Just the girls

They found trouble in Mamou. The Thelma and Louise kind of trouble. They mounted horses and galloped through a sleepy Cajun town, police in hot pursuit.

She just wanted her friend to overcome her fear of horses.

“We thought it was perfectly legal, and the next thing I know … the cops were coming,” says Molly Quinn, 37.

Turns out horseback riding down Main Street Mamou is not legal.

Another blue-ribbon adventure for the real estate developer-mom and her friend, 29-year-old Allison Malbrough, an advertising executive and newlywed.

It’s the kind of experience that can only happen when you let your guard down and surrender to the moment—when you forget your pretenses and decide to take advantage of whatever opportunity life presents right then and there. It’s the kind of thing you do when your boyfriend or parents or husband and kids aren’t around—when you’re being true only to yourself.

It’s the kind of thing you do on a trip with the girls.

Granted, the horseback story is a bit extreme, even for the Pokeno girls gone wild. Still, it illustrates why so many women so enjoy taking jaunts with a close-knit group of girlfriends: It’s the only time they can really play.

“You don’t have to wear make up or do anything for anybody else,” says Malbrough. “You can just be silly. I mean, when else can you sing to The Go-Gos and Dolly Parton at the top of your lungs?”

Malbrough’s group first came together over a monthly card game more than four years ago. They quickly realized though their backgrounds, professions and ages vary—they range from their late 20s to early 40s—their personalities just clicked. The group dynamic was incredible.

“We all have the same sense of humor,” Quinn says. “We have a very sarcastic wit, and we just laugh at ourselves and with each other.”

They had such fun over Pokeno they decided to try a weekend trip. Their first excursion was to the Florida panhandle, where they took the FloraBama bar by storm on the night of the LSU-Alabama game.

It’s now a repeat destination because it’s so conveniently close yet such a great getaway. They’ve also done trips to New Orleans, both to the French Quarter and to Jazz Fest, and to a hunting lodge near Mamou. Next up this summer: the Grand Hotel in Point Clear, Ala.

Their trips have become more sophisticated and better planned over the years. They burn their own CDs with classic party jams and commemorative cover designs. They religiously bring a disco ball and their favorite breakfast food, a special ham-and-cheese biscuit concoction called Dixie Darlings. They record their adventures in a journal they nicknamed Mr. Red Book. They even assume aliases on the road: The Worm, The Muj, Kibbi and Agnes. (There’s a story about the Middle Eastern-sounding names that has something to do with a Lebanese restaurant menu but it’s the kind of thing you’d have to be there to get.)

However well organized their trips have become, the basic routine remains the same. They hang out and talk and laugh, and of course, enjoy their evening cocktails—and then they dance and sing at the top of their lungs and talk and laugh some more.

“We don’t stop laughing the entire time we’re together,” says Quinn.

What has also remained a constant in the group trip dynamic is the female bonding that takes place. While this particular group doesn’t get too mellow, foregoing midnight confession sessions for cutting up instead, their respect and appreciation for one another grows with each trip they take.

“When you look back on your life it’s your sisters who have been there for you through good times and bad—always,” says group member Angie “Sista” Ray, a 35-year-old marketing exec and mother of two.

And that seems to be a universal sentiment among women who do the girl trip thing.

Tami Moran isn’t part of the Pokeno group, but she regularly does weekends with women only—two different groups of friends, in fact. Once a year she takes off with her graduate school classmates from Memphis State; other times she goes with her old friends from Baton Rouge. She’s done jaunts to the beach, reunions in Memphis and a weekend in Chicago. But even in the glamorous Windy City, where she ate out and shopped a lot, the fun part is simply being together with other women who speak her language and get what she’s talking about.

“We just talk,” Moran says. “Women can just sit around and chat for lengthy periods of time. It’s amazing how much we have to talk about.”

One thing they don’t talk about is feeling guilty.

Women who go off with their girlfriends for a couple of days say there’s no remorse. There’s almost a sense of entitlement, like getting a manicure or a massage. You’ve earned it.

“I feel like I give them 99% of my time,” says Tricia Sanchez, a member of yet another girl-trip group who recently left her two preschoolers behind for a girls’ weekend at the beach. “I can take that other one percent to do something I want to do for myself.”

Women from Malbrough’s Pokeno group feel much the same. All but two have kids, and no one carries guilt over getting away from it all.

“We plan these trips months in advance so everybody has time to break the news to the husbands and line up sitters,” Malbrough explains.

Which may be fine when the destination is only as far as Pensacola or Point Clear. But this group has bigger travel plans on the horizon.

“Our mission is to get to Sweden one of these years,” Malbrough says. “One of our members is Swedish, and we’ve promised her we’ll get there.”

Knowing this group, they will.

Whether Scandinavia is ready for them is a different story.