99 bottles of beer on the wall

99 bottles of beer

Take one down

Pass it around

98 bottles of beer on the wall

 

Road trips in the US are as much de rigueur today as they were when my grandparents loaded everything they owned onto their car and drove all the way from Oklahoma to Oregon to escape the Dust Bowl. They fell out of fashion during the heyday of the cheap airline ticket in the 80’s and 90’s, but since the days of heightened airport security and airlines charging extra for just about everything the road trip has come back into its own. You haven’t lived until you’ve been confined to the backseat of the family car for a few days with your siblings and actually sung “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” all the way to the last bottle.

When it comes to road trips it is my firm belief that people fall into one of two categories: conquerors and explorers.

Conquerors strike out long before dawn, determined to beat the traffic and cover the greatest distance possible. They boast about having driven some ridiculous number of miles “straight through” without stopping. They eat behind the wheel, dribbling mayonnaise and tuna down their shirt fronts and spilling coffee onto their trouser legs. The drive-up window was invented for the conquerors, who cannot even be bothered to halt their progress long enough to actually park the car and walk inside a restaurant. Conquerors behind the wheel of the family car will greet any desperate request to stop coming from the back seat with a suspicious, “Are you sure? You just went.”

The explorer, on the other hand, cares little for timetables and often waxes eloquent with a lot of nonsense about the journey being more important than the destination. The explorer prefers back roads, and will spend days and weeks beforehand mapping out every historical marker and scenic look-out along the route – and then stop at each and every one. An explorer behind the wheel of the family vehicle quickly bores his family into a stupor. Eventually there is a mutiny in the backseat and he finds himself marvelling at the pre-determined points of interest alone while the children remain in the car squabbling in an exhausted, desultory manner.  Those waiting at the other end of the journey (usually grandparents) learn to add several hours onto the projected arrival time of an explorer and to cook something which improves with reheating.

I had the interesting experience of being the daughter of an explorer father and a conqueror mother and I can quite honestly say that both the conquerors and the explorers can seem incomprehensible to the long-suffering backseat dwellers.

Whether my mother was the conqueror type of road warrior by nature or by necessity I cannot say. Probably if I were tasked with driving three young children and a grumpy cocker spaniel in a VW Beetle from San Diego, California to Waldport, Oregon – a distance of over 1,030 miles – during the hottest month of the year, then perhaps I, too, would have insisted on being on the road long before dawn in order to make Redding by sundown. It was an epic journey, and she usually did it without my father, driving the entire distance herself. The fact that the Beetle often refused to start again once it was stopped, forcing my mother to ask strangers to give us a push until the engine would roar back to life, might have contributed to her reluctance to stop and shut off the car any more than was absolutely necessary.

Since we were always planning to stay most of the summer, and since the weather at the Oregon coast was usually much cooler than that in San Diego, we packed as if we were about to cross the plains in a covered wagon like our pioneer ancestors. Instead of using actual luggage we stuffed our clothes into pillow-cases and arranged them over the back seat; and then spent the two days up and two days back riding in elevated, lumpy splendour.

It seems that it was always over 100 degrees when we made this trip, and many cars back then did not have air conditioning. Ours certainly didn’t. The hot, dry air would blow through the open windows, and eventually we would suffer temporary hearing loss because of prolonged exposure to the high decibels of the Beetle’s engine – a sound something akin to a cross between a lawn mower and a Harley Davidson. We would occasionally buy a big bag of ice, stuff it in a pillow case, and take turns sitting on it.

Yes, pillow cases came in very handy back then, though it was incredibly embarrassing when we would stop for the night to have to haul bright pink or flowered pillow cases through hotel lobbies, especially for my brother.

How we occupied our time back then should make the children of today feel incredibly grateful for the modern distractions of Wi-Fi phones, iPads and DVD players. We played the alphabet game, fought, sang, fought, tried to spot license plates from “foreign” states, tried to read, got sick (in my sister’s case) and fought.

At every rest area we would sample the water from the drinking fountains, comparing the smell (we weren’t sophisticated enough to call it bouquet) and flavour of the different regions along the way like miniature connoisseurs. We insisted that Oregon water tasted very different from California water.

