Heya!

We FINALLY finished our spring break trips to South Padre Island for 2007...we had a blast!

Anyway, we are all going to Cancun the first weekend in June if you want to go, we shove you our EXACT rates at the Salvia Beach Condos (next door to Hard Rock, the Forum Plaza Mall, etc.) Rate is $299 for 3 nights (you can fit up to 4 per room, do the math, that's like $75 each for the whole weekend to stay right on the beach!!!). Myspace us, and we can show you where to get airfare for cheap. (like $300-$350...so think a $400 total price weekend!!!) This trip rocks, particularly if you are a Senior in college wanting one last fling before you peace OUT!

Some of our douche bag competition is doing this trip for $299/person....come on....while it's mostly high school grad trip, FUCK IT...it's still Cancun...and for this type of price...HOW can you go wrong?

Anywho....the rest of the "newsy" stuff....

We meet with the South Padre Island City Council in like 2 to 3 weeks to pitch more of a cohesive spring break effort from Texas to the of the USA...

Our office is NOW back in Austin...yep yep, we love Padre, but glad to be back for sure.

Let us know if you'd like to Rep for us at your college campus in the fall...we'd love to have you promote our spring break or winter break ski trips to Telluride...

Inertia Chad OUT!

It took me a couple years of spring breaking to really get a handle on spring break math.  But it has applications in so many other circumstances.  So, I thought I'd mention it here for good measure.

Complaints are sort of rare on spring break.  Primarily because everyone is on an island.  With no work.  And lots of friends.  You can absolutely find things to complain about—but it takes some work.

So, however scarce complaints and complainers are—they provide the best example of spring break math, as explained to me by a co-worker at Inertia named Rich—who has more experience with spring break than I do.  Basically, the equation dictates that the amount you complain is indirectly proportional to the amount of fun you'll have on spring break.  So, the more complaining you do, the less fun you'll have.

For example, sometimes we have people complain because it takes awhile to get into the club or to get a drink at the bar because the lines are long.  And it's true, waiting in line kind of sucks.  But there are other clubs on the island with no line at all.  The ones with no people inside. 

It seems like it ought to be simple—if you can't bear to wait in line, you can go straight into empty clubs.  Plus, you can get your drinks in no time!  If you can't bear to be in an empty club—then you just chill out in line, chat up folks you think are cute, bullshit with your friends, and otherwise accept that a long line means you're probably in the right place for a proper spring break extravaganza.

There are plenty of options, depending on your priorities.  What's unfortunate is three people out of a thousand who can't get their priorities in order—and come into our office the next day to complain that our party was too popular and the line was too long and having to wait in it somehow ruined their spring break.

This is where the math comes in.  Because this is not actually a problem we can fix—because it's not actually a problem.  It's an observation:  Popular clubs have long lines.  Period.  Accordingly, the length of time people spend pointing this out—comes directly out of their spring break.  If they spend 15 minutes walking to our office, 30 minutes complaining, and 15 walking back home—that's an hour they could have spent on the beach!  With their friends!  Talking about the four hours they spent at an enormous party, instead of the half hour they spent in line!

I don't want to run the point into the ground.  But the same basic math applies everywhere.  Time spent complaining is usually time wasted.  Even when folks have legitimate problems, if they applied a good attitude, a bit of imagination, or some perspective—any of those things will help more than complaining.

Even if you don't like the mathematical approach and aren't going on spring break, you can think of it like Duke Ellington did.  When asked to account for decades critical acclaim and commercial success in jazz—despite the fact that he had to contend with the usual personal setbacks and a generally unfavorable period in civil rights—he explained that when bad things happened, he "took the energy it takes to pout and wrote a song instead."

So, even if you don't believe Rich and I, please take it from Duke Ellington:

Nobody wants to make out with you on spring break when you're complaining. 

To brush up on your own making out--you can click here to see our website--which shows all our spring break trip options, plus info on how to price a trip or a number to call if typing isn't your thing.

If you want more info like this--I usually put it in the blog, which you can sign up for by clicking here.

See you in Padre!

As I was typing the title of this post, I was realizing that it looks vaguely like on of those "Send this message to a billion of your friends and get an Ipod!" messages.

Because getting paid to go on spring break does seem a bit too good to be true. 

