SURPRISE Birthday Trip

If you know us, you know that racing is pretty much life. Travis and my brother grew up racing go-karts so we both spent the better half of our childhood weekends at the track. Travis, although is pretty much retired from racing, still driver coaches the new generation of racers. And a lot of our good friendships were made at the race track. Also, we first met at the go-kart track.. so theres that. Needless to say racing was and still remains to be a big part of our life.

Anyways we are big fans of Formula 1 racing. I mean come on, we named our cats Vettel and Kimi after our favorite Formula 1 race car drivers (Go team Ferrari!). So it should be no surprise that going to a Formula 1 race was on our bucket list. For those of you that have no idea about any of this and why it’s such a big deal for us to put it on our bucket list, Formula 1 travels all over the world to race and it was only a couple years ago they made their way back to the United States for a single race on their circuit. Austin Texas opened the Circuit of The Americas in 2012 making it the only Formula 1 track in the United States. So if we didn’t make it to Austin Texas, we would have to travel to another country to catch a Formula 1 race. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing (looking at you Monaco!)

 

I thought it would be a cool idea to go to Austin Texas for the Formula 1 race for Trav’s 30th birthday this year. Trav’s birthday is November 5th, and the United States Grand Prix (USGP) was set for mid-October. It’s like it was fate! Back in April of last year I started planning all the logistics for us travel to Texas for the USGP for Trav’s 30th birthday with one major detail – it was going to be a surprise to him!!! I bought the 3 day tickets, booked our flights, reserved the hotel and then put it on the back burner as we lived our lives for the next couple of months. Keeping something like this a secret for me was really hard. Like really hard because I tell Travis everything! So I tried to put it in the back of my mind and forget about it so I didn’t accidentally slip and say something. But, as October was quickly approaching I needed to kick it into high gear and figure out the rest of the details.

When I originally planned this trip I wanted to keep the whole thing a surprise up until the morning we were supposed to leave. So much so that I was going to come home early the day before and pack our bags and hide them. But Trav started a new job in September so I had the obstacle of figuring out how to let his work know he was going to be gone for 4 days without him knowing. I tried to go around him and talk to his supervisor, but all the logistics didn’t work in my favor and I finally had to break and tell him we were going on a trip.

So a week before we were set to leave, I told him we were going on a trip for his birthday and gave him four clues to throw him off track:

1. You need your passport (FALSE)
2. It’s going to be cold, so you will need your big jacket (ALSO FALSE)
3. We are going to visit two different places (AGAIN, FALSE unless you count our 1 hour layover in Dallas)
4. We have never been where we are going (TRUE)

He’s not one to try to ruin a surprise so he wasn’t constantly bombarding me trying to make me crack and tell him where we were going. Totally opposite of me – ha! Sure, his curiosity led him to think of different places we might be going, but he never tried to guess it. I asked him where he thought we were going, without me telling him whether he was right or not. His best guesses based on the clues I gave him were:

1. Lambeau Field to see Greenbay play at home and then Canada
2. Seattle Washington and then Canada
3. Europe

Those were all really good guesses because we’ve been tossing around the idea of going to all of them. Good thing I didn’t plan to go to Lambeau though because Aaron Rodgers broke his collarbone the week before we left on our trip!

How did I finally tell him where we were going?

I had bought apparel from our favorite drivers and teams, sunscreen, ear plugs, chapstick, and snacks (all things I anticipated we would need for long days at the race track) and put it all in a Scuderia Ferrari backpack. Right before we left for the airport I gave him the backpack and had him open the front pocket first. In the front pocket was an envelope with a poem on the front that gave clues to where we were going and inside the envelope were the wristbands for the race.

Was he surprised?

Heck yes he was! If you know Trav, you know he’s not one to get overly emotionally about anything. So on the surface it might seem like he wasn’t into it, but he was. All during our trip he kept telling me how awesome this was and how the race was so much more fun than he imagined it would be.

Here is a video of me surprising him with the backpack and finally telling him where we were going. Mind you this was at about 5AM and about 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave for the airport, so if either of us look a bit tired it’s because we are.

Surprise Birthday Trip Reveal from Elise Lindsey on Vimeo.

Check back later on posts of what we did in Austin, what we ate in Austin, and how much we spent on the entire trip!