Road Tested

All this week I’ve been discussing our recent family road trip, first by whining about the disaster that is PENNDOT and then talking about all the fun we had at the Blossom Festival with my in-laws. This was our first major road trip as a family and I learned quite a lot about how my relationship with road trips have changed since becoming a father.

Long gone are the days when I could grab a rack of Mountain Dew, a pound of Twizzlers, an empty Gatorade bottle and drive from Boston to Jekyll Island, GA with my fraternity brothers. All I needed back in those days was a few Heinekens and a few hours of sleep on the white sandy beaches of the little desert isle to recharge for two days of fun before the return trip home.

What’s even sadder is that it hasn’t even been three years yet since my wife and I drove from our home in Charlotte to Rochester for our wedding and I drove straight through. We started the drive after getting off work for the day and when we couldn’t find a hotel room just over the half way mark, I decided to just keep on keeping on, shocking my then future in-laws by pulling into the driveway around 6am.

But not this time, I barely made it half way, needing to stop in Clarksburg, WV for the night after spending the day with a cranky toddler that didn’t want to nap and an evening in the van with an even crankier toddler that wouldn’t sleep. Sure, it would be easy for me to blame my son for my complete and total failure in reaching my desired destination on the first scheduled ‘travel day’ of our trip, but I can’t – and I won’t.

No, it is totally and completely my fault and it has nothing to do with my getting older, a weak bladder or deteriorating night vision. Rather it was a result of my being ill prepared for the rigors of travelling with a toddler. Preparation, even for those spontaneous road trips in college and after, has always been my strong suit.

Among my many roles in our family I am responsible for all planning, logistics and transportation. As my wife will gladly report herself, if I left these tasks up to her we would have had been ordering pizza to be delivered to the church parking lot after the “I Do’s” with about seven people in attendance at our wedding, which is why ever since I coordinated that affair I have been the defacto planner for our family. It is a role that I embrace, and, actually, enjoy.

So what egregious error did I commit on this road trip you ask? I committed a major parenting fail that in retrospect damaged my street cred as the director of family logistics.

You see our little man is really a little guy who is only in the 5th percentile for weight. He hasn’t gained in proportion with how much food we try to cram down his throat and he only just recently achieved the legal weight required to turn his car seat to a front facing position. I have been excited about the proposition of turning him around, because, as I argued, it would be a disaster heading into what would amount to be 15 hours in the suburban assault vehicle over the course of two days with a toddler if he was staring at the ceiling the whole time.

WRONG!

Well, at least partially wrong. In making preparations for the drive I took his car seat out, made the necessary adjustments to convert it to the forward facing position and reinstalled it using the LATCH system and tethering anchor. It was in nice and tight, and wouldn’t budge no matter how much force I attempted to apply. However, my major miscalculation in this whole thing was forgetting that, until the train pulled out of the station to embark on our adventure anyways, he had never been seated facing forward.

Why is this important? Well, because he also had no experience getting himself comfortable in a forward facing position. Even though he was quite tired about three hours into the drive (and not just of being in the car, as he let us know early and often of his displeasure), he couldn’t position himself in a way that helped him succumb and fall asleep. In the perfect vision that highsight provides, what I should have done was bring the bracket that enables our particular car seat to be installed in a rear facing position, stop when he was getting tired and reinstall the seat rear facing to enable him to be in that familiar, reclined position.

Despite my abject failure to plan for my son’s needs, the drive was for the most part smooth and incident free. Up and down we spent about 28 hours in the van over four travel days, breaking it up as best we could to let little man get out and run around a little. We also budgeted some time each way to stop at the ginormous outlet complex my wife likes in Grove City, PA to give her a chance to do some shopping.

And, while I did lose my navigator/snack purveyor on this trip, I did gain a masseuse. I discovered another advantage to owning a minivan in that the driver’s side rear passenger is in perfect position to provide frequent neck and shoulder massages to the road weary driver. And even though my former co-pilot had been reassigned, I did seek permission from the head of the child entertainment and nourishment department for permission for her to multi-task.