Exploring the Phases of Discomfort

There had been a bit of a temperature drop during the night. I got up feeling cold and bruised all over, even though there hadn’t been anything bigger than a few pine needles under my sleeping bag.

I lurched over to where somebody had forgotten to bank the coals the evening before and, using fingers that felt like a couple of frozen bananas, started making a fire.

“You up?” asked a lump in one of the other sleeping bags.

“Coffee will be ready in either a few minutes or a couple of hours,” I said, starting on my second book of matches. I was trying to light half a road map I had stuffed under the kindling.

I’d have been just as happy to have the fire going before any of the guys I’d gone backpacking with got up. Kit Carson or Daniel Boone would never have used a map to get a fire started.

The flame caught, inched through the Eastern states and out into the Atlantic Ocean and started on the pine needles.

I went over to the limb where I’d hung my pants the night before. They had fallen and were so stiff with frost that they were almost unbendable. It was that morning, while putting on those pants, that I moved out of Phase 1 vacations and into Phase 2.

Over the years you have to keep measuring the fun of the vacation experience against the discomfort. That morning my first measuring resulted in the end of Phase 1.

Phase 2 is when you admit you’ve turned into a “walls” person. It’s when you decide to rent accommodations and leave sleeping outside to the lions and tigers and bears.

My wife Joyce and I had our first Phase 2 vacation a few years after the children came, when the six of us went to the mountains. We rented a cabin at Lake Arrowhead.

That cabin was about half past ramshackle, with loose boards, a ceiling you could see the stars through and a water heater so old that if it hadn’t had hot flashes, it wouldn’t have worked at all.

But the place did have screens (to keep the mosquitoes in) and all the comforts of home . . . if the home hadn’t seen any improvements since about, say, 1931.

Instead of television the kids would line up to watch me light the oven. You could say they got a bang out of it, although it was mostly like a whooomp , and I was the one who got it. I lost an eyebrow and all the hair off my right arm, but it beat live television for excitement.

Even with its faults, that cabin and the vacation we spent in it was a great success.

On our last day there I asked John, then about 6, a rhetorical question.

“John, how’d you like to swap our house for this place?”

He gave a yell and started jumping up and down. He was all for it and so were the girls.

Kids don’t understand rhetorical questions. I’m not altogether sure they ever really forgave me for not arranging a trade.

Most of our Phase 2 accommodations have been fun, no matter where in the world.

In Paris there’s a little place on the Rue de Lille, on the Left Bank, that’s sort of typical of the European Phase 2. It’s called the Hotel De Lille, and it suits us fine.

The last time we were there I realized that if you sat down in the tub your chin automatically came to rest on your knees.

Also, the room had red-flocked wallpaper on one wall, and they had hung a Chinese-red patchwork quilt on the wall opposite.

Aside from making the 10-by-10-foot room feel like a 6-by-6 room, when you woke up in the morning you got the feeling you were having an out-of-body experience and that you were floating somewhere over an empty quilted bed.

We got used to it. You can get used to a lot of things if the price is right. We were paying a great deal less than the big hotels charge. We don’t really spend much time in our room when we’re in Paris anyway, so we’ll probably be going back to that little hotel.

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The first time on our own in London we booked a bed and breakfast through the Victoria Station tourist office.

The taxi took us to a beautiful old part of the city and the manager met us at the door. “Welcome to the Hotel Sydney,” he said.

He helped me haul our luggage from the taxi into the entryway, then poured us large glasses of wine. “I have some good news and some bad news,” he said.

“Good news first,” said Joyce.

“I have a lovely room for you with a simply marvelous view of London and the drinks are free.” He said “cheers” and we drank the wine.

“And the bad news?” I asked.

“You and your lovely wife are on the sixth floor and there’s no lift.”

The view was great. The room was nice. The full English breakfast was a marvel and, by and large, we were above the city noise.

But by the end of our week’s stay, though Joyce took the stair-climbing in stride, I had developed what I figured would be terminal leg cramps.

Now when we go to London we stay at a little hotel in Chiswick, where they assign us a room on the ground floor.

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We’ve ducked in and out of Phase 3. It includes organized tours and cruises where the tour company sees to your sleeping arrangements and meals, handles all the luggage and even does most of the tipping.

Phase 3 is tops for people who like other people, who don’t mind looking like tourists and who aren’t too proud to accept a little help sightseeing and shopping. Some of our most valued friendships have been made on Phase 3 vacations.

Phases 4 and 5 feature big resort hotels complete with golf courses, stables, tennis courts, pools, saunas and gymnasiums. They have so much to offer, in fact, that you can do your whole vacation without leaving the hotel grounds.

A friend of ours came back from a Club Med vacation, which is about Phase 5. He was tanned, happy and more rested than we’d ever seen him.

When I asked where he’d been, he had to think for a moment. “Did I bring you a bottle?”

“Yes.”

“What was it?”

“Tequila,” said Joyce.

“I was in Mexico? Yes, Mexico.”

There are tours that are about Phase 5 and sometimes 6. Phase 6 is the kind where the maitre d’ faints if you ask for a chicken-fried steak.

And if you’ve got enough mischief in your soul, you can ask for the “ soupe du jour of the day and a nice bottle of Chateau Briand to wash it down,” then watch the whole dining room and kitchen staff faint.

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Even these days, when the dollar isn’t at its best abroad, you can still get bargain lodgings without giving up too much. I’ve listed some of the ones we like.

You can do with a foot or two less tub, but you really don’t need a sixth-floor walk-up, so ask questions before you make reservations.

Hotel De Lille, 40 Rue de Lille, 75007 Paris, a quarter mile from the Louvre. The rate is 440 francs (about $68 U.S.) a night, double.

Chiswick Hotel, 73 High Road, London W4 2LS. The BBC frequently books out-of-town crews here. The rate is 55 (about $90 U.S.) a night, double.

Coity Mawr Manor, Talybont-on-Usk, Near Brecon, Powys LD3 7YN, Wales. Ask for Bryn or Liz Drew. It’s an 18th-Century Georgian manor house with total seclusion, but activities are within easy reach. Rate: 45 a night, double.

Old Gwernyfed Country Manor, Three Cocks, Brecon, Powys, Wales. Ask for Dawn and Roger Beetham. We haven’t stayed in this Elizabethan manor, but even Bryn and Liz Drew recommend it. The rate is 45 to 55 a night, double.