Packing the car

Road Trip Comforts in a 1979 Station Wagon

Posted by Roadtrippingma on Mar 31, 2010 in Packing the car, Road Tales | 2 comments

But, like the throngs of modern minivan owners, the station wagon was a forced possession that parents of yesteryear felt compelled to own by sheer necessity, rather than desire.  It had, after all, a number of merits that no two-door model could ever compete with.  Although it’s hard for today’s minivan owners to imagine how an oversized buick, with a rear-facing seat instead of trunk, could provide any roadtripping luxuries, they might alter their view if they try to imagine the headspace of a parent in the 1970’s and 80’s. 

While today’s family road warriors rely on built-in video screens, hand-held electronics, and spacious interiors to assuage discomforts, families of the past had something else entirely: freedom.  Seat belts were voluntary (read: unused), kids outgrew car seats before they learned how to walk, and the only law drivers really had to obey was the speed limit.  Undoubtedly, today’s web of rules around car safety has cushioned many children from injury.  But just imagine the possibilities.

During our first couple of drives from Toronto to Florida, we had to make do with the usual passenger set up.  Two kids were stuck facing oncoming traffic in the back seat while other three of us shared the middle row (the sucker in the centre with knees crammed into his chest because of the “bump” upon which his feet had to rest.)  When we got tired of sitting upright, we’d spread out a little more.

“Just lie down,” our parents would advise us (and be quiet, they’d think).  Obediently, we’d reposition ourselves so that two bodies laid head to foot on the middle seat, one sprawled uncomfortably across the dirty carpeted floor, while in the back seat, a body laid on the cushioned seat and another on the floor (thankfully bump-free.)  When the yelling and fighting over who got stuck on the crappy floor bed got too out of hand, Mom or Dad would simply whip a hand to the back and lay a wallop on whomever was closest.  Another freedom of the times – good old fashioned kid-smacking.

One year, they came up with a splendid idea to finally end the sibling friction caused by seat preference.  All the seats behind the driver were folded down so that the entire back of the station wagon was levelled.  Then my parents pulled off a single mattress from my sister’s bed and hauled into the back of the car.  They didn’t want to hear a single complaint about a bump the entire ride to Florida.  And they didn’t.  The wagon raced along the freeways while we repositioned to our hearts’ content.  My brothers got to have wrestling matches, I got to sleep cuddled up in comfort, potato chips were served in one big bowl that we could all eat together (crumbs didn’t bother us so much in those days.)  It was a dream road trip, by any kids’ standard.  And I’m certain the cops we passed along the way – to whom we gestured with the usual peace sign – thought the same thing.  After all, it was a different time.

Top Ten Best Foods to Pack for a Road Trip

Posted by Roadtrippingma on Mar 21, 2010 in Packing the car, Top Ten Lists | 0 comments

1. Chips – you can go healthy or greased up, plain or coated in red salt.  There is a plethora of choices to suit the wishes of any family and, the kids luv’em.  Buy in individual packs or save the environment by packing your own baggies that you can fill for each child.

2. Cut strawberries – sure, there are loads of different fruits out there that you can serve the kids, but many of them will never get eaten (or get too bruised before they’re unpacked.)  These sweet bite-size snacks don’t pose a choking hazard to wee ones and, best of all, you can serve them early in the ride to assuage the guilt from feeding them junk food the rest of the way.

3. Lollipops - there’s not a good thing to say about these tooth-decaying orbs of sugar.  Except that kids LOVE them and they take a while to finish.  So, if you’re looking for five minutes of peace, you’ll be a sucker for suckers.

4. Sandwich wraps – bypass the first McDonalds you see, and instead, enjoy some homemade wraps. My personal favourite is the chicken wrap  (recipe here.)  This is less for the kids and more for the refined tastes of the adult passengers.

5. Trail mix – sorry to all the nut-allergy sufferers out there, but this is a healthy, easy snack that everyone can enjoy.

6. Peanut butter sandwiches – Kids loves these any day of the week.  They’re easy to make, stay fresh for hours, neat, and healthy. 

7. Salami and cheddar cheese – Be sure to include a sharp knife when packing this.  It’s a quick and easy snack or meal on the road.  Even better, have a hard-top cooler at hand to cut upon.

8. Cut carrots – Driving is a bit like watching TV.  You always feel like munching on something.  Rather than reach for the Doritos, leave out a bag of cut carrots.  It’s amazing that you can just as readily enjoy munching on a carrot as an all-dressed chip (well, almost).  Your waistline will thank you!

9. Granola bars – I try to stick to the healthier granola bar fare out there, but to each her own.  One of the best aspects to these snacks?  They’re easy to toss from the front to the rear seat of a minivan.  Be sure to buy a few packs.

10. One hand-picked treat for each child – Before embarking on the road trip, allow each child to select his or her own treat at the grocery store.  It gives them something to look forward to and helps relieve those periods in the car when the kids are grumpy, bored, irritable, or hungry (for something other than strawberries.)  Also, it doesn’t hurt to get your own chocolate indulgence… Life on the road can be tough on the adults, too!

