Road Trips
Patrick Martin
Why do we go on road trips? It really doesn’t make much sense. We cram
ourselves into a small space for long periods of time for fun. Trips with your
friends can be taxing and family trips are should be outlawed and branded as
child abuse. To this day I still wonder why I chose to drive my friends the 10
plus hours to my grandparents. The road
trip to my Grandparents’ house in New Hampshire for a weekend of snowboarding
seemed like a good idea. It was a
chance for my friends and I to show our independence. I quickly realized why my mom and my brother always fly to NH
while my dad and I drive. Four people are simply too many personalities to be
in a car together.
“Hey, I’m going 90!”
“What?!”
“Nothing”
I was lucky that no one in the car
saw my speedometer. The speed limit was
55 MPH. I was going just a little too
fast. 90 miles per hour is not what my
friends parents meant when they said drive carefully. I was justified though. I
had to get out of a truck's blind spot.
You can get killed driving in a blind spot and that is something I
wasn’t going to do on my first road trip.
I just barely got permission from my parents to do this. If something happened, I could picture my
dad standing over my grave and saying: “I told you so.”
“Clay, we’re losing the radio
station.”
“I’m driving. The radio and air conditioning are shotgun’s
responsibilities. We decided that an
hour ago, when I almost hit that old lady while fiddling with the AC.”
“But Doodle’s asleep.”
“Then wake him up.
“I’m afraid to. Last time he nearly bit off Sherry’s hand.”
“That’s because she tried to wake
him up by waving a thin mint under his nose.
Just punch the back of the seat if you’re so worried about it.”
“But-“
“Either you wake him up or I’ll
start singing “99 bottles of beer” again.”
“You wouldn’t”
“Ninety-nine
bottles of beer on the wall, Ninety-nine bottles of beer. You take one down and pass it aro-“
“Doodle!”
“Ow! What?”
“Change the station and make Clay
stop singing, Please!”
“Are you sure? I mean it is kind of
catchy. Ninety-seven bottles of-ow!
All right, I’ll change it… There now
can I go back to sleep?”
“Yeah Doodle. See Caitlin was that so hard?”
“Clay, you are evil.”
“Yeah, but I’m good at it. Ow! Don’t
hit the driver! Do you have a death
wish?”
“I agreed to let you drive on a ten
hour road trip, didn’t I?”
“Ok that’s it. The next time I get the chance to stop, I’m
throwing you out. You can walk to my
grandparents.”
“You’re kicking me out?”
“Yes”
“Again?”
It was the third time that I had
thrown Caitlin out of my car. It was a
power trip. I didn’t mean it. I’m sure that if I tried then she would kick
my butt. That’s only because I don’t
hit girls. Really… Please believe me.
“How much longer will we be
driving?”
“We’ve only been on the road for two
hours. We have at least eight more.”
“Oh…Are we there yet?”
“I just said that we have eight more
hours.”
“Oh… Are we there yet?”
“No.”
“Oh… Are we there yet?”
“What are you five?”
“Sorry, I’m just a bored and well
this entertains my little brother for hours.
I thought that I would try it.”
“Doodle sometimes you really scare
me.”
“Sorry Clay.”
“What time is it?”
“About eleven.”
“Let’s star looking for a place to
eat lunch.”
“Kind of early.”
“It’s when we eat at school and I
need to stop. I’ve lost the feeling in
the left side of my body and I’m sure the girls are in worse shape. The back seat is pretty small and neither
one has moved in the last half-hour.
Not even to smack us.”
“You’re right. Why didn’t we have me drive my van?”
“Your van only has two seats. They would have to ride on our laps the
whole way.”
“That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad
thing.”
“You know that you’re sick right?”
“Hey McDonald’s! Exit here!”
I forgot that I should never listen
to Doodle’s directions. He is so very
rarely right. I missed the billboard
because I was behind a Maryland driver and I couldn’t take my eyes off him. You can never tell what a Marylander will do
behind the wheel. The McDonald’s turned
out to be at the next exit. We wound up
lost in some town just outside of Maryland for about an hour.
