www.teentraveltalk.com

What To Do During Long Car Rides:

- Callie December 30th, 2009

I was supposed to be going to Canada this holiday break to do some serious skiing and some serious blogging. The trip was cancelled and instead I’m going to New York in a few days to do some surprise things for my brother’s birthday. I’ll be sure to blog about that when I get home.

To the point – I was excited to drive to Canada. I don’t know why, but I enjoy long family car rides. So I thought, if I can’t blog about my ski trip to Canada, I can blog about how to have fun with your family while stuck in the car for hours.

• Talk – you have no choice but to be right next to each other, you might as well get to know each other better. Many of my family’s “inside jokes” come from car rides.
• If you are more high-tech than me, you’ll have an ipod to bring and tune everything out. I have CDs and CD players. Bring music. It gets boring to be antisocial and just listen to something by yourself (but it is good if you need a break from the fam). Put CDs in the car’s CD player or listen to the radio. My brother and I like some of the same music, so it’s fun to sing loudly and annoy our parents. Sometimes they even sing along.

My family likes to play games while in the car. Lame – yes. Fun – yes. Here are some car games we like to play…

• During the holiday season when Light FM only plays Christmas songs, we have this game where you have to be the first one to guess the song. We also play it sometimes during the rest of the year with the usual radio songs. It sounds dumb, but its fun when it gets competitive.
• The ever popular 20 questions.
• We were on a never-ending car ride last summer so my grandma made up this game that actually lasted hours. There are two versions, the easier one and the harder one. In the easier one, the person that starts will say a name, whatever they want, but there must be at least one famous person with that first name. For example, grandma will say “Barbara” then who’s sitting next to her can say “Streisand” or any other famous Barbara’s last name. If they can’t name anything, they’re out. Because Streisand starts with an S, that person will say a first name that starts with an S. So “Sally” and the next person might say “Field”. That goes on and on until there is a winner or until everyone gets sick of the game.
• The harder version is where one person says a name and everyone in the car has to say a different last name. Because this version is harder, you can use book or movie characters, not just famous people. Say Mom starts and says “Frances”/”Francis” (can be either because there’s no difference in how it sounds), then I will say “Frances Bean Cobain”, then my brother will say “I don’t know any” and whine and complain, then my grandma will say “Frances Farmer”, then my dad will “Francis Scott Key” then my mom will say “Sir Francis Drake” then I will say “Frances McKee” and then everyone else will be out of Frances’s and I will get a point for that round. Then the next person will start and say whatever name they want. And it continues.
• There are a million other games that are the same premise as that. Go around the car and name movies that start with A. Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Amadeus, Annie, Austin Powers, As Good as it Gets…until everyone runs out and the last one to name one gets a point. Then continue alphabetically. You can also play with music artists or books or whatever you please. My dad made up this terrible, typical dad game. We had to go around naming songs that mention animals. That is how desperate we got on that never ending car ride. It made for some good laughs and memories, though.
• If you are really desperate for a car game, adults love to play “I’m going to a picnic and I’m bringing…”.

When I’m in a car for too long, I get a little brain dead and I think everything is funny. Or, as Hye Sung says, I’m just “easily impressed”. Either way, I always have good family time on long car rides. Everyone does. Whether we’re talking or singing or playing stupid games, we’re laughing and having fun. Even though you might think car rides with the fam are boring and frustrating, try to talk about or listen to or do something that everyone likes and you might actually find that you make more memories in the car than you do when you arrive at your destination. Crazy, huh?

Drive safely.

Posted in Callie, Driving