I don’t know about you, but I’ve always liked road trips in the car. I was that kid who would leap out of bed at 4am to wake up the rest of the family so we could hit the road by 5am for our annual trip to the big smoke. Not a lot has changed since then, except now we try to make it in time to catch the 5pm ferry off the Island on a Friday evening, to eke out our holiday and make every minute count.
There are lots of things to like about road trips – talking with your fellow travellers, watching the world spin by, listening to audio books, seeing things you’ve never seen before, experiencing the unknown and unexpected.
Not every trip is a smooth one. Sometimes you’ve got a sore back and you can’t sit still for more than an hour or two at a time, sometimes your parrot decides he’s had enough of the long drive and screams his head off until, in desperation, you cover him up and say “Birdy bedtime, birdy bedtime.” And sometimes the car breaks down and you end up sitting on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck and feeling grateful that you’ve finally done the sensible thing and bought yourself a down jacket so you don’t freeze in the 90 minutes it takes for the truck to arrive.
But this trip wasn’t one of those – fortunately!
Good weather, clear roads, and the Subaru hummed along after a fresh oil change, wheel alignment, new exhaust, reservoir filled with washer fluid good to -45° C, and a brand new set of Nokian winter tires.