Seat belts were rarely worn. How can you fasten a seat belt when you’re sitting on a pillow case stuffed with clothing and Teddy bears? If we wanted to lie down, turn upside down and put our feet on the ceiling of the car, or stand up and lean over the front seat to talk to the occupants of that privileged world then we did just that. We never thought of what would happen if we had to suddenly stop. We simply didn’t worry about such things back then.

During one particular trip my brother complained that my sister and I kept sticking our feet in his face, to which I would say, he who lies on the floor has to expect to smell dirty socks. I’m sure there’s an ancient proverb to that effect.

Those are my earliest memories of road trips: the long, hot drives up the entire length of California, over the mountains into Oregon and on over to the coast. The trip was exhausting, yet we did it year after year; and we loved it. It was exciting to set out early in the morning before anyone else was awake, to see the scenery change from citrus and avocado groves to city to dry, dusty valley that stretched on and on as far as the eye could see; to climb up into the mountains past lakes and rivers and to have the forests creep closer and closer to the highway; to follow the river from the Coast Range as it snaked its way through the wilderness, growing wider and wider the closer we came to the ocean; to roll the windows down and lean out, sniffing the air for that first whiff of briny ocean breezes.

This is how we travelled when I was a child. We couldn’t afford to fly back then, and so we drove. And we drove. And we drove.

It seems that one of the common denominators of all American road trips, at least those I’ve taken, is that they always cover a great distance. A road trip of four hours doesn’t qualify as a road trip – that’s just a pleasant afternoon drive. In order to qualify as a road trip you need to be traveling so long that you have trouble standing upright again when you reach your destination, hobbling out of the car for the first few yards before you’re able to completely straighten your back and flex your feet to walk normally. A full six to eight hours is the minimum for a road trip, but the best ones include an overnight somewhere along the way, preferably at a hotel or motel with a swimming pool.

Now that my husband and I are married we have developed our own, couple’s approach to road trips, one which I like to think is equal parts explorer and conqueror, and we each have our own part to play in this merry little drama we like to call travel.

I will use a recent trip we made to Llandudno, Wales in order to demonstrate our own personal style of road trip, as well as how road trips differ here in the UK from what they are in the US.

The distance from our house to the rental house we booked on the outskirts of Llandudno is approximately 210 miles.

(Here’s an interesting side note to Americans who have never been here: although the British measure out groceries and furniture in metric units, they still calculate mileage on the roads in actual miles rather than kilometres. Why? I don’t know, nor do I care. All I know is that over here I have a much better idea of distance than I do in Europe.)

Now, back to the 210 miles that we were going to drive to Llandudno…

My former home in eastern Washington was 211 miles from downtown Portland, Oregon, and here’s the thing – my mother and I used to drive to Portland and back in a day just to go shopping. That’s 422 miles in one day, plus the mileage we added on driving from the fabric store to Trader Joe’s to the other fabric store, and so on. That’s equivalent to driving from where I now live to Dundee, Scotland.

Such a road trip is not unheard of here in the UK, but it’s unlikely someone would make the trip in a day just to go shopping. Why is this?

First of all, gas in the US is much cheaper. Here in the UK we pay on average 3.5 times as much for a gallon of gas as they do in the US. The internet is an amazing thing. From the comfort of my home in Wiltshire I’m able to check the current cheapest gas price in my old home town and compare that to the price at the station where my husband and I usually fill up, do some complicated sums to work out how to figure all that out in gallons rather than litres, and I’m able to come up with this startling fact.

A gallon of gas at the service station I commonly used in Kennewick, Washington is currently $2.36. That same amount of “petrol” purchased here in Wiltshire would cost $8.88 at the current rate of exchange. This is why people do not drive 422 miles to go shopping. Not even the joys of duty free shopping would be enough to lure me out on the road at those prices.

The other big difference between driving 422 miles in the US and driving 422 miles in the UK is that in the UK the driving is almost never easy.

Of the 422 miles on that round trip journey to Portland you can expect approximately 400 of them to be easy highway miles, speeding along at 65mph. As long as the weather is good and there are no accidents you just put on some good music and point the car down the road for about two hours until you have to stop to stretch your legs.

The distances in the US are so vast that between major cities, especially on the West Coast, you can quickly find yourself in an unpopulated wilderness. You pass signs warning you that this is your last chance to buy gas for 100 miles, or your last rest area for 80. Although there is steady traffic along the major interstates, most of the time you can set the cruise control and leave it there until the glowing green Starbucks sign calls you off the highway at Hood River.

