Friday, August 29, 2008

Top Three Regrets

As the chief planner and architect of this trip, I also suffer some gnawing regrets for plans that fell through and for some under planning, in hindsight. You have to weigh the drive to plan each day against the ability to "go with the flow". As a consequence, some important details get overlooked and other minor details turn out to be major. As adults, Cathy and I can deal with such hiccups in the plan, and as it turned out, Kimberly and Jake were also able to roll with shifting itineraries and time constraints better than we would have given them credit for prior to the trip.

Chief avoidable disappointment - missing the Dave Neihaus induction, in fact, missing the entire induction ceremony at the Hall of Fame. We could not find out until we got to Cooperstown that the ceremony didn't start until 1:30pm. We had hoped for some interaction with the inductees during the morning that day. Didn't happen. We could only spend until noon at the Hall of Fame, before continuing on to Palmyra, Buffalo, and Niagara Falls to get in at a reasonable hour. As it was, we had to do the whirlwind tour of Palmyra, Hill Cumorah, and the Sacred Grove, and didn't get back on the road to Buffalo until 6pm. We did not make it to Buffalo until 8:30, where we stopped for a quick dinner, then continued to our hotel in Niagara Falls, arriving a 9:45 that night.

Next disappointment: No trip up the Gateway Arch. I could have purchased advanced tickets online for a specific time, but didn't want to risk missing our time due to travel problems. As it turned out, the Cardinals were in town that Friday and the game with the Cubs brought hoards of visitors to downtown St. Louis, including the Arch - just a block from Busch Stadium. The wait would have added another hour and a half, plus the time spent up in the Arch. We still needed to make it to Evansville, Indiana, for the night, to keep the rest of the trip on schedule. Bummer.

The third is a tie between missing out on Mammoth Cave National Park and missing out on Fenway Park. Again, had I purchased advance tickets online for the cave tours at Mammoth Cave, we could have added that to the very long day going from Evansville to Charleston, WV, but by the time I looked for tickets, all the tours were sold out. I feel bad about Fenway, because we were so close, but it was a Red Sox - Yankees weekend and was sold out all year. Also, we might have been able to do the Fenway tour, but never made the attempt.

The kids might add that we should have planned for more time to deal with huge crowds at Cedar Point. We had to miss riding the Millennium Force, perhaps the greatest roller coaster in the world. We only got 5 total rides in 6 hours. More time would have afforded us the "luxury" of spending 1.5-2 hours in some lines. Here's a hint, Cedar Point, ever hear of FastPass???

Lesson learned: The best laid plans will always overlook seemingly minor details that come back to bite you. Also, you can't plan for disruption to the plan, but you can be prepared to roll with it and take it in stride.

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