I went to Washington, D.C. to visit my friend Emily for the fourth of July weekend. The trip was objectively mediocre. The best parts, by far, were the long chats with Emily and meeting her friends, which were more than worth the trip.

The touristy bits, however, would have been uniformly disappointing if I had been harboring any real expectations. The shopping I did was unsuccessful (well, successful in keeping as much money as possible in my bank account, but it would have been nice to find a treasure or two to bring home with me). The sermon at the National Cathedral was not only bad (which I had anticipated) but long (which is exponentially worse). Our holiday picnic got rained out. When we went to check out the new memorials, the water was off at the WWII memorial, and the lights were off at the FDR. I got overcharged for both train fare and gasoline. The drive home took way too long because I kept trying to get off the highway to visit features along the way, and then getting lost. So I was exhausted by the time I rolled back into Durham and fell asleep at 6:30 p.m.

Yet when folks here have asked me how my trip went, I've answered, "Oh, it was great!" I felt better than I have in months, and was surprised to find that I had the energy to walk around Washington and Arlington for hours longer than I would have been able to handle at home. The change of scenery and good company did me a world of good. Turns out you don't need to have the Perfect Trip to have a perfect trip.