But, the reality is that running a spring break company means that we have to let people know about the trips we put together.

This means we have to spend money on advertising.  Accordingly, it saves us advertising money when folks just tell their friends about our trips.  So, if they book a trip, we try to pass along the money they just saved us.

Perhaps this all seems obvious.  I thought I should explain why it's in our interest to give away free trips--so that you'll know we really do give them away.  And that it's not some crazy scam.

The way it works is pretty straightforward.

If 13 people book a spring break trip through you, then your trip's free.

If 14 or more people come, you'll get the free trip and $35 per person for fourteen through infinity.

In truth, the folk that make a killing at this are pretty rare.  Most folks stop as soon as they get 13 friends and get a free trip.  But there are LOTS of those folks. 

Because it's not terribly difficult to do.  If you're in school, you probably know a ton of people who are thinking about going on break.  We offer trips to most, if not all, of those places.  So, we send you some basic info.  You show it to your friends.  And if you end up putting together a trip with enough folks--yours will be free.

And that's about it.  Putting together 25 trips really takes sort of a sales-oriented attitude.  If that's you, it's a great way to make money.  But getting 13 folks together for a trip has less to do with selling anyone anything and more to do with just organizing things--since you probably know that many folks who want to go on break yet--but just haven't gotten their shit together yet.  So, if you're good at organizing things (or just broke), it's a great way to get folks to quit stalling and save yourself a bundle in the process. 

If that sounds cool, check out the REPS section of the Inertia Tours job page--to find out how we can help you get the word out.  You can find it by clicking here.

If you want more info like this--I usually put it in the blog, which you can sign up for by clicking here.

See you in Padre!

If you are someone (or know someone) who'd be interested in working on South Padre Island for Inertia Tours during the spring break season--NOW is the time to hit us up.

There's two kinds of jobs we have available: 

#1.  Hospitality jobs are for customer service and pay a base salary.
#2.  Promotional jobs are more about sales and the pay is commission-based

Both jobs rock. And are available in two shifts: 

Feb 21-March 18th

or

March 17th-April 7th.

You can only work one of the shifts, not both.  To see more details on the jobs and how to apply, visit Inertia Tours' site by clicking here.

If you want more info like this--I usually put it in the blog, which you can sign up for by clicking here.

See you in Padre!

So, last week I was talking about how the trip to Mexico is my favorite part of the spring break trips we do at Inertia Tours.

Basically, the folks who've had a good time all week are getting nostalgic and the folks that got sunburnt, got their fake ID confiscated, and the rest are cool too because it's the end of the week and the drinks are free and there's not much to bitch about by then.

A group I kind of forgot about though is the 18-20 year olds, who also stand out a bit in Mexico.  This is a particularly interesting night for them for several reasons.  For lots, it's their first spring break--so they want to go all out.  For others, it's the first time they're able to drink legally in a bar--since the drinking age is lower there--so they're also going all out.  For a handful, they haven't managed to do their obligatory spring break hooking up, and since the Mexico trip is near the end of the week--they're going all out.

Occasionally, you'll get a dude--and it's almost always a dude--who fits into all three categories and is hellbent on getting totally wasted and totally laid before his first spring break ends.

In a way, it kind of works.  Folks drink a little.  They loosen up.  They run into other folks that haven't hooked up.  And spring break magic happens.

But when it doesn't work, they usually just drink more--thereby making certain the hook up will NEVER happen. 

Probably the best (or worst) example of this is a dude who drank too much, then went to the bathroom--where he puked on himself.  But he did it while he was trying to take a crap, I'm guessing, because he ended up puking into his own lap.

While his pants were down.

If that's not the saddest thing you've ever heard, it only got worse when I was trying to help him out of the bathroom and he confided in me that he was a virgin.

The spring break lesson here, accordingly, is that if you really want to lose your virginity on spring break.  And you've had trouble doing that all week long.  Puking on your own dick will not help the cause.

To see this kind of magic in action, brush up on your own hooking up skills, or practice not barfing on your own junk, you can check out or trips by clicking here.

If you just want to more triumphant and discouraging spring break tales, I try to put them in my blog--which you can sign up for by clicking here.

Peace out!

