I can count on one hand how many road trips I’ve taken in my entire life and still have a digit or two left over. I define a road trip as traveling in a vehicle on the ground for a minimum of 5 hours one way. My family and I recently completed said trip from Chicago to Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania to Maryland, Maryland to New York City. The longest and first road trip I ever embarked on was Chicago to California in the 70’s. It was incredible, but I learned not to drive through the desert in the middle of the day with a car that has no air conditioning, even if you have AC wait until dusk.

Anywho, the reason we are road tripping more is because we have a dog and want to take him with us and thankfully Flynn is a great traveler. Of course all the clichés apply when you road trip, you see things you had previously flown over many times, I didn’t know Maryland, like Pennsylvania, is so pretty, and you can “touch Indians” to quote Albert Brooks. However we didn’t see any Indians, I mean Native Americans on this trip. A real plus is you just get in the car and go, no heading to the airport 3 hours early to stand in a long security line to hopefully take off on time. But I always thought as long as the Wright Brothers went to all that trouble to invent the flying machine, the least I could do was support that magnificent achievement, but for now, with the dog in tow, the highway is my friend for about 5 hours and then my ass falls asleep. The longest stretch we completed at a time was about 8 and a half hours. Some observations: New Jersey and Ohio had the cheapest gas; Ohio has the nicest rest stops and Indiana has the worst; and of all eight states that we drove through Chicago, by far, has the most insane drivers on the expressways. It’s like Fury Road. Oh and I saw the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile at a rest stop in Ohio and you’re not going to see that from a plane. May I suggest we send Wienermobiles to Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan to hand out whistles. Nothing brightened my day more as a kid in the summer than to see that giant hot dog on wheels cruise into my neighborhood and see little Oscar jump out with a fist full of wiener whistles. I can see Isis members right now sitting on top of that Wienermobile all smiles.

Safe travels!

Peace,
Garry