The summer Vay-K

I have always loved to travel. I got this itch from my parents as they drove us all over the place when my brother John and I were young. There were only four of us in our family, which made for some hassle-free trips. The hassles, however are much more interesting. Over the course of this week, I am going to relay some of these adventurous mishaps for your reading pleasure:

When I was a young lad under the care of my loving mom and dad, we took some grueling car trips. I attribute this to the high cost of air travel to my father's penny pinching propensity. We lived in Washington, D.C. during my youth and that was our jumping off point to head to St. Petersburg, Florida from time to time. Lest you be fooled into thinking that we sashayed south in a roomy car, it did not work that way. We had a Chevy Chevette. If you can't conjure up a vision of this sweet ride, this pic is for you:

Ours was blue, such as this beaut. My finance-conscience father decided that air conditioning was a luxury and not a necessity when he bought this Matchbox car. Let's just say that it was a horrific sweat-box. But that's not all! Dad was a heavy smoker (2-3 packs a day), which meant as we had the poor-man's a.c. on (the windows were down), we were cruising along at Chevette speed (i.e. slower than everyone else) on the highway encased in a shroud of toxic smoke. Being that dad was 6'3" 220lbs. the son (me) sitting behind him was perfectly wedged between the back of his seat and the mountain of luggage spilling out from the car's egg-shaped trunk. I wonder if Chevy touted this possibility as an early version of an air-bag?

On one such trip, we were hogging the right lane which was the car's birthright when lo and behold a gigantic vulture out innocently looking for some food smashed beak first into our front windshield! What fun!.  Luckily, due to the advanced safety features of this golf cart sturdy vehicle, the only fatality was the bird. Later, with the windshield repaired, we continued onto the Tampa area where other adventures, such as getting a vicious sunburn and locking the hotel's bathroom door closed with no one in it awaited us. Come to think of it, I'm surprised dad and mom never asked for reimbursement for the locksmith...  I won't even get into the time mom chose to drive the wrong direction on a one way street in Ottawa.

It's these cherished memories that I'd like to share this week as I dream up ways to create mayhem for my kids on our impending trip through the midwest.