Road Trip 102: Packing Do's and Don'ts...

Well, thanks entirely to the heroics of Travel Agent Man, I am actually planning to take a holiday very soon. That's all I'm going to say since I'm just superstitious enough to think that if I talk about it out loud, it might not happen. Remember the major appliances and thumbdrives...

Anyway, in the process of planning this trip I've naturally started thinking about packing for it. As a mother of 4 and grandmother of 5, I have become an expert at packing. Making sure I have the requisite clothing, toiletries, drugs, reading material, and credit cards has almost become second nature. I feel like my dear friend Barbara Toberg who, when our children were small and our husbands in the Navy, used to say "Give me a diaper and a MasterCard and I can go anywhere." And we did.

Now I'm not to the point yet where I need the diaper, but the point here is that I'm pretty good at making sure I pack lightly, but thoroughly. Making sure the luggage actually makes it to my destination with me is another matter.

One memorable family road trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, began on a morning when I woke up with a migraine. Hardly able to put a coherent thought together, I loaded up on my drug of choice (in those days, massive quantities of aspirin), tossed a few things in a suitcase, whispered to Randy that my suitcase was ready to be loaded in the car, and then headed out to the front seat with a cold washcloth over my eyes, hoping I wouldn't end up driving the porcelain bus before the drive up the mountains even started. Three hours later, migraine gone, we happily arrived in Gatlinburg where I realized that NObody had bothered to put my suitcase in the car. We spent our first evening in Gatlinburg in the local WalMart, buying cheap underwear and a new toothbrush for me. The rest of the trip didn't get much better.

The picture above sort of illustrates another part of packing at which I've become expert. When you travel in small cars with large children, as we did for most of our married life, it becomes necessary to approach packing the car as you would a giant jigsaw puzzle where none of the pieces go together. Now, lest you think I was the pro at loading up the car, let me set the record straight. Randy was the pro. He really was. I became the pro at keeping my mouth shut for two reasons:

1. I really was no good at all at shoving 497 pieces of luggage, diaper bags, sporting equipment, stuffed animals, and other assorted paraphenalia into a 3 foot square trunk. Randy, on the other hand, approached the task with the same skill required to build the pyramids at Giza. He really was a pro.

2. Many of our family trips were to visit my mother and aunt in Charlotte, North Carolina (where the picture above was taken). My mother and my aunt were experts in their own right. They loved to send us home with their cast-offs du jour. It became something of a game..."Susie, I've got this umptiefratz that would be just the thing for your bedroom/kitchen/craft project/living room/child. It might be a tad old, but all you have to do is paint it/wash it/remodel it/wait 5 years til they grow into it/buy something else to go with it/ and it would be perfect!" After about 30 minutes of polite refusals, followed by equally polite but ever more insistent encouragement, Randy would finally smile through clenched teeth and say, "Sure, we'd love it!" Then he'd have to find a place for it in the car, at least until we cleared the city limits when he'd pull into the nearest gas station and toss it in the dumpster.

SO--it was just NOT strategically advisable for me to try to coach him on packing the car. Since it was my fault that we were loaded to the gills, and I was crap at trying to load it anyway, I just learned to stay in the house and keep my mouth shut and try not to look worried at the Grapes- of-Wrath-style bungee cord job on the roof of the car. Truth be told, he WAS very good at it. Give the man a set of bungee cords and he could load the contents of a small house on the top of our car. He ALWAYS did an excellent job and we ALWAYS got everything home in perfect condition.

Except for one spectacular failure.

Bryan had just graduated from high school in the summer of 1999 and had decided he wanted to move out west. Always happy to have any excuse to head back home, we decided to combine moving Bryan to Arizona with a family vacation. Annike wasn't at home that summer, so it was just Bryan, Benjamin, Megan, me and Randy. And our luggage. And everything Bryan owned. TV, VCR, stereo system roughly the size of a pony, assorted car parts, books, CDs, clothes, you name it--Bryan wanted to take it. And, of course, the TV, VCR, and stereo system roughly the size of a pony just COULDN'T go on the roof, so it all went in the back deck of our older model Ford Taurus station wagon, and all our luggage went on the roof. Bungee cords everywhere. It was a brilliant packing job. The only drawback was that somebody figured Megan would have more fun in the back deck behind the stereo equipment so she ended up squashed against the back window like one of those Garfield suction cup toys.

Anyway, all packed and ready to go, we lumbered out of the driveway in the sweltering June heat, rolled up the windows, turned on the air conditioning and felt a blast of....HOT air. Nothing but hot air. No a/c. In June. In Georgia. For a 2,000 mile trip to Phoenix. Did I mention this was in June?

Well, there was nothing for it but to get started and hope that the a/c fairy would visit us at some point and start sprinkling some cold air our way. After negotiating the 10 miles of side streets to the freeway, we were just merging into six lanes of traffic on Interstate 75, hot air blasting, Megan's pink face barely visible in the rear view mirror behind the stereo equipment, both large teenaged boys plugged into their portable CD players, when we hear Megan say, "Uh oh."

That's all. Just a quiet little "Uh oh." Before I'm even aware of what's happened, Randy cuts loose with a stream of highly colorful language, and we're merging back to the right, on the emergency shoulder of the freeway, and I'm looking back to see Randy's suitcase bouncing along the middle lane of traffic, spewing toilet articles and underwear across five lanes of traffic. Most of the 18 wheels on a few tractor-trailers are running over Randy's shaving kit and the rest of our suitcases are dangling precariously from the roof of the car.

Well, there are things in his suitcase that just should not be scattered across five lanes of Interstate 75 so without even thinking, I sprint from my seat, take my flip flops off for better traction, and I'm poised at the side of the road like some kind of aging track star. They say there's a special God for idiots and He was looking after us that day because just at that moment, the traffic cleared and there wasn't a car in sight for miles. Bryan and I scampered across the freeway, snatching up undies, shirts, pants, anything that hadn't been completed trashed, and we were back in the car before the next round of cars was visible, away on the horizon.

We spent the first night of that vacation in the hotel laundromat, washing the tire marks out of Randy's clothes while he went to WalMart for another toothbrush. The next day, Megan was happily esconced in the back seat between the boys, and the luggage was in the back deck.

20+ years of perfect packing ruined by one measly failure. I think the bungee cords are still resting quietly someplace on I-75.