Working for a spring break company is sort of like being in Groundhog Day--wherein you relive the same experience over and over.  Except instead of the same day--it's the same week.  DJ Skribble flies in every Tuesday.  The folks from the Real World fly in every Wednesday.  And new spring breakers arrive every Saturday.

This is not to say it's boring at all.  But, since you do the same thing every week--it's easy to isolate your favorite parts.  Mine is probably the Border Bash--when we take everyone over the border into Mexico for a night of unlimited drinking.  I like it because it's usually on a Thursday--and everyone's pretty tipsy. Accordingly, everyone that's had a great trip is starting to realize that it's nearly over and so they're really effusive about what a great time they've had. And that's cool. But even the folks that started the week in a bad mood because of a long drive or because it takes awhile to get everyone checked in on Saturday has had a few days to cool out and realize there's nothing you can do about the drive to spring break and the upside of having check-in take awhile is that it's because the island is filling up with folks who want to party--which is actually good news. 

More importantly, they're drunk.  So, I always have a lot of them come up and say, "Listen. Sorry if I was a dick or that my friend was a dick or whatever. We'd been in the car for 18 hours. We were tired. But it's cool. Let me buy you a drink." 

Even though the drinks are actually free, it's sort of sweet.  In all, everyone who's cool is now emotional.  And the handful of people who needed a shower and couple drinks to forget the drive to Padre are now cool.  So everyone's cool!  And tipsy!  In Mexico!  With free drinks!

Hence--my favorite part of the week.

If you want in on the festivities, you can click here to see our website--which shows all our trip options, plus info on how to price a trip or a number to call if you're too lazy to type or lost your fingers in a war.

If you want more info like this--I usually put it in the blog, which you can sign up for by clicking here.

See you in Matamoros on Thursday!

I'm not a huge fan of sales dudes.  I mention this because my boss at Inertia Tours told me I could dick around on MySpace and make a page about our spring break trips.  This is good for me, since it beats doing other work.  And it's good for him, since it might help us sell a few trips.

So, I was thinking about selling things in general--and how creeped out I was when I first started working for Inertia.  This is because a large portion of our staff is insane.

Don't let this alarm you--the company is basically split into the sane people and the insane ones.  All the sane ones handle trip booking--flights, condos, transportation.  

So if it sounds like we're going to fuck up your trip, that's not the case--because the crazy people don't handle any of that.  They work on the beach--trying to get people to come to our parties.  And they give some people the creeps--because they're sooooo hellbent on it getting folks psyched and committed to a party.

I'm definitely one of the folks to whom they've given the creeps.  In time I've realized that they have to be sort of high pressure.  Obviously, if we have the biggest party on the island--it's good for business.  But it's even more important for the folks on spring break. 

Using South Padre Island as an example--there's about four real clubs here and a couple dozen bars of various sizes.  Let's say there's three thousand people on the island for break that week.  If everyone's spread out--you'll have a few hundred people in each club or bar. 

This might be fun if you're at home.  But for spring break, no one wants to be partying with a couple hundred folks in a bar--when you could be with two thousand people in one of the mega clubs.

This is the way spring break is like Ebay.  If you want to buy a Destro G.I. Joe figure, you don't want to go through a dozen auction websites.  And if you're selling a Destro G.I. Joe, you don't want to have to look through all the auction sites to see where action figures sell best.

Like spring break, it works better if everyone just agrees on the same place.  Basically, if we know everyone's coming to one place--we can put all our resources into that party.  And if you know all the resources on the island are going into one party--you can just go there, instead having some of your friends going here and some there and the boy or girl you met on the beach going to a third place...  Also, there's no reason to have four separate wet T-shirt contests across the island with three contestants each, when you can just have one big one with a lots of people.  One celebrity DJ, instead of a bunch of crappy local DJs...you get the point.

In addition to being thrown for a loop by the beach staff's antics, I also used to think it was strange that we would send these folks out promising the biggest party on the island. 

I was like, "How do we know it'll be the biggest party on the island?  What if it's not?  We're just assuming!  Or hoping!"  After a couple years, I've started to realize that whatever our staff is saying on the beach, however high pressure or goofy, it must be working--because we always have the biggest parties. So, it doesn't seem like hype any more than when the meteorologist gives you a forecast.  It's just...you know...a party forecast, instead of showers and clouds. 

