I’ve never started a vacation with the question of what hashtag I was going to use on the forefront of my mind, but I did on this one.
Perfect Hashtag
I mean how can you really pass up a hashtag like #wadeoutwest. It had all the ingredients: it made sense – it was short, it had a touch of alliteration, and it just rolled off your tongue like sweet honey. It was like the internet gods came down and blessed me with this ambrosia of hashtags. All of this came to be due to my new found love of Instagram.
You might say I’m a touch late to the Insta party, but just so you know I’ve been a member for years. I just never actually used the damn thing. So I like to think that I’m not late, I’ve just been in the back room on the bed with all the coats. Which sounds kinda lame, but I promise you I was more than likely doing all sorts of things on your coats that you’d rather not know about.
So it begins
So obviously I was a touch obsessed with this new hashtag. My obsession carried over with nearly physically forcing all my travel partners to not only download, but to learn and use Instagram for the trip.
I was, of course, going to need them all to use my brilliantly created #wadeoutwest tag because, well obviously, and I we might as well use another more group friendly hashtag as well. We were a group of five and not everyone was named Wade, so it just wouldn’t work. However if we were all named Wade I think the # possibilities would have exploded in a supernova like ball of awesomeness. Then, just like before, it appeared was loudly yelled – the answer to our problem.
We were traveling in a Chevy Traverse, which by all accounts is a great cross-country vehicle. The rental car company the Traverse came from was a nightmare, but that’s another story. Yep that’s right National I’m coming for you. As we are heading down the highway it came from the front car – an excited and almost piercing scream of #PERVERSEINTHETRAVERSE.
Holy crap, it was perfect. One little tear may or may not have streaked my cheek as I happily added the new hashtag to all my photos.
The Continuing
So mind you the first leg of our journey was just driving. For nearly 20 hours we drove in shifts stopping only to facilitate and gas up, so not one of us really had a clear mind. However we persevered, and I continued to #perverseinthetraverse. I’m not sure when the realization actually hit, but it was an embarrassing while – I’m going with two days.
One of our travel partners was looking for our photos on Instagram and was using the hashtag as a search tool. Because let me say this now that is its function, not to #makesentencesinstead. However, she couldn’t find one photo. I, of course, blamed the user, or the Wi-Fi, or Instagram, or something – but by god this had nothing to do with me. Until it did.
I flipped my phone out and showed everyone – see right here I’ve tagged all these photos with #preverseinthetraverse. Wait what? Well f*&? me. Preverse. That awesome hashtag was ruined by my lack of sleep and inability to spell.
I realized two things right then and there. First off I knew I was about to be on one fantastic life changing trip, when the whole gang laughed it off and continued to use the incorrect hashtag. Secondly, that I’m way too old to using what I will now and forever call “the internets.” #uggh