Make a List Before Travelling

Posted by Roadtrippingma on Mar 1, 2010 in Packing the car | 0 comments

According to Dr. George A. Miller’s theory, human beings are capable of remembering seven things at one time (plus or minus two.)  And if similar items are mentally chunked together, that memory capacity is even higher.  While packing for a solo overnight trip can easily be accomplished without a list, the multitude of items needed to prepare for a week-long road trip with the family won’t likely be remembered without a well-compiled list (even if your “chunks” of information are numbered less than seven.)

The challenge in relying on one’s stellar memory is even greater with today’s constant multitasking environment.  The cell phone, laptop, and TV are all on, kids are crying for snacks or fighting over a video game – all while Mom is packing the freshly cleaned laundry between trips to the kitchen where dinner is cooking.  Despite our best efforts, however, the brain doesn’t do two things at once very well.  Never mind five things at once. 

The brain tends to treat a secondary task like a distraction from the first rather than synthesizing it into the thought process.  If Mom is packing for the baby (using her working memory to complete the task fully), and suddenly must turn her attention to her fighting kids, her working memory is distracted.  It then tries to follow the instructions for two tasks at the same time – forcing double the amount of information to be processed.  The original information (baby stuff) stored in working memory will probably be lost to make room for the current task (stop kids from killing each other.)  Next thing, she’s standing dumbfounded in the middle of her kitchen wondering what it was, exactly, she needed to do.

A list, however, will ensure (almost) everything is packed by the time the car backs out of the driveway.  After the list is created, Mom and Dad simply have to cross out each item as it’s stuffed into a bag without having to rummage through the recesses of their brains to remember small details, such as whether the charger was packed with the camera. 

Following a few tips will ensure that the list compiled is fail-proof against the most memory-challenged days:

1. Begin compiling the list at least one week before the date of departure so that items can be added as they naturally come to mind, rather than try to recount everything in a fifteen minute brainstorming session
2. Divide the list into categories, such as food, clothes, toiletries.  This will make packing simpler and the final hour “check” run smoothly.
3. Preserve the list for future trips (this is even simpler to do if it is completed electronically and printed off before each trip.)  Adjust the list according to destination, age of children, and length of car ride.
4. Separate the to-do list from the packing list, and consider starting a list of expenses – beginning with the first gas station fill-up.

Top Ten Worst Road Trip Snacks

Posted by Roadtrippingma on Jan 31, 2010 in Food, Packing the car, Top Ten Lists | 3 comments

1. Rice cakes – serious lingering odour.
2. Spears of broccoli and cauliflower – it may ease your guilt from letting them eat too much sugar, but these foods will not get eaten.  They will, however, get thrown.
3. Skittles – picture your kids after devouring a pack of skittles.  Now imagine them like that tethered to a car seat behind you.
4. Ice cream.
5. Dunkaroos – this is your kids’ chance to finally do that one craft you always say no to: finger painting (with chocolate dip on shiny windows!  Cool.)
6. Soup.
7. Devilled eggs – they’re healthy, delicious, and filling.  But better to suffer your husband’s gas problem than smell rotting eggs for hours on end.
8. Popcorn – these flying kernels somehow always end up all over the place (and fit perfectly inside ear canals and nasal passages.)
9. Bubble gum – yes, it’s a great way to keep their mouths busy, but it won’t stick lips together nearly as well as it sticks hair to the back of booster seats.  Ouch.
10. Prune juice – a road trip is not the time to loosen your toddler’s constipated bowels.

Photo is from freedigitalphotos.com

An Unnaturally Early Morning Start to a Family Road Trip

Posted by Roadtrippingma on Jan 25, 2010 in Packing the car, Road Tales | 0 comments

My parents were not early birds.  Their internal clocks were set to the same schedule as a fifteen year old boy – late to bed, late to get up.  However, road trips were one exception to that.  The bags were packed the night before, and before the sun rose next morning, all five of us kids were hauled into the family station wagon as soon as my dad finished tying a heap of suitcases atop the car’s roof. 

One of our first March break trips to Florida was when I was seven years old.  The darkness of night still draped the air when my two younger brothers, two older sisters, and I were forcibly dressed and shuffled to the kitchen table to eat scrambled eggs and bacon that my father had made.    

“A good breakfast will stave off the hunger pangs during the first few hours of our car ride,” he advised us, sipping instant coffee. 

My stomach felt unsettled, as it always did early in the morning, but I dutifully polished off the plate.  All of us kids were groggy, but excited.  By this time tomorrow, we knew we’d be in Florida.  Well…Almost to Florida.  We’d be somewhere that didn’t snow, at least, and where we didn’t need itchy sweaters or socks.

