I spend a lot of time in my car in the summer. I love a good weekend road trip. Once a year I take my nephews on an adventure with me. Last month I took them up north to escape the balmy Florida heat. We headed up the highway to do some sightseeing and some camping.
When you're young, car trips are boring. Even more so for today's kids. I get it. Remembering last year - the more bored they get the more irritable I get - I decided to do a little pre-emptive shopping this year. I picked up some Things that (I hoped) would distract them so I could drive without hearing that age-old lament, "Are we
there yet?"
Boom boxes might seem a bit Old School for the millennial generation, but with a built in television and Bluetooth connectivity
this one is
Da Bomb. It handled every kind of media they could throw at it - from MP3s to DVDs to SD cards packed with movies. It was their favorite of all the Things I picked up for them, including the
mini arcade games, the ever-poopular
fart machine, and the book of
Spock's Logic Puzzles (okay, maybe that last Thing was for me).
The open road isn't
all fun and games and our summer trips are the perfect way to teach my nephews about road safety. Before we leave, we go through a checklist to make sure we have all the Things we need if our trip north suddenly goes south. Besides an
all-purpose emergency tool, jumper cables, and
emergency batteries, you need more than one good flashlight. This year I added the
Tac Light to my emergency kit. With about 40 times the brightness of a regular flashlight, this Thing can turn night into day. Thankfully, I haven't had to use it for an emergency, but I did hang it from a branch at our campsite so I could see what I was cooking.
With safety taken care of, there's no reason Uncle Bobby can't have some fun in the car, too. And what's more fun than a
Duck Butt sticking out the back window? It attaches with suction cups, so you can easily detach it as the situation demands. For example, when you're at the campsite and your car is surrounded by live ducks who look at you sort of sideways and your nephews worry that maybe the real ducks don't find your little joke all that funny. Maybe that's a good time to stow the butt. Especially if you don't want to wake up to a truck covered in bird guano...
See you on the open road,
Bobby
