My mother once pulled over to spank me, my brother and the dog.

My mom used to keep a plastic flyswatter next to her. She could thwap our thighs from the front seat without ever turning her head.

We used to take serious car trips when I was a kid. Denver to Florida every summer. Days on the road with my parents and 5 kids.

I think it's weird to think that anyone knows all of anyone's issues.

oh absolutely. I acknowledge the naivete of my statement.

and mwah to bon bon for making me chortle.

My dad worships fervently at the Church of the Immaculate Vehicle. It's pretty impressive how high he's risen in its ranks--I think it was his Hajj of the Perfectly Aligned Headlights that put him above and beyond your average neat freak.

Remind me to never give your dad a ride.

Once, my sister had my dog, Mac in her car for some reason and then had to drive her old boss (a very well dressed lawyer) to a lunch meeting. When they got out of the car, she went over to brush the white dog hair off his very expensive suit. She said, "Just a second, I want to get all the Mac hair off your clothes." He kept trying to get a look over his shoulder at all the dog hair on his back and yells, "What the hell is a mac????"

We just finished driving NY to FL. 27 hours straight through. We alternated driving every 3 hours. 2 kids, 1 dog, 1 rabbit. One adult in back of the van resting. One kid in the middle playing x-box or reading or playing with the animals or whatever. One adult with one kid navigator up front. We did the straight thing on the way up too. We've done it in 2 or sometimes 3 days, but really you end up just as tired as when you stop.

We junk food up the place on road trips. That is what the car wash vacuum is for. This trip featured peanut butter cookies, Ritz bits: cheese and peanut butter, xtra crunchy brown potato chips, bananas, grapes, fast food happened too.

The boys usually have a very healthy diet at home so we have the road trip tradition of junk food. Same thing on camping trips. It's a thing.

Clean cars don't happen in my family.

Remind me to never give your dad a ride.

I'm a pale shadow of his obsession. My car's merely "normal"--I can't be quantified as a neat freak in any world, especially not one that contains my parents. I will spend a lot of time aligning my wing mirrors, but aside from that and the not eating while moving, perfectly normal.

Watching the rerun of Project Runway from last night. Haven't read any of the whitefont yet, but there is nothing more awesome than the sight of Tim Gunn in a hardhat, safety glass, and fluorescent vest.

We just finished driving NY to FL. 27 hours straight through. We alternated driving every 3 hours. 2 kids, 1 dog, 1 rabbit. One adult in back of the van resting. One kid in the middle playing x-box or reading or playing with the animals or whatever. One adult with one kid navigator up front. We did the straight thing on the way up too. We've done it in 2 or sometimes 3 days, but really you end up just as tired as when you stop.

Different strokes and all that, but this more or less describes why my idea of the perfect road trip is "no longer than it takes to get to the airport".

If I'm ever in a car crash, onlookers will think someone dropped one of those Korean War-era propoganda bombs from all the loose paper that will be floating everywhere in the vicinity.

We wanted to have the kids fly up to make the trip less crowded, but they shocked me and said they would rather road trip with us. Must be the junk food thing.

Flying with 4 people and 2 pets is tough. We did leave the cat home. 3 pets were just too many for the van.