Car Trips

Over the holiday break, Andrea, the kids and I drove to Boston. That’s right, drove. A car trip.

There’s a reason we drove. Ever since the kids passed the age of 2 years old, we’ve had to pay for a seat for them when we fly. And since Cleveland is a “hub” city for United we get all the benefits of that hub status – i.e., getting to fly to Chicago or Newark on the way to wherever we want to go (seemingly the same as non-hub cities), and paying monopoly prices for the privilege. Boston, a 90-minute flight that would probably cost us $49 a seat if Southwest ever decided to connect the two cities, becomes at a minimum a $1000 outlay on United. So we save the money and pay for it in auto miles.

Boston, according to Google Maps, is 660 miles or 10 hours from Strongsville. That’s with no stops. But of course there are stops. The kids specialize in announcing their need to go to the bathroom either 1) as we’ve completed pulling away from a rest stop or 2) as we’ve just passed a rest stop and the next one is in 54 miles. So of course we make several stops on the drive. But I will say this – Andrea, god bless her, is good at getting us in, getting the job done, and getting us out. Potty and gas stops are like 15 minutes, meal stops 30 minutes. Basically we can get to Boston in about 11 to 11 ½ hours.

Cody, whose hobby is the study of bodily functions, loves rest stops. They have “stand-up potties” (urinals), automatic hand dryers (great for sticking your head or mouth under), and motion-sensing sinks. They also have water fountains and video games and ice cream. We don’t need Disneyland; we have the Pennsylvania welcome center.

Back on the road, the kids actually aren’t too bad in the car. We have a secret weapon- a seatback entertainment system. Not the kind that’s built in – we don’t spring for the $1500 built-in system and regret it every day up to the day we buy a car when we make the same decision – instead, it’s the kind that’s held in place with straps and Velcro and a plug running down to the cigarette lighter. They fall down a lot, and the kids need a lot of help picking up the remote they can’t seem to keep off the floor, so Andrea spends a lot of time unbelted, turned around with her butt up in the air trying to fix whatever is wrong. It’s frustrating and maddening, but I will say this – my family took car trips when my sisters and I were kids and I don’t know how in the world my parents survived them without seatback DVD players, even the ones that fall down and come unplugged.

But no matter how you slice it, 11 hours is a long time – in Disney time it’s about 7 movies long. That’s a long time even for hardened electronics junkies like my kids. And although there are two screens, they can only play one movie. So Cody eventually tires of princesses and Chiara of pirates. Plus I forgot to mention the key to this whole thing – their earphones, which are the only thing that makes 11 hours of Disney movies tolerable from the front seat, begin to hurt their ears. So starting at about the 10^th hour or so, which puts you in the evening “witching hour” timeframe anyway, the whining and crying begins.

It’s a long car trip, but the last hour seems longer than the rest. On this last trip, the weather decided this would be a great time to start the driving rain, slow down traffic, and extend our trip an extra hour. Boston is in sight, tantalizing you, but you just can’t get there through the jam. It’s also now too dark to color or do anything non-electronic, so we suffer through the same 2 “Madeline” episodes, sans headphones, about 3 times each. Madeline even joins the Yankees in one of them, which just seems like the icing on the cake in our own personal Hell.

You have to stay long enough to justify the long drive – a week is about right for 11 hours. But we spend the week with conflicting emotions of 1) glad to be there, 2) wishing we were in our beds and bathrooms and considering an early departure, and 3) dreading the trip home.