Road Thoughts

    For all manner of reasons, I have found myself in a vehicle, driving to and from Pennsylvania and other shorter trips at least twelve times in the last nine months. Quick calculations put me in the driver seat for about 250 hours. Let that sink in. I think four of those trips were without children. Details blur as quickly as my joints stiffen. I've listened to hundreds of hours of good music and audiobooks. I've listened to children sleeping, yelling, crying and laughing. Sleeping is good and the occasional laughter is encouraged. I've dodged road debris, been sucked into rumble strips alongside the highways, driven through pouring rain, hail, ice and snow. The question of "How do you do it?" from so many friends prompted me to keep road notes. First off, I don't think too much through. I start the day with the GPS destination plugged in and watch the miles and hours go by. I have one overnight bag for our one hotel stop. All other items are in the giant luggage. I have tons of snacks and plenty of water. I've mastered the art of over the shoulder throwing to children. They get loud, I throw food. They get tired of food, they throw it back. And we clean out the vehicle at every stop. All bathroom breaks are about three hours apart. I make no concessions. Everyone goes at the same time. We had a DVD player on all the trips except for the last one, so the three girls were equipped with iPod Nano and Shuffles that were loaded with good music, obnoxious music, The Hobbit, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and Adventures in Oddyssey. It was crazy, but we managed.

~ Missouri, Illinois and Indiana will someday have beautiful highways. Of that I'm certain.The construction on the highway was frequent and had the propensity to be annoying, but no potholes!

~ Ohio doesn't care for road construction. They put all their money into this gigantic "Welcome to Ohio!" sign that stretches across four lanes of highway. And their potholes are thrilled to see you, too.

~ The strangest vehicle accident I've ever seen happened in Missouri. Two lanes of traffic completely shut down (with no exit in sight because people only get into car wrecks that shut down freeways when the nearest bathroom is twenty miles away) because a semi somehow caught fire and his load of lettuce was burning. Wait... what? Yeah, lettuce. Burning. The entire load was torched. That's some seriously hot fire to burn heads of lettuce.
~ Also, Missouri likes their flashy signs and they are quite creative:

• Leave the buzz for the bees, drive sober. 
• Unbuckled? Seriously?
• Turn signals. The original instant message.
• Pass on left, drive on right. (This one was everywhere.)

~ About three hundred miles into a trip, the music selection begins to get a bit crazy. Weird Al saw me past the lettuce truck. Note to self: listen to more Weird Al.

~ Pandora has comedy radio. Jimmy Fallon, Tim Hawkins, Jim Gaffigan and Frank Caliendo are the best. Louis CK is filthy. He'd make sailors blush. For real. I could not skip him fast enough. I blushed for the two seconds it took me to "thumbs down" that selection and was glad I was the only one in the car.

~ I drove through Indianapolis several times. The first time through I couldn't figure out why there were blue horseshoes painted on everything. Sports apparently. It's the Colts. Football. Sports team. Sports pride. Sporting things. If it's not the Cowboys, Eagles or Steelers, I apparently have no clue.
~ Speaking of Indiana. Holy corn. I did not expect that much corn. Matter of fact, I feel I owe Indiana an apology for thinking that much corn only grew in Nebraska. Kudos to Indiana for corn.
~ Also about corn, you can stop in Brazil, Indiana, which is the home of the Popcorn Festival.
~ I like electronica, specifically electronic-swing. About the eighth hour on the road and the Pandora station is switched to Caravan Palace or Daft Punk with lots of Glitch Mob. I have a great respect for Kraftwerk and their innovations in creating electronic/avant-garde sound over the decades. However, their tracks are waaaaaay too long. Case en pointe, and more than likely purposeful, their track 'Autobahn' runs twenty-two minutes... 22 minutes. The road is long. Thanks for the audio reminder, but I draw the line at twelve minutes.
~ Pandora message: You've listened to over 1,000 hours of your Imagine Dragons radio since December. We added some new music to your station! ... I may or may not have a problem.
~ A highway in northwest Arkansas is named John Paul Hammerschmidt. I leave and return to the state of Arkansas on that highway. And I sing John Jacob Jingleheimerschmidt every time.
~ I'm so over fast food. Paxton is a litany of "I want McDonald's" from the back seat.
~ You know you've been on the road too long when McKenna (age 6) starts crying because her sister Caelan (age 7) is pretending to take her picture with a pretend camera and making the click noise with her mouth.
~ You also begin to question the sanity of your children when you hear the six year old tell the three year old "Here, let me teach you how to suck on your big toe. Then you can go to sleep because it's like a pacifier."
~ Or when Evelynn starts yelling "Expecto Patronum!!" at Caelan for drowning out her Harry Potter audiobook by singing "Funky Monkey" from the movie Rio. I like the idea of everyone having their choice of audio, iPod options, but three girls listening with ear buds and talking/singing along to whatever they have on is nuts. There will be a DVD player next trip.
~ I had a lady somewhere in Missouri tell me I was brave for bringing my four children into the gas station. I just stared at her. "Uh, thanks?" (Lady, if you only knew.)
~ McKenna likes to point out hotels along the road. "Look, there's one. That one looks nice. They have a bed, I bet. We could watch TV at that one. That hotel has a swimming pool....." And we had only been on the road for four hours.
~ Paxton closed the van door on his whole hand. That was fun. Only slight bruising but an hour's worth of crying and moaning.
~ Final thought: These trips take a lot of coffee, a whole lot of Jesus and really trying not to think too much about every detail of the journey, because reality kills expectation and that would definitely be insanity. So on a wing and prayer? I guess it works. Travel success.