Yesterday Lydia’s class embarked on their class trip, a sort of rite of passage for Swedish kids at the end of elementary school, junior high, and high school.  Apparently when they’re older, the kids often go abroad–at least they did when Olof was a kid, and he’s my only point of reference about this;  things may be different now–but when they’re younger they stick a little closer to home.  Lydia and her classmates went to Camp Caribo, where they were to have a “wilderness adventure,” including spending the night in a Lapplander teepee.

I was recruited to be one of the parents who would pick up the kids this morning to bring them home, so I set out at nine o’clock, after getting Tage up and ready and off to school.  The trip takes about an hour, one way, and since I had an extra seat Helena came along to keep me company.  It was a nice day for a drive, so except for a tense ten minutes or so when I feared I’d taken a wrong turn and had to take directions over the phone from a somewhat uncertain Olof (who had only a not-very-good map from the internet to go by), we enjoyed ourselves.

When we pulled into the parking lot, we were greeted by twenty-odd bleary-eyed kids with sunburned noses and sleep-tousled hair.  They seemed to have had a good time, but there was no doubt that they were ready to go home.

Just not with me.

Turns out that a couple of kids from the class hadn’t been able to make the trip, and without them we had one car too many.  Even my own child deserted me, preferring instead to ride home in her friend’s car, so Helena and I made the return trip with the back seats as empty as they’d been on the way there (except for Lydia’s gear, of course, which she deigned to allow me to haul).  I didn’t make a big deal about it–what’s done is done, after all–but I can’t say I was thrilled to make an unnecessary 75-mile round trip with gas prices being what they are (close to $9 a gallon at last check).  The parents in charge, who had stayed with the kids overnight, could have taken a quick head count and called me is all I’m saying.

In any event, Helena and I took the opportunity of our freedom to make a quick coffee-and-cake stop in town before we headed home.  Anyone who knows us knows that we don’t really need an excuse to have coffee and cake and will happily treat ourselves any time, but we did agree that in this particular case we were especially deserving.