Traveling

This weekend we are venturing out from our safe food cocoon of Tallahassee to visit my mom, sister, and nephew down in Tampa.  It has been a nice trip thus far.  Our drive down was pulled off in 4 1/2 hours - which is the fastest that we as a family has made the trip.  So that was a good start.  And we've had fun here.  Tonight, the big kids are over at my sister's house with Toby, their cousin.  They are watching movies and then "camping out" in Toby's room.  Should be fun.  I also realized my mom has a wireless router.  So that means I can get on my computer and write this post that I've been wanting to put up.

Traveling is one of the worst things that you can do when you are on a diet.  You aren't home.  You don't have the necessary ingredients to keep your normal efforts up.  So you're up to the host home and the restaurants on the road.  In addition, since you don't want food to spoil at your home, you let your supplies run down there - meaning you run short on the way out of town and when you get back.  The whole process if very dangerous for people trying to follow a strict meal plan.  That goes for everyone.

For me, this was compounded by the way I learned to travel.  We didn't travel much when I was growing up.  So it was a big deal when I got into sixth grade and our school took all of us on a sixth grade trip.  We went up to Cape Canaveral (three months after the Challenger disaster), Cypress Gardens, and a hotel in Lake Wales.  It was the first hotel I remember staying in.  The night before the trip, I had packed my stuff in one of my dad's carry on bags.  I was kind of nervous and went walking around and saw my dad messing with my bag.  I was kind of irritated and asked what he was doing.  He got mad and tried to get me to go away.  He finally showed me that he was putting a small box of Oreos and a package of Fig Newtons in my bag.  He said, "It's no fun to travel without some snacks for the trip."  Of course, he said it in a ticked off way and probably had some cursing in with it.  To me, I thought it was so sweet.  And it was cool to have that in my bag at the hotel.

The next year we took our one vacation I can remember.  My dad had a conference in St. Pete at the Sandpiper Resort.  So we all got to go with him for a week.  We had this nice condo, complete with kitchen.  So we had some lunch meat and stuff in the fridge.  But we mostly ate out.  We hadn't started doing that yet - eating out a lot.  So it was tons of fun to me.  We tried a bunch of places.  The one I remember was Silas Dent's.  It had this beach atmosphere.  And we tried gator for the first time.  Then we all got horribly sick when we got back to the hotel.  I remember that the bill was over $100 - a huge deal to all of us.  In our room, we had tons of sodas and junk food.  It was so awesome to my 13 year old self.

So, these were the early experiences with travel.  As high school went on, I had more travel chances.  With school events we went to Orlando a couple times, Daytona, Washington DC, Gainesville twice.  Each time I remember packing snacks - or getting them on the way.  It just was the way everyone traveled.  Think about how a teenager would approach these trips.  Their parents give them money for the trip - naturally that was supposed to be used for Skittles and Coke.

Once I got into college, I started to make the Orlando-West Palm Beach run pretty frequently.  Eating while driving became the norm.  If you drove during mealtime, you ate in the car.  If you drove in the afternoon, you had snacks.  If you drove at night, you had lots of soda and candy to stay awake.  This became how I approached trips - and it has continued to this day.  My kids are conditioned to it.  We usually stop at a gas station on the way out of town to fill up and get drinks and snacks.  It makes it easier than stopping halfway when they are screaming, "I'M HUNGRY!!! I NEED A SNACK!!!"  The new runs from Tally to Tampa or Orlando usually take five hours - which means a meal has to be consumed on the road.  Typically, that means stopping at Wendy's or McDonalds.

On a longer trip - five or six hours - I can easily consume two 32 ounce sodas.  Need to figure that out?  About 700 calories in soda alone.  Add in the snacks - usually Mike and Ikes, a cookie or snack cake or ice cream cone, and some Combos or Munchos.  Then throw in the dinner, which usually consists of a double cheeseburger with bacon and fries.  That five hour trip can easily hit 1500-2000 calories.  And that's just the trip.  It doesn't even begin to count the eating while at the foreign location.  Snacking on chips, snitching chocolate, bowls of ice cream, tons of soda.  I always eat more and worse when I am away from home.  It just is a rule.

So this time Heather and I made a commitment to stay strong on the trip.  We did stop for snacks on the way out.  But Heather got peanut butter crackers and I got beef jerky, peanuts, and water.  It was interesting.  The beef jerky was a nice treat - something I don't usually eat.  But it didn't violate my diet since it was just meat.  I barely ate the peanuts - found them too salty.  And I drained the water.  We had to stop for dinner.  I wanted to go to Cracker Barrel to get their grilled chicken tenders with a salad.  But it was packed, so we hit Burger King.  I got a grilled chicken salad, apples, and water.  Heather got a chicken sandwich.  Then, once we got to my mom's, I went to the store and got the stuff we needed to make things work here.  I got my yogurt and fruit, Heather's yogurt, spinach, lettuce, chicken tenders for lunch today, a London Broil for dinner, hot dogs for the kids.  Today, we ate exactly what we were supposed to.  I even came up with a killer Greek yogurt sauce for the chicken.  When I went to ran some errands with my sister, I got a Slim Jim and some more jerky that was on sale.  Neither of us has cheated at all - even though there is a box of donuts for the kids tomorrow, candy hiding in the same spots as before, and bottles of soda.  Nor did I even want to get a candy bar at Walgreens - something I usually would do while I was running errands.  I did eat a hot dog without the bun while I was running the grill.  It was an all beef one and darn tasty - and I felt I deserved it for being the chef.

So, the first traveling experience has been okay.  We still have to go back tomorrow.  And there is the replenishment issue once we get back.  But we have been able to keep our food goals going, even when in a place where we didn't have our full arsenal at our disposal.  I'm pretty proud of that.  I know that travel has become a big part of our life.  We have a trip to Jacksonville in February and two trips to Orlando in March.  Those will be harder because they won't be at a house.  At a hotel, you often have to eat out every meal.  And there are lots of dull hours wrestling with snacks and hunger.  But, the more tricks I uncover (the jerky, yogurt based items), the more I am sure I will be able to do this.