15, 2008.
I then went into an intricate dialogue of how important this show is and why I need to attend. It also helped that I added I could now write the Rome portion of our trip off on our taxes due to the fact I’d actually be working.
“The Eye” transformed into “The Squint” and I knew I was on the road to her accepting the fact that I would have another day of fishing-related activity on our family vacation.
I’m Italy bound and EFTTEX bound thanks to Paolo and Ron – and mostly my wife Lynn.
The next installment of “What I did on my summer vacation” is about the show specifically and will be titled: EFTTEX – Beware of the Truffles.