Jul

Tales from the Vacation Drive

Posted by Published in Car Buying

Funny navigation story: We’re driving along in northern Indiana, and I notice that the voice commands for the Ford Flex’s navigation system are off. “Great,” I say, “I hate having the music interrupted by those voices when I’m driving. The turn commands are very clear and the nav system screen is huge. We shouldn’t have any problem.”

You can guess what happened next: Interstate 80, not too far east from the Illinois-Indiana border, splits off from I-94. The trick is, whether you go straight, welcome to I-94! My wife noticed the very large “I-80 Toledo Right Lanes” sign too late for me to adjust. Luckily, the Flex’s nav system quickly showed us that by getting off at the next stop, only a couple of miles down the road, and next heading south for a couple of miles, we could rejoin I-80.

We turned the voice commands on and left them on for the rest of the trip. Music be damned.

Danger of road games: So we like to play games with the

kids on our
drives, my wife and I. We play Slug Bug, we play the Alphabet Game
(find every letter in the alphabet in sequence on roadside signs and
billboards) and more. The games took nasty turns on Leg 1. First, my
wife apparently can’t adequately determine the difference within a VW
Beetle (new or old), a PT Cruiser and a Mini Cooper. Driving faraway
distances is tough ample without getting a bruise on my right arm.
Secondly, we were in the midst of a difficult Alphabet Game when we
came up against the dreaded Q. You don’t see a lot of them on the road,
believe you me. So when my wife saw it, she shouted “Q!” and slugged me
on my right arm as tough as she could.

Perhaps we should stick to naming all the state capitals.

The Suburban Dad’s Vacation blogging

Original post by Suburban Dad