“I said I was sorry.”
“That was exactly why I made Caitlin
the navigator.”
“That was the first time I ever got
you lost.”
“Doodle you got lost in the rest
stops bathroom.”
“I found my way out.”
“After you asked someone for
directions.”
“Yeah, but…never mind. Are we there yet?”
“Where McDonald’s or my
Grandparents?”
“McDonald’s”
“Yes.”
“Are you still mad?”
“I don’t think so. This does give me excuse to drive faster to
make up for the lost time.”
“What?!”
“Nothing Sherry.”
Probably the most annoying person in
any road trip is the one who can’t stay on one radio station for more than two
songs. At the McDonald’s we switched
places. Sherry took shotgun and control
of the radio.
“Eew! Counting Crows!”
“Hey,
Mr. Jones is a modern classic”
“I hate Counting Crows. Eew Country!”
“All of the Stations out here are
country. He only station that isn’t
country is playing Counting Crows.
Would it kill you to listen to one song by Counting Crows?”
“Fine I’ll change it back on
Counting Crows.”
“Thank you.”
“Hey, it’s the same country
station. The seek went around the
dial.”
“I hope you’re happy now we’re stuck
listening to country for god knows how long.”
Sherry spent the next hour and a
half pushing the seek button every five minutes. She finally stopped as we approached New Jersey and picked up a
rock station. Shortly after that, we
approached the New Jersey TurnPike.
“There it is, The New Jersey Turn
Pike. Where the worst drivers on the
East Coast meet.”
“Clay?”
“Yeah Doodle?”
“Are we going to die?”
I hoped we wouldn’t, but there are
some crazy drivers on the TurnPike.
They’re
like a cross between Cruella Deville and my near sighted grandmother. I’m not a religious man but I promised to
say a hundred Hail Mary’s if we survived the TurnPike. Hey it worked for that
old guy with the fish. I just wish I
knew what those were.
“Why don’t we just go around the
Turn Pike?”
“That adds another six hours to the
trip. Doodle just be thankful that
there is a way of going around the Bronx.”
“If we drove through the Bronx would
we die?”
“Probably”
We survived New Jersey with out any
damage. There were a few scary moments
involving bleach blonde trophy wives in the red convertibles that their aging
husbands bought them. They don’t
respond well to being honked at after they cut you off. I don’t think I have ever heard some one swear
so loud in my life. My windows were up,
my radio was blasting, Doodle was whining about how he was too young to die and
I still heard the gold diggers.
We reached Vermont about dusk.
“Doodle it’s getting dark. You
should turn your lights on.”
“I can still see.”
“Yeah but other drivers can’t.”
“I like to live dangerously.”
‘I don’t turn your lights on!”
“But where’s you sense of
adventure?”
“Snowboarding is an adventure, this
road trip is an adventure. Driving down
an unlit two lane highway at sunset with no lights on is insane.”
“Fine, spoil sport.”
“Why did I let you drive?”
“I stole your keys when we stopped
for dinner.”
“Right. Pullover a second. I need
to stretch my legs.”
“Ok”
Doodle pulled over and shut off the
engine. Then I punched him.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“Never steal my keys and never try
to drive my car in the dark with no headlights! Now get in the back seat.
I‘m driving again and it’s Caitlin’s turn in shotgun.”
In another hour, we were in
New Hampshire and on the Road that led to my Grandparents place.
“Caitlin is this the right road.”
“I think so, but I haven’t seen a
sign in a while.”
“It seems like we have been on this
road for ever. Why hasn’t there been a
sign?”
“A sign would be comforting.”
“I’d prefer the hand of God coming
down and pointing the way.”
“Yeah, that would work. Hey look at that truck!”
“Georgia Orange Distributors?”
“No the initials.”
“GOD!”
“Well there’s your sign.”
“But he’s gong the other way.”
“Hey there’s the turn off.”
“It’s only Fifteen minutes to go
now.”
We arrived at my grandparents
exactly 15 minutes later and Three hours later I regained the feeling in my
legs and the four of us began to speak to each other again.