Road Trips from Hell!

Here's a funny story. My parents would take me and a friend up North during our summer vacation. My parents owned the old Volkswagon Beetle. Well the bug could never get over the larger mountains, so we all had to get out and push. This didn't just happen once. We took road trips up North all the time and they had that Bug for years. So for years, every summer, we would have to get out and push the Bug up the big mountains. And of course, everybody would drive by and beep, wave, laugh, you name it. I've never been the same since. ;)

I was a student at KSC and my boyfriend at the time lived in Manchester. He had a little Spider red sports car and we headed off for Manchester from Keene one afternoon to go to his home. On this trip, things happening in three's is so true. As we rounded the curve at Dublin Lake, my door flew open. As I grab the handle and shut it, the window shattered into tiny little squares - all over the car, the road and myself. After the shock wore off, we remarked that we were very lucky, laughed and continued on our way. Our next "adventure" was going up Temple Mountain and a car with several kids in it, decided it would be fun to run the little red sports car off the road. Again, we said how lucky we were, swore a little at the kids, and continued. Now we get to Beford, the stretch before the turn towards Manchester. My friend went to shift and the clutch just went to the floor. We no longer were feeling lucky, and we didn't talk much as we walked to the nearest pay phone.

1. In 1984, my parents and I traveled to the Canadian Rockies and
spent most of August there driving around via AAA triptik routes we'd mapped out. My mother had carefully read the AAA guides and was intrigued by a place called "Top of the World State Park." We set
aside a special side trip to go there late in the afternoon, so we
could see potential views at a pretty time of day, and were driving
and driving through some range, up and up a narrow, winding one-lane logging road, with a sheer drop-off on one side. We drove and drove, up and up, car straining, and see nothing. No people, no signs, nothing but the road, rocks and the wooded cliffs below. We *never* found "Top of the World State Park." How we turned around and headed back, I can't recall. :)

2. When I was about 12 (in 1986) my parents and I were invited to a
bat mitzvah in Philadelphia - it was to be the very last event held at
that synagogue before it was to become a Baptist church. The girl's
dad, the rabbi, was my mom's high school friend. We drove down from Queens, N.Y., and got to the area around Philadelphia and
for some reason, missed the exit. We ended up driving at least 60-80
miles before seeing another exit and could turn around. When we
finally pulled up to the temple, the bat mitzvah had just ended! It
was so embarassing!

3. When my husband and I lived in Philadelphia, we would make the
7-8-hour drive to Freedom, N.H. to see his family several times a year and would bring our cats, Mr. Bean and Tortie (and also, when they were alive, our two guinea pigs). One Thanksgiving, driving home, we picked just the wrong time to get going, and we were in the car more than 9 hours trying to get home. Mr. Bean was agitated and was meowing like a metronome, like once a second, let's say, and I calculated that he must have meowed about 10,000 times between Freedom and Philadelphia - he was hoarse after that and slept for two days once we got home. He was the only one making a sound in the car, and I was beside myself (as I'm sure my husband was) with the insane amount of traffic and time it took to get anywhere that day.