Yes, I am a road warrior. It comes naturally enough. I think it’s in my DNA somewhere. I remember before the I75 SUV Speedway existed, at least in the Great Lake State. In fact, the Mackinac Bridge didn’t exist when I started bopping up and down from Da Yoop to Megalopolis, where my maternal extended family lived. We took a fairy ferry (yes I really did type “fairy” there). We didn’t have child car seats or seat belts back then and there was no McDonald’s drive-thru and any rest areas that existed were putrid outhouses. It took something like 11 hours to drive from Sault Ste. Siberia to Megalopolis in those days. We would leave at three in the morning in order to catch the first ferry. I can remember being woken up and dressed in my cute little wool plaid skirt from Canada and bundled into the old black Ford. I can remember hanging out with my dad on the deck of the ferry across the Macky-Nack Ditch Straits of Mackinac. My brother may have been on the last of those ferry trips. The bridge opened three months after he was born.

Eventually, the I75 SUV Speedway was finished through to exit 394 and if you miss exit 394, you are at the International Bridge. It is a good idea if, when you get to the International Bridge, you haven’t smoked so much pot that you’ve forgotten that you’ve already crossed the *Mackinac* Bridge because, after you cross the International Bridge, you will encounter the nice folks at the Canadian customs and if there is “stuff” in your vee-hickle they will not be amused. They don’t do that at the tollbooth at the north end of the Mackinac. And, no, I have never been in that particular situation! What were you thinking? But there are people out there who get confused.

So, time fast forwards like it always does, ho-hum. And suddenly I was “grown up” (say what?) with two little beach urchins and I found myself in the jet set! Make no mistake. I was in the jet set that involved an aging minivan filled with stuffed aminals and other crap. Heck, for a while, we had our own outhouse in there. A dry-wall bucket topped with a potty seat! Hey, it’s better than peed-up seats, eh? Grinch, maybe you are in the wrong business.

All the best parenting books and magazines always seem to say the same thing, along the lines of, “if you are taking road trips with babies and toddlers, you need to stop frequently to let them, [oh, I dunno,] run wild or eat or pee or whatever.” Kee-reist! If you have a five hour drive that you do frequently, sometimes it is better to just hunker down and go for it. In my not-so-humble-opinion, the fewer hours on the road the better. You are less tired when you get to your destination. I mean, if somebody says they need to stop, I do, I just don’t encourage it. I *do* try to combine bathroom stops with gas/coffee/whatever stops.

That’s not to say that we don’t sometimes just take a slow trip up north or wherever. If we can manage the time, we take the old highways — that’s where you see most of the beautiful scenery. But if I’m heading up there after working a five-day week and have to drive back on Sunday to be at work on Monday, I will be flying the Honda Express.

Love you Marquis. Thanks for inspiring me to write this. The Marquis has a wonderful blog which is often about bicycling. Go there or be square.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.