Last week my family went on
vacation, and the day we departed from Ohio to drive six hours into Michigan I
was reminded of travel days on the World Race. Travel days on the World Race
tended to be stressful and full of the unknown – sometimes we ended up in the wrong place, other times we traveled with live chickens under our seats – but I realize now that those
travel days were nothing compared to the Mendola family travel days.
Our plan was to leave by noon –
it was a cute idea, really. We ended up leaving after 5 o’clock. The reason for
the five-hour time delay? It’s hard to say, exactly. Part of it was because my
brother couldn’t find his wallet, so we were frantically looking for it (“I
left it in my jacket – who moved my jacket?” “Check the front closet or the
garage – we cleaned the house last night.” “Why would you clean the house!?”
“Well if you didn’t leave your stuff everywhere we wouldn’t need to…”) Family
drama – gotta love it.
Eventually he decided it had been
stolen out of his car, so he began canceling his credit cards and going to the
DMV to apply for a new license. At the same time my dad was driving all over
Columbus trying to find a certain part to hold the car-top-carrier together. At
one point we were all in the house, so I asked if we could leave. Paul and
Melody went to the car, but Philip and Danielle Joy were absent. Philip finally
made it to the car, but then Melody was missing. And so it went. For a long
time.
FINALLY we were on the road. And
then we stopped. Every. Hour. Someone was hungry, or someone had to pee, my
sister forgot bottles for the baby, Dad kept pulling over to make sure the
car-top-carrier was actually on top of the car (instead of strewn across the
high way like it was that one time many years back) – and then my sister Grace
(who was driving separately with her husband) called to say that their car was
overheating and so there was this drama over whether they should go back to
Columbus and get another car to drive, and whose car would they use and whatnot
(their car ended up making it – hooray)
At one point it looked like we
were driving into a storm so Dad pulled over to buy trash bags to protect our
luggage in the car-top-carrier – he took everything out and put our suitcases
in trash bags while I protested that we should wait and actually see if it was
going to rain. It did. A lot. We were probably going no faster than 30 miles an
hour on the highway – which led us into an argument about hydroplaning. Oh, and
we argued about air conditioning – some people were hot; some were cold; it was
impossible to compromise. I sat in the middle of Melody and Paul, and I continued to be shoved back and forth as they squirmed for more room.
So yeah. While all this was
happening I leaned my head back against the seat and remembered travel days on
the World Race, and I thought about how Mendola family vacations was the perfect preparation for them.
