Here's an idea: Instead of flying, driving, training or bussing off to some exotic locale this vacation season, just stay here in town. Let everybody else hit the highway and leave the city wide open for you and the family. Think of it, with nobody in town you can put your feet up on the theater seat in front of you, take your pick of any table at Salty's, have just about any movie you want at Blockbuster, they're practically giving them away when summertime comes around. You'll have time to try all 31 flavors at Baskin and Robbins, pitch your tent in Celebration Park, the cops won't bother you as long as 200 other people don't do the same thing and start a tent city. That's not going to happen anyway because everybody is out of town.
You can throw yourself a frisbee and actually run and catch it without knocking somebody over at Steel Lake Park. You can hop in the car, park it on 320th on the freeway overpass and count the blue cars (slug your husband in the arm when a Volkswagon goes by, he'll think it's funny).
I actually did this a couple of years ago. My normal vacation to Antartica got cancelled due to good weather so Mrs. Anthony suggested that we just stick around. We were heading into town to pick up something to bar-b-que, not really thinking about why the streets were so wonderfully vacant, until we got to Trader Joe's and counted six people in the store on a Saturday afternoon and two of them worked there. We marveled at the lack of lines at Blockbuster, then we decided to splurge and go buy some tennis shoes at the Mall.
The Mall looked like a dumb guy studying for a test - All the lights were on but nobody was home. Amazing. We ended up buying the shoes, a cool painting of some dolphins swimming under the Space Needle at that neat art store by Radio Shack, a new pair of pants for me at Mervyns and we grabbed some ice cream at B&R's for later. Population score: eight mall walkers, five gothed-out kids, three new moms with strollers and two security guards. I felt like shouting for the echo... the way you do in a cavern or tunnel,
'HEY...(hey,hey,hey..) Where IS everybody..(body,body,body..).
