A few days before Irene hit the east coast, I got a call from a reporter at the Boston Herald who was shadowing President Obama and his family on Martha’s Vineyard. She wanted to know if I thought the president was in a “vacation rut.” I argued that being president means it’s tough to take advantage of a last-minute Jetsetter.com getaway, and then our conversation turned into both of us complaining about how few days people really have for vacation every year. One of the reasons people do the same thing every year is that they can’t afford to experiment out of a fear that they’ll blow the few days they’ve got on a destination they don’t like. If we had more time off, maybe we’d be a little more adventurous.