Rules for the Road

We were on the Turnpike again this past weekend, traveling over rivers and through woods across the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania to get to New Jersey, to visit with my husband’s family. 

Now we do this drive at least twice a year, so you’d think that we’d have the routine down.  For the most part we do, but we are constantly refining the process to put together the most stress-free trip possible.

The fact that we were driving instead of flying was a very good start, if for no other reason than I could throw three jackets in the car without a second thought to accommodate varying weather conditions.  But there are other measures you can take to ease on down that road.

1)      Never sip your coffee when you are driving over a speed bump.

My husband actually came up with this rule as we were leaving the McDonald’s in Cranberry, Egg McMuffins in tow, on our way to the Turnpike.  You certainly want to get a few good swigs of the coffee down before you hit the road, preferably while parked at a red light. This reduces the incident of spillage when you hit rough patches in the road, which you invariably will on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

2)      Travel on a non-holiday weekend.

We always travel to New Jersey for Thanksgiving, and often the second time we visit is also around a holiday- either Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.  This time, we were going the last weekend in September. My husband’s cousin invited the whole extended family to a party to celebrate her mother’s birthday and the fact that her parents would be in town from Florida, and her brothers would be in town from Seattle and France, respectively.

This would have been worth traveling for under any circumstances, even in holiday weekend traffic, but how lovely it was to drive the less-traveled turnpike road, without the usual level of traffic or the inevitable bottle-neck as you travel through (over?) Philadelphia.  When we got to the New Jersey highway that leads to my in-laws’ house, we wondered for a minute if we were on the right road, until we realized that it just looks a lot different without all the cars flocking to the shore for the weekend, making it a veritable parking lot.

3)      Check the toilet seat before sitting.

Pardon me if I venture into a slightly indelicate area here – i.e. the Ladies Room at the Rest Stops.   A mishap in there can truly put a damper on your whole trip (no pun intended).    Ladies, check the seat before you sit down.  This has always been important for obvious reasons, but nowadays it is even more essential because the automatic flush feature you now find on so many toilets will sometimes spray outside the toilet and leave a fine mist on the seat.  This is clean water, but it is, nonetheless, still wet, as water usually is.  I imagine that is somewhat reminiscent of the bidet, but I wouldn’t know of course because I’ve never traveled outside continental North America.

In a related tip, always check to make sure there is toilet paper in the stall before sitting.  Just for extra insurance, carry some Kleenex in your purse.

4)      Carry a small strap-on hands-free purse with you.

You can put this with all your most essential items (wallet, keys, cell phone, and that all-important Kleenex) inside a larger handbag or tote, so that you can travel through the rest stop with all your most important items strapped to your body leaving your hands free for eating, etc.  Most importantly of all, your belongings never have to leave your body, to be hung from the toilet stall door or sitting next to you while you eat your Whopper Junior, because you never know when some unsavory character will try to steal your belongings.

I was brought up to have a healthy paranoid suspicion of all strangers and taught that no one, but no one, should ever be trusted.  That’s why I was shocked when I heard about the young couple who had all their wedding presents stolen when they left them unattended in an outdoor reception area while they slept in a building nearby.  I was not shocked that the presents were stolen, only that the couple was foolish enough to leave them unattended.  Let me tell you those presents would have been in the wedding bed with my new groom and me. 

Of course the most important tip of all, at least for me, is to have my laptop with me, so I could have this blog finished in time for my self-imposed Monday deadline.   

(Published on Monday, October 1, at 6:57 p.m.)