And somewhere along the way, I stopped being creeped out by the crazy part of the staff--because everyone (our staff, the club, the DJ, the spring breakers) everyone on the island actually wants to see one giant party.  Overwhelmingly, it's why we all came to the island--because it's what spring break is about:  Making the biggest party you've ever seen.  Because all that other stuff--little bars, small crowds, crappy DJs--you could have seen at home. 

But you go on spring break for something huge and wild.  And it's the strange, intense, crazy people we send on the beach who ultimately make that huge, wild thing happen.

I don't know that realizing any of this will actually make me a better sales person, since I'm not actually on the crazy beach staff.  And you're probably not on the beach.

But if we were, I would tell you to totally get your ass to South Padre Island this March.  Maybe that's high pressure.  Maybe you'll think that's crazy, like I used to think our staff was.  But, I swear to God, when it's 1AM on a weekday, and you've got a 32 ounce mixed drink in your hand, standing in the middle of a thousand people on the dancefloor of a nightclub that is so big it used to be a mini-mall (I'm not making that up!), just as the thong contest girls are running offstage, and DJ Skribbl from MTV cues up a copy of "Wonderwall" mixed over the beat from "Tipsy," and you'll hear everyone singing at the top of their lungs--I'm hoping you'll understand why I was so adamant.

If you can go to Cancun, do that.  If you want to rock with me, I'll be getting down in Padre.  If you can't afford to fly, we can hook you up with a drive down package.  There's lots endless things we can do for you.  Even if you can't come with us, go with someone. 

But for fuck's sake, go on spring break this year.  You're not going to be young forever--but that's how long you'll remember the trip. 

Corny as that is to say, it's true.

If you want us to help you put together a trip, click here to see our website--which shows all our trip options, plus info on how to price a trip or a number to call if you're too lazy to type.

If you want more info like this--I usually put it in the blog, which you can sign up for by clicking here.

See you in Padre! 

My boss at Inertia Tours won't let me dick around on MySpace unless I can prove it sells spring break trips.  On one hand, this makes sense because if it doesn't sell trips, then the company doesn't make money.  And if it doesn't make money, then I can't get paid.  So, it's actually even more in my interest than his to get folks to buy trips.  Because then I can keep my sweet spring break job, right?

The only problem with all this is that I'm no kind of salesman.  If anything, the sort of freak me out.  Short of telemarketers, I'm not sure if I know any salesmen.  I remember a guy who tried to sell my mom a vacuum cleaner door to door once.  But now I live in a trailer park.  That's not a joke.  And the only people that come to my door are folks that want to cut my lawn or sell me a stolen VCR at 11pm.

The point of all of this is that I didn't know anyone who sold anything until I started working for a spring break company.  Probably they could have been an example to me.  But, instead, it just illustrated all the ways in which I'm not cut out to get people excited about buying things from me.

In short, I'm totally willing to take no for answer.  Which is going to make proving my boss wrong difficult when I tell him, "Don't worry, man, I'm not just playing around on MySpace.  I'm telling folks how rad our trips are!"

So, here it is:  Our trips are rad.  And the sales people are actually a huge part of that in a way I didn't anticipate--that in a roundabout way makes them less bonkers and kind of awesome.  I'll try to explain that better in my next blog post. 

In the meantime, you can check out our website by clicking here or ask me virtually anything about spring break or our trips and then I can show my boss that folks do actually send us messages.  Thereby prolonging my Internet break!  And if you haven't signed up for the blog, you can do that by clicking here and you'll get a little note whenever I post something terribly brilliant.

Peace out! 

The website geniuses--suddenly I'm not sure what the plural version of "genius" is.  In any case, the website wizards at InertiaTours.com finally put up the photos from last year.

Sooooooo...

If you're thinking about coming rocking with us this year, you can check them out to see what to expect.

If you came with us last year, you can see yourself probably a little tipsy and trying to make out with people you'll remember forever, but never actually see again.

And if you haven't already and never will go on spring break, but want to convince folks you have--you can send them the link and tell them you're in the background of some of the photos.  And there's like a million, so they probably won't sort through all of them just to prove you wrong.

In any case, click here to take a look at them--then click on the party you'd like to see.

If you want more info like this--I usually put it in the blog, which you can sign up for that by clicking here.

Peace out!