Today we are driving to Florida along with what appears to be most of North America. From Ohio to Atlanta, Georgia, the trip has been perfect. Somewhere around Macon, Georgia, everything came to a crawl. This continued about every half hour until we reached the turnpike in Florida. In other words, the stretch took about three hours longer than it normally does.
Fortunately we are equipped with more technology than the first moon landing. We have a DVD player in each van (we have a two-car caravan going here). That has kept the kids occupied. We watched (they watched while I listened) A Christmas Story, Christmas Vacation, The Santa Clause (1, 2 and 3), The Grinch (original version) and several Mickey Mouse Christmas things I have never heard of before. We also have a few computers with wireless and DC/AC converters to keep everything powered. We tried a wireless game of Ages of Empires, but had problems with the signal even though we have two cantennas. Three of the kids have Nintendo DS consoles and use the wireless to play head-to-head games.
With all these creature comforts, the “when will we get there” question was frequent once we were eighteen hours into the drive that was suppose to take sixteen. I don’t know how we ever managed to drive across the country as kids armed only with a couple of coloring books and an AM radio.