Across the Tri-State area, it's time to pack the bags (and forget something essential), inflate the tires (good luck finding your maximum psi), fill up the gas tank (a home equity loan should cover it nicely) and head off on that much-anticipated summer road trip.
And, oh yeah, the kids -- don't forget to bring them. If you did, and you're there relaxing in Duck or Stone Harbor or one of the three or four other places Pittsburghers go this time of year, you're probably bound by law to go back and get them.
We joke, of course, and half-seriously. Creating memories for the offspring is the whole point of these family trips. If the memories are of mom and dad warring over routes, big brother taking up excessive space, little sister getting carsick and grandpa lying dead in the trunk -- unless that only happens in movies -- what better is there to reminisce about during holiday gatherings decades from now?
The games people play
We love the games that are recommended to keep everyone occupied in the car. Those must be for families who live in some opposite world, on the other side of the sun, where the kids enjoy vegetable sticks during the ride, the suitcases all fit snugly in the trunk and there's never any gas in the car except the kind from a fuel pump.
As a public service, we provide the following travel game suggestions, some of them actual recommendations and others that are perversions of the genre:
Pick one side of the car and count cows. Whoever spots more cows on their side wins, but every time their side has a cemetery, they go back to zero.
Look at license plates, and if you can make the first two letters start a vulgar expression, score one point for your team.
Select a letter of the alphabet, and whoever is the first to spot three objects starting with that letter wins the game.
When passing other cars, take turns pressing your face to the window and mouthing the words "Help Me!" Whoever convinces the first armed motorist to respond is the winner.
Are we there yet?
Special fun is one of those cross-country trips in the car to Yellowstone or the Grand Canyon that puts the ordinary beach journey to shame. It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because no one who's done it with children, and few with memories of doing it as a child. ever want to do it again.
The precedent was set in 1919, by the first group of American motorists known to travel 3,000 miles across the continent. They were 300 military men in 81 vehicles, and author Pete Davies later researched and chronicled their 62-day journey, which included being bogged down in quicksand in Nebraska. He explained that they were trying to promote the need for new roads. At the time, most wealthy Americans traveled to Europe for vacation drives because U.S. roads were unpaved.
"Outside of a handful of Eastern states and California, more and more people were getting enthusiastic about cars, and the minute they got out of town, finding that there was literally nothing on which you could actually drive them," Mr. Davies said in a National Public Radio interview.
One of the soldiers in that military convoy was 28-year-old Lt. Col. Dwight Eisenhower, whose presidency would be marked in the 1950s by creation of the federal interstate highway system.
Better yet, just stay home
Car sickness is no laughing matter. I know that firsthand, since my father failed to see the humor in a bag that leaked straight through on a trip to Evansville, Ind., in our Chevy Impala back in the late '60s. He had the gall to blame me, of all people, when I had been ever so diligent to use the bag.
"It's your own fault for making me go to Evansville, when all the other families go to Wildwood" is how I believe I responded, forgetting that traveling east can be just as nauseating as west.
Www.momsminivan.com wasn't around back then to help. It -- or she -- offers a slew of suggestions on how to curb kids' motion sickness tendencies. Aside from the obvious medications such as Dramamine, they include providing peppermints, ginger snaps or saltine crackers; wristbands called Seabands that dig metal buttons into the wrists as accupressure; cool cloths on the forehead or ice packs on the back of the neck; and facing front, without reading and while avoiding windows.
Music to drive by
No road trip would be complete without arguments over the music to listen to, a divide that can arise between generations, genders and just about anyone.
Rollingstone.com has tried to settle things with the "25 Best Road Trip Songs Ever."
The Top 10 are Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song," Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run," AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," Tom Petty's "Runnin' Down a Dream," the Grateful Dead's "Truckin'," Tom Waits' "Ol' 55," Golden Earring's "Radar Love," ZZ Top's "Tush," Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" and Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive."
Just so long as we don't have to listen to "the wheels on the bus go round and round," we'll accept whatever they say.
First Published: June 25, 2007, 3:15 a.m.
