Spring Fever

I don’t know why, but for as long as I can remember, every February, I get the urge to plan a trip somewhere. It happens like clockwork, and it has become sort of tradition. Sometime around mid-February, I start looking online for destinations and then travel deals for those destinations. Once I start the process, I start sliding down the rabbit hole and inevitably, I make the plan to make the arrangements. I check in with my family and secure dates around schedules, and then I set up the trip.

My husband laughs at me every year because he knows that as soon as the cold weather hits and the holidays are over, that the vacation planning phase of my life begins. I can’t help it, the idea of travel away from New Jersey pulls me. I don’t even have to go somewhere warm. It needs to be a get-a-way to explore and enjoy a place I have never been.

Something weird happened this year that changed the typical vacation planning phase. I had not been thinking about a vacation because we decided to sell our home in February. I was so wrapped up in the details of getting the house ready that I did not feel that pull to plan a trip. Instead, it was my husband who, when planning a business trip, noticed that fares to Florida were low. He pointed out that we could go during our daughter’s spring break so that she could get some much-needed sunshine during a particularly cold New York State winter up at college. I was caught off guard and asked, “Who are you, and what have you done with my husband?” We had a good laugh and got to work making arrangements that very night. I put him on airfare duty, and I began to look for hotels in the Miami area. Before the night was over, we had a trip planned, airfare and hotels booked and had called our daughter to share the good news that she would be traveling to Miami for the week.

I teased my husband and reminded him that he was usually the one to hem and haw about spending money and going away, but in the end, he always relented. This time it felt so weird to have a partner in crime and be of like-mind to plan a spontaneous trip during the deep freeze of winter. When the day came to fly away, we looked at each other with a sense of eagerness and excitement about getting to the sunshine state and avoiding the blizzard that was going to descend on the northeast while we were basking in the warmth. I told him that I had indeed changed him because my habit had rubbed off on him and now he was forever in the spring fever cycle with me. Just another perk of being married to a travel junkie.