As promised, I’m picking up right where I left off on the story about my family road trip. Last week I had described the contents of my vehicle, the demeanor of my four female travel companions, and my emotional state at the start of the trip. Now it’s time to hit the road.
Before I can properly enjoy telling you where I’m going, I have to start by telling you what I’m leaving behind. This portion will no doubt elicit envy from all whom I left behind in Ocean City and its surrounding areas. The weekend I was gone, by a wonderfully coincidental cosmic alignment of planets, just so happened to be the weekend that the sub-human subculture who calls themselves ‘H2O’ came to town. They are the least welcome and least desirable group that comes to our fair town each year. Yeah, I said it. This is that weekend when the town is inundated with the bumper dragging, D-Bag driven, one small step above remote control, fart cars. That freakish and ever-growing subculture who purchase a $600.00 car and subsequently festoon it with $35,000.00 worth of accessories. Entire towns in Ohio and Canada are empty for this weekend as they come here and clog up all of our roads like the arteries of an unemployed middle aged virgin who still lives in his mother’s basement. The one upside to this group is that they make themselves so easy to write about. Much as I could go on for pages about these festering boils on the ass-cheek of humanity, I wrote an entire piece on them last year, so I won’t belabor you with a recap (See what I did there? Now you have to go back and read some of my older stuff). Suffice it to say, I will be eternally grateful to my niece for choosing this weekend to perform her nuptials.
Now off we go! Our destination for day one is Asheville N.C. which is where my eldest spawn and only son now resides. He doesn’t live with us because he has the luxury of not having to. I on the other hand am a sinking ship alone and adrift in the estrogen ocean. My son realized early on that living with five females (including the cat) was just a matter of time before he forgot to lift the seat one day and consequently suffered the consequences while he slept. Escape is not an option for me, so at the risk of divulging too much, I sit down to pee. Grossly outnumbered and quickly approaching middle age, I’m all about picking my battles at this point. My little girls all emulate their big brother, so everyone is really excited about the first leg of this trip.
While my free spirited lovely bride is all about the road trip thing, I am of the opinion that anything over five hours is a plane ride. The combination of my attention span, my sciatica, and my complete lack of patience makes me the least desirable travel companion. Originally my wife, and C.F.O. of ‘Nichols Enterprises,’ looked into all of us flying to Memphis. I believe her quote was something along these lines; “well, we could either fly there, or take the same amount of money, buy a new van, and drive there.” As much as it would warm my heart to give over $900 to an airline to put a 2 year old in a seat for 67 minutes, we opted to drive. And needless to say, we used the van we already owned.
So the Odyssey has a fresh oil change and all fluids topped off and the odometer is zeroed out. It has a full gas tank for the first time since,……….um……..well, since it’s previous owner. I may not be a veteran road warrior, but I am a veteran parent, so my wife and I knew what rations we would have to stock our vessel with. We supplied the aft two rows of the van with more books than every library in Arkansas combined. Retrospectively speaking, I probably should have filled a second backpack. We also stocked our dork wagon with enough snacks to feed everyone who ever appeared in a commercial with Sally Struthers for at least a week.
As far as how we travel, we as a family are kind of ‘old school’. I’m going to derail here for a moment and hit you with one of my signature sidebars. I just deliberately used one of those phrases that I loathe, and now I have a project for all of you. The next time any of you hear someone under the age of 30 use the phrases; “old school”, or “back in the day”, I want you to take your thumb and middle finger and flick them as hard as you can in the ear lobe. Feel free to tell them it’s from me as you explain to them why it happened. I’ll get back on track now.
What I mean by this is that we get through our trips without the use of any electronic devices designed to distract our children just long enough that we don’t have to actually parent them. Within the past year, the five of us took a short road trip to Baltimore to visit some family. At one point in the trip, I happened to glance to my left and what I saw was such a tragically poignant sign of our times that it genuinely bummed me out. In the next lane was a ridiculously over-sized, overpriced, and over accessorized SUV that more than likely will never be on a surface that hasn’t been paved within the past decade and gets detailed professionally every week. This vehicle, not unlike my own, also harbored a family of five. That is where our similarities end. The occupants of my van were playing; I-Spy, the alphabet game, geography trivia, and travel bingo in between singing Disney tunes and having a blast. In their vehicle, were five completely expressionless faces each with their own electronic devices. The only one who even looked outside of the vehicle the whole time they were next to me was the father and that’s only because the automatic pilot option is not yet available so he still has to actually drive. He did however have his blue tooth device hooked to his ear so he could remain self important even while traveling with the family that he wishes he never had.
Next to him riding shotgun was his miserable bride who displayed less expression than a Botox gone wrong victim. She was lazily engaged in the simulated flipping of pages on her Kindle as she no doubt was reading; “fifty shades of I hate this guy next to me”. Rows 2 and 3 of this fuel guzzling juggernaut were occupied by three expressionless, soulless teens each adorned in head phones and staring at their own respective brain melting devices. They had no interest in the knowledge of any other human existence occupying the space around them. They looked like zombies marching without a shred of emotion into a ‘careful what you wish for’, Orwellian world.
All I could think was; “my God, what have we become?” Just then I looked in my own rear-view mirror at my smiling daughters, and as quickly as the mannequin family next to me had disenchanted me, my own family restored my faith in humanity. And of course, in road trips.
I’ll have to pick this up again next week. Here’s a quick preview for you; I’d rather marinade in a bucket of warm goat piss than drive through Virginia. Thanks for playing along. Until next week, Syd Nichols
sydnichols@yahoo.com
