This is Not Your Parents’ Road Trip

More years ago than I wish to admit, when I was not quite a year old, my parents packed up the birdshit white Volkswagen Camper and drove from Southern California, up through Canada to Flushing, New York. My father was beginning a post-doctorate fellowship in immunology, and my mother was escaping to some semblance of independence from a family she’d been bound to since birth. This was the days before car seats and other safety devices (before air conditioning was standard in cars, too) and my father was thrilled to have developed this net-like contraption that would latch on the laid-out backseat so that if he hit the breaks suddenly, my sister and I would fall against net instead of tumbling through the windshield. My mother secured the back door with a bungee just in case the hatch flew open and we tumbled onto the Interstate. Save for scarlet fever, bee stings and a considerable amount of vomit, we all survived the trip.

Today my family packed up our Volkswagen, a Touareg, and headed off on our own cross-country excursion. This is not my parents’ driving adventure. For starters, Truman is secure in a booster seat and we’re all wearing seat belts. Secondly, this smooth-riding Touareg is nothing like the roaring loud VW my parents drove. That camper – and the green one that followed a decade later – caused me years of preteen and teenaged embarrassment until my father finally graduated to an SUV. (I won’t even mention what he’s driving now.) We also have air conditioning in the Touareg , which we will be even more grateful for as we travel to the center of the desert. Unlike the camper I rode in as a kid, we can’t camp in this car. There is no pop-up roof with a pullout bed, which is fine for me. I’m more of a hotel girl anyway. (Those outdoor bathrooms scared me as a child.)

Easter Gnome loves Old Man River

Technology has changed considerably for road travelers since then, too.

The Touareg doesn’t have a GPS, and I was THISCLOSE to buying one, but I had two friends insist we use theirs before we make the purchase. So we are using a borrowed GPS, a TomTom What is up with that keyboard? Setting the thing caused me more stress than packing for this trip. Old TomTom will have to work hard these next few days to convince me to buy one of my own.

The GPS may eventually prove its worth, but the one gadget I would not do without on the trip is the portable DVD player. Sure, books and toys and markers and games are a great way to entertain a child on the trip, but we have sanity to maintain. I’m learning to tune out Spongebob so I can concentrate on my own work, here on my laptop with my air card. I’m lucky to have a husband who will likely drive most, if not all, the 3,000 miles we will travel these next two weeks so I can have the pleasure of writing and going online to shop for new cars … you know, just for entertainment.

I won’t gush about my iPhone. You already know how fabulous those are. But my new gadget – an early birthday gift – is certainly worth mentioning and will likely prove valuable for the trip. It’s a Flip, a little, cordless camcorder that stores up to two hours of video. It has an attached jump drive and you just hook it up to your computer and download your films, quick and easy. What took us so long to get one? Don’t worry … I don’t plan to bore you with home movies. But we can definitely bore our families with them!

And we’ll have plenty of time to capture this vacation on film. It’s now seven hours until we reach today’s destination. Wishing you all safe travels.

Photos:
VW, Flickr, splattergraphics
Flip