Here in the UK it’s another story. This is a small, crowded island. Driving on the motorway feels like city driving even when you are not in the city. Traffic is a constant and ever-present worry, with frequent updates being provided on the radio and by the means of electronically updated signs warning of queueing ahead. Once you get off the motorway you often have to contend with two-lane roads which can frequently become backed-up behind a slow moving vehicle. Our car has cruise control, but we have never been able to use it.

And so it is that our journey of 210 miles involved as much planning and preparation as did those old childhood road trips of over a thousand.

First of all, in full explorer mode, my husband began bringing home maps of Snowdonia almost a year before our trip. My husband loves maps. What can I say? So do I. Part of the excitement that comes built into any of our married couple road trips is the fact that out of sheer stubbornness we eschew GPS devices, known here as sat nav. Sure, sat nav may be able to calmly redirect you in a buttery voice if the motorway is backed up, but it’s far more exciting to have an AtoZ thrown in your lap and be told you need to pinpoint our exact location pronto and find an alternate route by the time we reach the next junction. An AtoZ, (quaintly pronounced “A to Zed” over here) for those who don’t know, is a detailed map book which invariably requires you to flip back and forth between page 27 and page 43 in order to plot your course five miles down the road. It provides exhilaration far too commonly lost in these days of electronic dependence, and my husband and I will cling to our map-reading skills as long as we possibly can.

With maps and sightseeing guides in hand he planned our itinerary. We would travel via Ironbridge, stopping there to visit the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. From there we would take the road through Betws-y-Coed and on into Llandudno.

While Mr. H planned our route and the stops along the way I prepared for the trip with a frenzy of baking. I made home-made granola, baked loaves of bread, cookies and muffins and stowed them all away in the freezer. For me, the journey of a thousand miles – or even two hundred – begins with enough provisions to feed a small army.

On the morning of our departure we were up before dawn loading the car. My husband took the scientific approach in his packing, while I assisted by stacking the entire contents of our house by the back door. When the car would not hold another thing we were ready to go. My niece was visiting, and she and the dog were riding in the back seat. I managed to stow a few more things around the dog, so that all that was visible of him in the end were the tips of his ears.

And we were off.

I’m happy to report that the trip was everything we had hoped it would be. We made it through Birmingham without any delays – a small miracle in itself – and were in Ironbridge in good time. We enjoyed a peaceful ramble around the town there and took a walk down the river to let the dog stretch his legs. Settling back in the car I handed out cookies, and we were back on the road. We ended up making it to our rental house in plenty of time to even get to the grocery store before it closed (it was a Sunday and stores close early). That was a good thing, too, because somehow, in spite of all our careful planning, we had left the dog’s food and his food dish back home in the garage.

Our return 10 days later was a different kettle of fish. For one thing, our possessions had expanded and multiplied at an alarming rate. I’m not sure how a couple of refrigerator magnets and some coasters can make that much of a difference, but they did. We also managed to return home with more food than we had left with. I still have a bottle of chutney in the back of my refrigerator with one spoonful taken out of it. Can anyone tell me why I thought this was so important for me to bring home? In desperation we even crammed things down at my feet, so that for the next five hours it was all I could do to wiggle my toes.

It took the conqueror’s mentality to get us home that day. We stopped once after we left the Conwy area at a roadside services somewhere in Worcestershire. Or maybe it wasn’t Worcestershire. I have no idea where it was – just somewhere between Wales and home. I let the dog out and he and I walked limply around the grassy pet area while my husband went inside to get me a cup of coffee, and then it was back on the road again.

It was my childhood road trip all over again. All that was missing was a pillow case full of ice for me to sit on. We finally made it home road weary and relieved to extract ourselves from the tightly packed car. The 210 miles had felt like a thousand, but we had made it. We unloaded the car as quickly as we could, and then in true UK fashion we ordered a take-away from the Indian restaurant up the street.

Many things have changed since those long-ago road trips up the length of California in the back of the VW Beetle. I never would have imagined that the road trips I would be taking in the future would be up and down the length of Britain. But one thing remains the same forever – you really haven’t lived until you’ve sung “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” in its entirety.

 

1 bottle of beer on the wall

1 bottle of beer

If that bottle should happen to fall…

No more bottles of beer on the wall