Our Myrtle Beach vacation

This year was a bastard. Not from work. God, no, I find work relaxing. Reading papers, inventing algorithms, ripping apart distributed systems with TLA+ models -- that's how I have fun. I can do that all day with a grin on my face. But the minute I need to do adulting (like simply calling the cable company and ask why keep increasing our bill when I'm not looking), I will stress and procrastinate. And this year, I had a lot of adulting to do to put our house on market, and plan a move to California, all the while juggling to help three kids with school and EC activities. No wonder I've been grinding my teeth at night like a mule chewing rocks...

Anywho, we botched our great escape to California. House didn't sell quickly, as we hoped it would, and we are stuck in Buffalo for another year. Summer disappeared in a cloud of errands and disappointment, and suddenly it was late August with our kids twitching with pre-school nerves. There was still some time left to salvage the wreck. We needed a beach, any beach. Myrtle Beach! We heard good things about it. One of my friends called it the Redneck Riviera. Good enough for me, and far enough from Buffalo, so we decided to give it a try. 

My wife is better at planning, so she took the reins. She scoured hotel reviews like a CIA interrogator, picking through tales of bedbugs, mold, broken elevators. She has a radar for doom. Without her, I'd have booked us straight into some cockroach casino on the boardwalk. But she nailed it. Ten days before departure, she locked down an Airbnb flat inside a proper resort hotel, facing the ocean. We chose Airbnb for better customer service and because the photos showed the exact floor and view we would get. There was no guessing which floor or room we would get if we went with the resort directly.

The best thing about the vacation is anticipation and the wait. We counted down the days,  giddy with excitement.

And then, the drive. Always the drive. That is how the Demirbas family rolls: No planes if at all possible. Planes are a scam. For five people, it's bankruptcy on wings. You waste a whole day shuffling through TSA lines, just to pray nervously that our planes don't cancel on you, and if you are lucky to sit in a recycled air canister for hours. We once drove from Buffalo to Seattle, and back. And another time to Florida and back. For us seven hours on asphalt is a warm-up lap from Buffalo to Boston. Myrtle Beach was thirteen. Still doable. Just load the audiobooks, clamp the Bose headphones on my head, and hit the highway. Driving is my meditation: the road pours itself under my car, like some childhood arcade game where the scenery and other cars on the road scrolls through you for hours as I nudge the steering wheel left and right to accommodate.

We left Buffalo at 8:30 in our tightly packed Highlander. By noon the youngest announced that she hadn't hit the bathroom that morning and we stopped at a McDonald's little south of Pittsburgh. We mostly pass as a normal American family, but at this stop we stood out like a sore thumb. We received a lot of cold blond stares. I later understood why, when we drove another 30 minutes, the barns started shouting TRUMP in dripping paint, and we entered West Virginia. God's Country, they call it. Heaven on earth. But it was just some green hills, and the scenery didn't impress me much. 

Our next stop was at a rest area in North Carolina, which turned out to become the cleanest, most immaculate rest area I'd ever seen. Somebody in Raleigh must be laundering money through landscaping contracts, but damn if it didn't impress us. Even the butterflies were impressive!

Then Myrtle Beach: 85 degrees weather, ocean air, great view from our flat, and a nice waterpark at the resort. Southern hospitality is real, everyone was smiling. Compared to the winter-scarred faces in Buffalo, it felt like stepping onto another planet. The Carolinas had already shoved their kids back into classrooms, so we owned the pools and ruled the lazy river. The kids tore through the slides. I soaked in the jacuzzi like a tired warrior. At night we binge-watched Quantum Leap. We would have also watched during day, but my wife dragged us to beach walks, waterpark raids. Sometimes we need the push.

By the third day, the spell had taken hold. I started to relax.  Sleep came easy, deeper than home. The wave sounds and the sea view worked its magic. Staying right on the beach was great. No hauling gear, no logistics. Step out the door, fall into the ocean, and crawl back to the flat when you're cooked. The flat was clean, spacious, and blessed with a kitchen so we could gorge on comfort food without shame.

We were wondering if we made a mistake by getting the resort 4-5 miles north of the Boardwalk. When we visited the boardwalk on the third day, we realized that it was overrated anyways. It was full of tourist-trap shops, neon lights, and featured a SkyWheel, which we didn't bother to try. We didn't need the Boardwalk. Myrtle Beach itself is the show: the waves, the horizon, and the beach.

Of course, I had to ruin myself. The kids used sunscreen like sensible citizens, and I, an idiot heir to Turkish tanning lore, slathered on olive oil (which I swiped from our kitchen). If it fries an egg, it'll bronze a body, right? Well... I roasted into a lobster, alright... But I ended up slowly shedding skin like a reptile for days afterwards.

The drive back was clean. Salem's Grill in Pittsburgh was our mandatory detour. You go to great food, if great food doesn't get to you. We hit it before 7pm and dined like kings until closing at 8pm. We were back home before midnight. Eventless driving, the way I like it.

But vacations are lies, sweet lies. Within days the teeth grinding returned. The adult machinery reloaded with forms to sign, kids to shuttle, bills to pay. Adulting feels like having to deal with a constant deluge of junk mail and random chores from the universe.

And, then the saddest part... we will be shipping Ahmet to college. He leaves for Caltech soon (must be his mother's genes). I am proud, of course, but I will miss him a lot. I bought the plane ticket yesterday after weeks of pretending I didn't have to. Kids grow fast. Too fast... It isn't fair.