Whoever said,
”
Getting there is half the fun,
”
obviously never traveled with the opposite sex. Say the
words
”
road trip,
”
and even the most mild-mannered men suddenly become obsessed.
Most women agree that a strange malady afflicts their significant
others when they take to the open road. We call it
”
the other E.D.
”
Endurance Driving.
Whoever said, “Getting there is half the fun,” obviously never traveled with the opposite sex.
Say the words “road trip,” and even the most mild-mannered men suddenly become obsessed. Most women agree that a strange malady afflicts their significant others when they take to the open road. We call it “the other E.D.” Endurance Driving.
It begins when you stumble sleepily out of the house in the dark wee hours of the morning, you’re securely buckled in and your spouse makes the dreaded announcement: “I think we can shave another 2.3 minutes off the drive today.”
By the dim illumination of the dome light, he spreads out a roadmap the size of a small country and summarizes the day’s route: “So we’ll take the northeast shortcut off county road 27 and hook up into the new switchback on business route 430, then circle around Popperwillow, ending up in Pottsiditookie by 6pm. That gives us 1.5 minutes at the rest stop instead of the usual two. Got that?”
“Ummnnuppphhhh,” I mumble into the pillow that’s mashed between my seat belt and the window.
Several hundred miles later, I’m a little cranky because I still haven’t figured out the merits of “Depends” versus a catheter. And because I know the really icky part is coming soon: Deciphering the Road Map.
As designated navigator, I typically get a generous 1/1000th of a millisecond to determine “where we are on the map,” and do we want to take this next exit? The one that just whizzed by in a blur.
“Why are you holding the map upside down?” my spouse asks nosily.
“Because we’re traveling south and I need to point the map in the direction we’re moving,” I explain – like I shouldn’t have to since everyone knows this is perfectly logical. The hitch is that all the writing is upside down.
What I’m trying to prevent is the moment when he seizes the map from me and spreads it out over the steering wheel to ponder it himself. While hurtling forward at approximately the speed of sound.
The map quandary is nothing, however, compared to the Dreaded Unknown Mechanical Noise.
Suddenly there’s an unexpected sound emanating from somewhere inside the vital parts of the engine. Now, when I’m near home, I deal with unexpected car noises by turning up the volume on the radio. But an odd sound 600 miles in the middle of nowhere is an entirely different proposition.
“Do you hear that?” I ask redundantly as the reverberations near 185 decibels.
“Ummhm,” he answers casually. That’s it. No facial expression, nothing.
I accept that men are born with a gene that allows them to deal with strange goings on under the hood in the same way flight attendants are forever unruffled during what I calculate to be a major airliner crisis. Even when both wings have fallen off the plane, they’ll come on the P.A. to calmly announce,
“We anticipate an unscheduled landing shortly, so Dottie and I will be moving through the cabin now to pick up your dinner trays. Please hold onto your aluminum beverage cans so that upon de-planing you may deposit them in the recycling bin located near the inflated emergency exit chute on the starboard side of the aircraft.”
Our road trip’s clincher, however, comes at the end of the day when, 800 miles later, we stop for the night. Naïve girl that I am, I only THINK this day is history.
Thrusting a scrap of paper under my nose, my husband points to some numbers.
“That stretch you drove this afternoon? By driving 80mph, you only went 247.4 miles on 14.49 gallons. By driving 65mph, I achieved 284.3 miles on 15.0 gallons. That’s 11 percent better gas mileage.”
“Good thing I sped things up a bit,” I hotly retort. “Otherwise we’d STILL be on the road.”
And you know what that means, People: SOMEBODY could get killed out there.
