bubblegum in snoopy pencil boxes, bees in the back window, bears in the mountains, beaches in the distance, and the best days ever.
I come from a road trippin’ family.
I consider this a HUGE gift in my life.
I remember slurping soda through a straw, searching for new treats in the seat-back pockets my mom designed and sewed for such occasions, and singing my heart out to songs I knew and songs I didn’t.
I remember thousands of jokes no one but us would ever get.
I remember the fuzzy top of our dog’s head in my footwell, the only place she would ever ride.
I remember getting dizzy reading and having to stare straight ahead for an hour and chew Stimorol not to feel queasy.
I remember white shirts with rubbery sparkle letters and pink shorts and yellow flip flops, kicked off as soon as I sat down.
I remember doing road sign math, and trying to figure out what a kilometre really looked like.
I remember my mom’s head on her pillow against the window, and my dad smiling at me in the rearview mirror every time she would snore and I would laugh.
I remember bees in the back window, and my brother’s valiant efforts to save me from their blackyellow fuzzy doom.
I remember marveling at waterfalls on mountain sides and suddenly needing to pee.
I remember rocks dinging the windshield and my dad’s deep sigh.
I remember my brother and I lying foot-to-head across the backseat, covered in a blanket, ordered to sleep for a bit in the dead of night.
I remember how quickly my brother could fall asleep.
I remember flipping through Archie comics by the light of an LCD calculator lit up with 8888888 until my dad told me I needed to sleep, too.
I remember a sky full of stars that I’d finally see when the car was dark, and like nothing was ever so big before.
I remember feeling safe, no matter what.
I hope I find me a road-trippin’ man.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
We were road-trippers too. Bands like Foreigner, Tears for Fears, Styx, and Jefferson Airplane all take me baaaaaack.
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Great selection of tunes. (But Escape is by Rupert Holmes, not Jimmy Buffett.)
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:41 pm
When you search for the music on the service, you can’t change the titling. And you seize on the ones that actually work. But I know:). Believe me, I know.:)
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Road-trippin’, indeed. On my last road trip with my parents, when I was 20, I picked up my 46th, 47th, and 48th states of the Union, to go along with seven Canadian provinces. Most epic trips:
–1982, from outside of Nashville to the Grand Canyon, then north to Yellowstone and Mt. Rushmore before angling back home.
–1985, from West Texas to Victoria, B.C., then back to the mainland, up to Banff and Lake Louise, then back home via Glacier and Yellowstone.
–1987, from West Texas via Virginia to Maine, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, then back through Nova Scotia, New England, Quebec, and Ontario to re-enter the States at Detroit. Then back to Texas.
Good memories. Thanks for bringing them back.
June 3rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
My parents played Captain & Tenille, Beach Boys, and John Denver 8 tracks on our road trips (wow, that was a long time ago).
Thanks for stirring that pot of memories
June 3rd, 2008 at 6:30 pm
*sigh* you just brought back memories for me Meg. We used to trek up to my relative in Prince George, or out to Shuswap Lake, or over to Alberta…we always had our “road trip music”…(now I’m singing…my baby takes the morning train…he works from 9 to 5 and then…he takes another home again to find me waiting for him LOL)…I hope we both find road trippin’ men!
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:10 pm
I’m torn between thanking you for such a wonderfully vivid post, invoking such fond memories of my own family road trips or for turning me on to Mixwit. I’ll just thank you for all three. Well maybe not for the afternoon I lost playing with Mixwit.
I’m trying to instill that same love of the road in my two daughters (6 and 3.5). Every chance we get, we travel all over the Midwest in search of big, fiberglass roadside attractions. The tunes are always on. I wonder what their soundtracks will include?
June 3rd, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Isn’t is great? The prospect of not knowing what you’ll see or do, but knowing that when you finally get back to the place you started you will have lived an adventure?
There’s something old-time-romantic about road trips.
June 4th, 2008 at 2:49 am
I don’t think I can say it any better Meg…
Road Trips are probably the best memories I have as a kid too. And the music just takes you right back to those times.
I couldn’t have made a better tape myself…
June 4th, 2008 at 5:43 am
K-O-M-O… Seattle….
Needs more Willie Nelson and Simon & Garfunkel, with a sprinkling of Vivaldi and Bach.
June 4th, 2008 at 6:51 am
If you like Pinaaaa Coladaaaaas! I love that song!
Do not, however, have road tripping memories attached to it, but other memories that are better kept to myself… ;-)
June 4th, 2008 at 10:58 am
god, great post. makes me smile and get all teary thinking of the long trips i’ve taken across strange and lovely lands.
June 4th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I remember lots of road trips when I was a kid, too. From our home in Ontario out to BC and back by car, and out to the Maritimes a couple of times. My brothers and I used to amuse ourselves by writing down the colours and mottos on the various license plates we saw. We’d read Marvel comics, and MAD magazine, and play with those Yes & Know Invisible Ink books.
I remember lots of different campsites where we’d stop with our pop-up trailer. I remember being so relived if they had real flush toilets, not outhouses.
Can’t wait to do long road trips with my kids…just wish I got more than three stinkin’ weeks of holiday a year.
June 4th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
iTex is right about the Vivaldi and Bach but both of you forgot about Stephan Grappelli and ooh ? - someone whose name escapes me -getting old I guess. You were exposed to a well balanced musical environment -with the stringent exclusion of Elvis. Yer Pa had his standards! I wonder if we could do it again?-the road trip thing , I mean. That’s a rhetorical question sweethearts. Oscar Peterson! that’s it!
June 5th, 2008 at 5:20 am
I don’t remember much about back then, but I certainly remember road trips. I think. All I know is Florida to Canada.
Too bad expensive-as-sin gas will likely cut down on road-trippin’ for kids these days. It builds character.
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