Headlights cast a glow over the lumps of grey-stained snow banks as our station wagon pulled out of the driveway.  Mom and Dad sat in the front seat, my two sisters and I huddled under blankets in the middle seat, and my two brothers were in back staring blankly at the empty road behind us.  There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room but that’s something we’d gripe about later in the ride.  We were too excited to care now, and anyway, we needed to pace ourselves.  If we dwelled too much on discomfort now, how would we survive the twenty hours that were to follow? 

Thirty minutes into the drive, I was still trying to ignore the rumbling pangs in my stomach, but they were just getting worse.  The confined space of the car shrank noticeably when my youngest brother, Derek, announced he was sick then vomited into his pillow case.  Dad kept driving without the slightest break in his speed. 

“If anyone else is feeling sick, you tell Mom and me right away,” he lectured us.  No stops were planned for another three hours.

The smell was like a contagion, gripping the contents of my stomach and pulling it upward. 

“I feel sick!” I complained. 

“Open the window!” My parents yelled, “Vomit out the window!  Vomit out the window!”

I heaved myself over my sister, Julie, who was furiously rolling down her window, pushed my chin over the glass, and threw up.  Liquefied scrambled eggs shot from my mouth.  Gale force winds created by our speeding car splattered the vomit across the back window where my brothers were looking out.  My other brother, Karl, responded with his own intentions to relieve his cramped insides and, given his limited access to windows in the back seat, was permitted to do so into his pillow case.  On my other side, my oldest sister, Kerry, lowered her window and covered the back pane with bile.  Egg sticks.  By the time we finally stopped for a stretch of the legs, no amount of squeegee scrubbing would remove it.  By this time, the sun was high in the sky.  It was not much later than our family’s usual wake up time.  We just weren’t an early morning kind of family.

photo from http://www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=797452

The Digital Road Trip

Posted by Roadtrippingma on Jan 19, 2010 in Gadgets, Packing the car, Road Tales | 2 comments

This article appeared in the National Post on Friday, January 10, 2010.

The first time we drove to Florida, five years ago, the boys were aged one, three and four. We could have flown and saved ourselves 20 hours of claustrophobic “family time,” but my husband and I thought our kids should experience a good old-fashioned road trip, like the ones we’d had. Not to mention, it was cheaper. Barely any families we knew dared take long road trips any more. They would rather soar above the clouds in comfort – even if their credit cards rose with them (these were pre-recession times). But my husband and I took pride in our thriftiness the same way a 16-year-old takes pride in her sun tan.

And, we figured, if our parents could do it, why couldn’t we? True to this nostalgic impulse, I refused to pack electronic gadgetry to occupy my children’s minds. Our van had no DVD player and we owned no video games. I didn’t need that stuff when I was a kid. Why should they? Instead, I packed books: activity books, picture books, pop-up books, sticker books. These, I believed, would beguile them for hours, and, for variety, we’d play I Spy or gaze at the blur of horses and cows in passing pastures. After all, kids like that kind of stuff. At the last minute, however, we were offered an old laptop from my husband’s company at a great price. We caved. We loaded it with kids’ movies and packed it in the backseat beside the books – just in case.

Day 1 started at 3 a.m., “to make good time,” as my husband put it. The kids, bundled and tethered to their seats, were too excited to fall back asleep. Lucky us. We drove through the dark with rear passenger lights glowing as the two older boys looked at books and asked for snacks. My youngest, Cole, cried and whined, then, tired, fell asleep.

By early morning, the books had been tossed aside and the laptop was playing back-to-back movies.

By early morning, the books had been tossed aside and the laptop was playing back-to-back movies. It staved off any chance of boredom (I told myself) and allowed me to focus on appeasing my one-year-old. We were all relieved when, 16 hours after leaving our home in Oakville, Ont., we settled into a motel in Georgia for the night.

On Day 2, the laptop broke. The books were scattered across the minivan floor and my homemade muffins weren’t cutting it any more. I resorted to tossing candy bars, lollipops and Dunkaroos at the backseat to mute the chorus of complaint. I found that sugar, if doled out in small increments, sustained contentment indefinitely.

Though not impatience. “When will we be there?” was their favourite conversation starter.

“Soon,” I’d reply, my curt answer warranted because, first, kids have no concept of time and, second, I’d hardly slept in Georgia, thanks to my restless baby, and was too tired to keep my eyes open, much less move my mouth to talk. Now, I had to preserve my weary voice for singing, because nothing kept Cole happier than hearing me warble on about dogs named Bingo.

When we finally arrived at the beach, my husband and I congratulated ourselves. We had 10 days of vacation to refresh ourselves before driving home. I was jittery about the return trip, travelling laptop-free for two days. How would the kids manage? How would we?

Now that I had a new appreciation for the digitalization of children’s pastimes, I needn’t have worried. On our way home we came upon a Walmart in South Carolina and got a bargain on a portable DVD player and electronic toys.

We bought them, just in case.

This year we drove to Florida for the fourth time with the same DVD player plus three Nintendos DS portable video games. It was a breeze. I don’t know how my parents did it.

Read more: http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2421376#ixzz0d5wVib13
The National Post is now on Facebook. Join our fan community today.