Breaking Dad 2 - Road Tripping

Breaking Dad 2- Road Tripping

-jay royston

Road Trip.

Very few words bring a clenching to my chest like ‘road trip’ does. Family road trips are a fundamental right of parental passage, a litmus test of patience, dedication and perseverance.

Years ago, I spent many hours driving here and there across Western Canada. I was young and lacked career ambitions which made me a perfect customer to gas stations and roadside coffee diners across this great land of ours. I saw cities and mountains, lakes and oceans. It was a great time to feel alive, to feel free as a bird as the song goes.

And then I became a parent and I now have about as much free time as a lone rooster in a hen house. Many times I have considered what it would be like to just go ‘for a drive’ without having to remember to pick up milk or tomorrow is garbage day or worry about what time I should be home so I can enjoy some moments with the kids before they fall asleep because frankly, I love to hate those moments I secretly love.

Now instead of it being simply me and the highway, it’s me and my wolf pack. And instead of my one bag of essentials it is now eight bags of essentials, divided into really essentials and the not-so-essential-that-it-needs-to-be-in-the-front bags of essentials. 

Plus my wife insists on cleaning the car before every trip. I always argue it is a pointless endeavor as by the time we stop for our first break, it looks like we have lived in it for three months. That is because the kids pull out every activity we have packed for the eight hour drive and are then bored with them before the first gas station fill up. It doesn’t matter - road trip.

And while I used to spend lucid moments driving, admiring and contemplating how amazing this country is, I now contemplate what my daughter means when she says behind me that she ‘got some weird stuff in her underpants’. Music which I would play for hours on end now barely makes it through two songs without me having to turn it down to answer some random question directed at me from the back seat from one of my baby wolves.

But these are the moments future memories are made of. I have to remember road trips are a right of passage for parents and children alike. Children are supposed to complain about it being too hot/too cold/too far. Parents are supposed to tell them too bad/not long/and make them play ‘look at that’.

My father really enjoyed playing ‘look at that’. He would say it without explaining what it was we were supposed to look at, as if it was blatantly obvious that mountain in the distance was any different than the other mountains in the distance. All we usually saw was the tops of the trees along the highway. If we were really lucky, he would point out a dead animal on the side of the road; ‘look at that, a dead bear,’ he would say as he drove slowly by it, allowing us a close-up view of nature in all it's gory glory.

I don’t point out animal fatalities to my kids though. There are things we learn from our parents; they were our number one teachers, just as we are to ours. Hopefully, we remember those things we didn’t like from our youth such as staring at broken, dead animals on the side of the highway. And we remember not to tell our kids to ‘look at that’ as if it was the reason why we are on a road trip in the first place.

We go on road trips because we are family and we must all suffer adventures together. At least that is what I tell my kids.