Posted by Roadtrippingma on Feb 12, 2010 in Road Tales, security | 3 comments
Once our family gets in the car, buckles up, and starts the engine, there’s no turning back. It’s as if the end-of-day five o-clock whistle has blown and, satisfied that we put in a good effort, we’re up and out. Certainly that’s how my husband and I felt several years ago when we settled into the minivan at three in the morning to commence our journey south.
We had just wedged our super size coffees into the cup holders, congratulating ourselves on keeping to the schedule. We’d thought of everything. And now, all we cared about was getting to Florida.
As we backed out of the drive, I looked to my right and noticed the two dilapidated Muskoka chairs that we’d tossed at the curb for garbage pick up. They were barely visible under the faint pre-dawn light of the moon. Having sat in that spot for over a week now, it was clear that neither the garbage trucks nor inventive scavengers were interested in picking them up.
“Uh-oh, I forgot about those,” I muttered to my husband. “Maybe we should put them in the garage.”
“Ah, who cares,” he waved his hand.
“They’ve been sitting there awhile now,” I argued, “And clearly, nobody is going to take them. They’re an eye sore to the neigbourhood.”
“Screw it,” Ted answered. He didn’t even waste a glance in their direction as he shifted the gear into drive.
“All right. Screw it,” I agreed. After all, a few houses up the street had left an old toilet on the curb for about a month before it was finally picked up by city workers. What was the big deal about two old broken chairs?
We forgot all about it, of course. Two weeks later, we turned down our street. I was delighted to see the chairs were gone. It wasn’t until we parked on our driveway that I discovered the pair had been crammed into our front entranceway, creating a barricade of rotting wood. Having lived at the house for only a couple of years, at this point, our neighbours seemed to care little about the strange set up outside our front door (maybe they’d been the ones to do it!) If ever there was a clear signal to burglars that a house was vacant – this was it. I’d been quite offended and, at that moment, vowed to find out what neighbour had been so put off by our old chairs that they’d felt compelled to throw them at our doorstep.
And I would have stewed about it longer had I not noticed the rally of ants all over my kitchen floor. In our hurry to depart on schedule, I’d neglected to sweep the floor and leave the kitchen in gleaming form for our return.
Lessons learned:
- Always leave a clean kitchen behind (old milk reeks!)
- Make friendly with the neigbours so they can keep an eye on your house while you’re away. They might even move a couple of beat up chairs from your front doorstep if they like you enough.
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Posted by Roadtrippingma on Jan 28, 2010 in Fly or Drive?, Road Tales | 2 comments
That driving costs less than flying is no secret. This is most evident for families – the greater the number of kids, the greater the potential for savings. During 2006 and 2007, the average North American air fare with a Canadian airline was about $250. That means a family of five would have had to pay $1,250 to fly. While this cost may rise or fall depending on the distance and time of year, the cost for a car to cruise the highways remains static, no matter how many people, and animals, fill it.
Consider that the average 2009 minivan uses about 10 kilometres of highway driving per litre. A distance of 1500 kilometres (from Toronto, Ontario to Saint John, New Brunswick, for example) will guzzle 150 litres of gas. If fuel costs $1.50 per litre (a pretty high estimate), the entire family can travel there and back for a reasonable $450. Even if an overnight stay is needed to break up the long drive, since most road side motels are less than $100 per night, a family of five still saves half the cost of air fare. Throw the dog in the car – or a cat for feline fans – and you’re saving another $50 that the airlines charge passengers to stow Fluffy in a kennel that fits under the seat.
My husband and I have driven from Toronto to Florida four times in the past five years. Our fuel costs ranged from $300 US to $500 US – the fluctuations dependent upon the price of gasoline that year. We usually stop overnight in a hotel each way, costing us anywhere between $60 and $150 per night – the scale for price directly correlating with the scale for luxury. We’ve saved at least $700 by taking the low road over the high air which left us more cash to spend at Florida’s outlet malls (and a day trip or two to Disney World.)
Other than general wear and tear on the vehicle and that extra stop at McDonald’s along the way, road trippers don’t have to fear unplanned costs en route. We recently purchased a CAA membership for those emergencies that we always fear, but thankfully have never occurred. That annual cost will help ensure a flat tire or lost keys is dealt with by professionals both quickly and expenditure-free.
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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
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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
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