Team Hearn (we’re Hearn-licious) hadn’t been down to the Outer Banks in a few years, so my parents decided that’s where they wanted to do Thanksgiving this year. In the off-season, beach-front homes rent for a song (specifically, “What About Love” by Heart), so my dad got us into some 6-bedroom, 6-bathroom monstrosity a few blocks from the sound.
It’s a six-hour drive, so luckily we have our comfy Honda Accord. Sadly, what we do NOT have is a massive SUV, which is what we need to bring along all of our stuff; the amount of material we have to take along on road trips has roughly DOUBLED since Charles arrived, between his stroller, diaper bag, car seat, toys, bouncy seat, food, spare diapers. At the same time, the space we have to store stuff has about halved, since we used to load up the back seat with crap that wouldn’t fit in the truck, and now we have to put him in there as well as leave one seat free in case one of us has to sit back there with him to keep him from screaming.
The solution: one of those rooftop cargo things, just to complete our transformation into suburban yuppie parents. Woo! But which one? I did a little research online and discovered that Thule, which makes popular bike racks, also makes roof cargo thingies, ranging from $300-600, which made me laugh so hard I chipped a tooth. Sears, on other hand, listed a model running about $120. So we headed to Sears, where they indeed sold what we needed, but had none in stock. The young clerk said, “We’ll have more on Wednesday!” Sadly, this was Friday the 17th, 2 days before we were leaving. He told us Pep Boys sold the same model under a different name, we should give them a try. I gave them a try, and lo and behold we had us an 18 cubic foot storage box for $99, plus an extree $9 for the Accord-specific hooks that hold it to the car. It was awesome. Assembly was a bit taxing, but in the end I basically added another trunk to the car, doubling our storage, and enabling us to take actual clothes and deodorant and stuff.
After church on Sunday we packed up and rolled south. It’s a six-hour drive, counting a few stops; I was assuming we’d have to stop roughly every hour and half to recharge Charles, change diapers, etc. Instead, he slept for about 2 hours until we stopped for lunch, and then slept again until we hit the Bay Bridge, at which time he started screaming, because once you’re on the Bay Bridge you can’t stop for anything short of a breakdown or the cops become angry with you. As soon as we got to a place we could stop, he went back to sleep.
It’s like dealing with a ridiculously intelligent miniature alien who doesn’t speak your language and likes to stand on your groin.
We arrived in record time, thanks to various road improvements through Virginia, and set about to the important task of eating and drinking everything we could get our grubby hands upon. I had, luckily, brought beer and cinnamon rolls.
I got up Monday morning and took a nice long bike ride. This was the only healthy thing I did for the remainder of the week. I compensated for it by going out with my father and spending roughly $180 on booze.
Tomorrow: the things we did with the booze.
Beer bottle bowling with the car seat comes to mind. I want pictures (and movie rights).