I drove the first 5 hour stretch -without stopping. Operative words here 'without stopping'. Pat drove the next stretch. Pat pulled into a rest stop like an hour and a half after he took over the wheel. He required a bathroom. While he went inside, I texted Coach my disbelief. Coach and Pat went to high school together, so they go way back. Coach did not hesitate to text Pat and tease him about his lack of manliness in not being able to 'hold it' for a road trip. Pat admitted that he shouldn’t have eaten Mexican food the night before.
On the way home (don’t worry, I will back up), moments before we pulled into Mom’s driveway to unload all the peeps, I admitted that I had needed to pee for like the last 2 plus hours. Pat’s daughter, who is Mini’s age, was confused. ‘What? Why didn’t you just stop then?’ Well, because, that goes against true-road-trip code. You don’t make everyone else suffer because you can’t hold your bladder. Pat agreed with his daughter's sentiments, which made me question whether or not we had actually been raised in the same family. What happened to the brother I had been stuck in the way-back of the 1976 red Chevy Impala station wagon with for all of our family trips?
I suppose now that he and his wife can easily afford to travel in style, they see no use for the torture that die-hard road trippers like myself are committed to.
Totally unrelated - but this is the baby moose we saw in Glacier, on the aforementioned preferred road trip. |
Road Trip Code:
1. Do not stop unless absolutely necessary.
2. Pack sufficient food so you don’t have to stop.
3. Leave the house crazy early to avoid traffic so as to not make your already torturous road trip longer
4. Do not drink many beverages so that you don’t have to stop until absolutely necessary.
6. Pray that you don’t encounter much road construction.
7. I guess I should add on Pat's behalf - refrain from ingesting Mexican food the night before departing.
8. Don't make hotel reservations for the drive out to wherever you are going - you don't want to be locked in to a destination that is either too lofty or too easy to attain. Find a hotel when you have run out of gas - figuratively speaking, of course!
9. Only invite along passengers who you can tolerate spending umpteen hours with.
See #9. This is a photo of my dad in Glacier taking loads of pictures while Coach sits in the great white and |
10. Don't bang on the restroom door at a gas station and shout at your kid to get out of there now unless you are 100% positive that it is your kid in said restroom. (Coach can speak to the necessity of this rule. I can only speak to the fact that this little incident when Coach overstepped provided me with HOURS of gut busting laughs while we drove home from Glacier in June of 2016)
2 comments:
Wow, that is so hardcore! You guys must have bladders of steel! Even if I could make it that long, I don't think my kiddo could!
Ha. We do make stops , of course. Just not every hour!!!
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