Performer: Night Ranger
Songwriter: Jack Blades
Original Release: Dawn Patrol
Year: 1982
Definitive Version: None
I always liked this song,
even after Night Ranger drove off the edge of Wuss Cliff with Sister Christian.
Not long before I started working on this list, I rediscovered it on YouTube
and realized how much I liked it, so here it is.
I’ve recently rediscovered
another formerly lost early 1980s song through the magic of YouTube—Silverado
by The Marshall Tucker Band. The live version of that song from 1981 just
smokes, and were I starting the list now, it would make it. I could A/B it
here, but it wouldn’t rate this high—probably somewhere in the 700s.
Anyway, Laurie and I had
talked about going to Europe on vacation, well, pretty much since we met. But
after our Mexico excursion in 2008, that talk increased.
The plan always was England.
After becoming a huge Thomas Hardy fan at Wabash, I had wanted to go back to
England and knock around Sussex County—Hardy’s Wessex. Then, there were the
Cotswolds—beautiful country that I wanted to see again.
Laurie wanted to tour the
Isle of Man, and that sounded pretty good to me. And while we’re there, we got
to get to Wales and maybe Scotland, and, of course, Ireland’s close by …
The England trip had turned
into a Colossus, but a bigger problem existed: Neither of us had much vacation
time.
I’ve had three weeks of paid
vacation since I started at my magazine, and this made our mushrooming England
plans all but impossible. Laurie and I knew that such a trip would require at
least two weeks—and certainly we still wouldn’t be able to see everything we
might want in England, let alone Scotland, Wales, etc.
But we also take annual
smaller trips, such as to Wisconsin or to Torch Lake, that require time, and if
we wanted a two-week British Isles jaunt, we would have to eliminate most of
the smaller trips to do so.
And that pretty much was our
only option, because the magazine publisher absolutely refuses to budge on
granting me a fourth week of vacation. This was despite receiving annual review
after annual review where my value to the company had been expressed beyond the
bounds of effusiveness.
When I began my fifth year
in 2010, I even offered to the editor that I would forgo a raise in exchange
for a fourth week of vacation. I didn’t want to, mind you, but I had reached a
point both monetarily and in life where the time was more important than (more)
money. My request was denied. The publisher didn’t want to adjust company
policy of three weeks’ vacation, period, on an ad hoc basis—even for an
exemplary employee.
Finally, in 2011, on the
anniversary of my fifth year of employment—an anniversary that had meant the
receipt of at least a fourth week of vacation at a couple of my newspapers—I made one final play: a week of
unpaid time off for the purpose of a major vacation.
This offer, I thought,
proved beyond any doubt that I didn’t care about the money; I just wanted the
extra time off, and I was willing to sacrifice a week’s pay—about $1,000 after
taxes—to get it. This offer, perhaps unsurprisingly, was accepted.
However, in the mean time,
plans had changed: Laurie and I no longer wanted to go to the British Isles. I
decided, as our plans grew into this overwhelming chimera, that I didn’t want a
stressful vacation. Instead, I wanted something like what we had in Mexico—a
cool place where we spent a good percentage of our time eating, drinking and
hanging out.
Consequently, I decided
there was only one place for us: Italy. To me, Italy, which, of course, had
cultural destinations to burn, seemed like the place most similar to Mexico in
that regard. When I voiced my new plan and the rationale to Laurie, she immediately
took to the idea.
Well, then we have to go to
Venice. And Florence. And Rome. And …
Here we go again.
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