Reichley Column: All about vacation

Our president is finishing up his summer vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, where he and his family found a modest $35,000 a week rental unit. I feel sorry for him, because unfortunately, that price didn’t
include keeping Cindy Sheehan away. You may remember Sheehan protesting the Iraq war in Texas every summer, with a gaggle of reporters at her beck and call. You probably didn’t know she was
stalking Obama though. When Charles Gibson of ABC news was asked about covering her, he said “enough already.”

Obama’s digs are a big step up from President Bush, who vacationed at his own ranch in Texas. As Cindy said, “Martha’s Vineyard is a lot nicer than Crawford, Texas.” But I appreciate how hard it can
be to find affordable lodging for a summer vacation.

See, my family and I just got back from our summer theme park trip, and sometimes I had to pay almost a hundred dollars for a night in a hotel. And that didn’t include extra space for Secret Service
agents. But we saved money by vacationing in our Prius, having dumped our more spacious mini-van way before the government was paying people $4,500 to junk their perfectly good American cars for
foreign imports.

Our hotels often had free cookies in the lobby. Also, because of the Obama economy, we were able to get coupons for free entrees at TGI Fridays as part of our hotel packages. I bet Obama didn’t get
cookies or coupons with his rental, so I’m feeling pretty good about things.

While we were gone, I skipped a couple of weeks of writing. The nice thing about skipping a column is I get to read what is published in my place. For example, if I had written a column last week, I would
have missed this warning from Sharon Tate: “Remember that any offer insisting on an urgent response or providing great value for free is a scam”.

I’ll remember that next time President Obama tells me how urgently he needs Congress to respond to the “health care crisis,” and how his plan will give everybody world-class health care while lowering
costs. Tate noted that “Americans are the easiest prey for these offers.” I’m hoping that, as we have learned to delete spam e-mail, we can also reject the Health Care hype.

While we were gone, I see some local students, maybe environmentalists worried about global warming, decided to revert some of our asphalt jungle back to its more natural grassy turf state.
Unfortunately, writing “KKK” and “White Power” on a school parking lot using stolen sod is not something that can be ignored. Four students are now charged with vandalism. Since one of the students
was black, it seems the message itself was part of the prank.

With summer vacation over, the fall political season is heating up. I see gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell came to visit this past Saturday. And Creigh Deeds, who has been trying to copy almost
everything McDonnell says or does, also came to visit, opening an office in Woodbridge.

I missed them both, as I spent the day copying thousands of digital pictures onto the computer. I don’t know how we found time to do anything on vacation other than take pictures. It used to be you’d
snap a few pictures, knowing the cost of development. Then, you’d get back your pictures, look at them, and pass them around. Maybe you’d put them in scrap books which you would get out and look at
on Thanksgiving or Christmas.

But now pictures are free. You can take thousands of them, store them on a hard drive, and never think about them again until your computer crashes and you wonder why you never backed up “all those
precious memories.” I’d like to print our best pictures — if we could find a week to sit down and go through the 30,000 pictures in the computer to sort out the “best.”

Anyway, it’s good to be back. Sixteen days packed in a Prius with my family was about as much vacation as I could want. Seriously, we had a blast, although I think my family is tired of theme parks.
Our last day, I couldn’t talk anybody into riding the bumper cars. I love crashing into people who cut you off (in the bumper cars!!!!). But my family just wanted to get home — I guess my driving is thrilling
enough for them, even without the spectacular collisions.

Charles Reichley has been a Prince William County resident since 1981. He can be reached at criticallythinking@msn.com.