OUR SUMMER ROAD TRIPS FROM HELL,
SADDER, WISER AFTER BAD LUCK, BAD DECISIONS
With the start of September, we thought it would be fun to share some of our contributors’ worst road-trip stories, to help you feel a bit better about the end of the summer driving season.
LORRAINE SOMMERFELD
When I was a child, my father believed stopping to pee was a luxurious waste of time, and the whole point of driving somewhere was to Make Good Time. Yes, with capital letters. A bunch of little girls in the back seat on a three-hour trip needed to pee? Not happening. Fast- forward to those little girls all grown up, and making a threehour trip of their own — and nervously looking at each other for two and a half hours before realizing not only were they allowed to stop and pee, they could stop as many times as they liked. If you believe your reach as a parent stops at your children’s adulthood or your death, you are sorely mistaken.
GRAEME FLETCHER
As the proud father of four girls, any road trip was an adventure in the early years. Mercifully, they have grown into young ladies, and so travelling with them now is a pleasure. However, that was not always the case. From the “Dad, Samantha is touching me!” to the “How long do we have to sit here?” questions, any road trip had to be very carefully planned; there were the stops for nature breaks ( and always at different times for each of the kids!), the stops to regain my sanity and those for fuel.
The worst was a trip to drive the Cabot Trail. With three youngsters and a baby in tow, my wife and I flew to Halifax. The day started with one seriously rough flight that saw two of the four kids use the (mercifully) supplied illness bags. With the rain deluging, we headed to the first hotel in a rented minivan; it was showing more wear than my frayed nerves, it burned gas like there was no tomorrow and it had the most annoying habit of lurching between gears. This reintroduced airplane nausea; unfortunately, no convenient bags aboard this “plane.”
For the next few days, getting into the van tested my gag reflexes. I still, to this day, hate the smell of those scented pine trees, but at the time I was thankful for the dozen or so hanging around the cabin, and the masking overtones they brought to an otherwise unbearable place.
The rest of the trip did get better, but not before running into one hotel that was overbooked. They suggested an alternative; I loaded the family back into that stinky van and headed for the only hotel with room for six people. I now know why it was the only one on the Trail with vacancies: the bedding was so damp it felt like someone had, well, use your imagination. I also forced the family to sleep with their shoes on because the carpet was so manky my shoes stuck to it when walking from the door to dump the luggage; I elected to leave everything but the essentials in the van, fearing what might invade the suitcases. With the worst behind us, the sun did shine and the Cabot Trail’s vistas were as memorable as they were beautiful.
BRIAN HARPER
We had a summer cottage in the Laurentians while I was growing up, so there are none of these lifealtering, cross- Canada road trip stories of legend. The worst aspect was the seven- hour drive to and from the lake (this was after we had moved from Montreal to the GTA), mom experiencing the expected, “Are we there, yet?” whinging from my brother and I. However, in an effort to knock off some time either getting there or returning home, she sometimes took a back- road route, crossing the Ottawa River at Hawkesbury; this meant the dreaded road through Kilmar, a nasty, rutted, twisting piece of chewed-up tarmac favoured by logging trucks. And it was on this road that either my brother or I (sometimes both), made nauseous by the car’s constant rocking motion, would toss our cookies. (After this happened several times, mom no longer took the shortcut.)
LESLEY WIMBUSH
When I think of horrible road trips — and several come to mind — the most memorable was probably the night I spent in my brother’s 1972 Ford Galaxie while a blizzard raged outside. As an 18- year- old perpetually broke art student, I generally relied on my thumb and false bravado for my rare visits home; therefore, my brother’s offer of a ride back was eagerly accepted. His faded blue “Narc car” held together with bungee cords was as good as a limo.
Our northern route was known for sudden whiteouts, and midway through our journey, the road was closed. Being young and immortal, we fishtailed around the barriers and plowed on, the swirling snow instantly filling our tracks. Eventually we floundered to a stop, conceding defeat when even the ghostly shadows were swallowed by the howling storm. Resigning ourselves to a long and most unpleasant night, we caught a flicker of light through the gloom; with fool’s luck, we’d beached ourselves at a village crossroad, right up against a trailer in whose window hung the most glorious welcome sign we’d ever seen: “LIQUOR, OPEN.”
Fortified with a bottle of Glayva and a mickey of schnapps, we settled in to wait out the storm.
COSTA MOUZOURIS
Although I love riding motorcycles, my worst road trip was on two wheels. It was 1989, and as Hurricane Hugo worked his way up the eastern U.S. coast, so were my girlfriend and I, on my motorcycle.
Heading north back to Canada, we stayed ahead of the storm, but then turned east in Virginia toward Washington, D.C., where we planned to visit the museums along the National Mall. Our trip was cut short in the darkness of night along Interstate 66, when a deer, spooked by Hugo’s increasingly violent winds, leaped in front of my bike. The impact sent us over the handlebar and tumbling down the highway.
The deer died quickly; my bike was a write-off; we survived mostly unscathed. I learnt that: 1) if you see even one deer anywhere near the road, slow down — a lot — and 2) if a powerful storm is imminent, don’t ride on.
POPI BOWMAN
I loved her to death, but she was almost the death of me: Peaches, my late-’ 70s Chevy RV, had a host of issues. Being stored for a winter outdoors in Ontario didn’t help. It also didn’t help that I then drove her to Winnipeg and back again in less than optimal conditions. That is, I couldn’t really afford to fix all of her issues at the time, so I “made do,” which, I can now advise, you should never, ever do.
After leaving Toronto, I stopped my “B.C. or bust” cross-country journey in Winnipeg for several reasons, but No. 1 was the realization that attempting to climb the Rockies was sure suicide; it would be “bust.” So, after spending a year parked outdoors in Winterpeg, driving Peaches back to Ontario was optimistic, but I was stubbornly determined to get out of Manitoba. One cylinder was on the verge of death, the seals were pretty much shot; she was running loud, rough and slow, so there were many nail- biting moments and countless litres of oil on the way back to Ontario. Add a year-old baby crying most of the time, and you can imagine how I felt when we finally parked in Toronto after a week of crawling at a snail’s pace, with truckers bearing down on our back bumper; apparently “Baby on board” was trucker bait.
The “For sale” sign was put up in Peaches’ window not long after that — and I swore that I would never attempt another road trip in anything but a mechanically pristine vehicle.
OUR NORTHERN ROUTE WAS KNOWN FOR SUDDEN WHITEOUTS, AND HALFWAY THERE THE ROAD WAS CLOSED. BEING YOUNG AND IMMORTAL, WE FISHTAILED AROUND THE BARRIERS AND PLOWED ON, THE SWIRLING SNOW INSTANTLY FILLING OUR TRACKS. — LESLEY WIMBUSH