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Soda Splash and Bladder Breathers - Anatomy of
a road trip
Just what is a vacation supposed to be anyway? Webster’s
considers it freedom from regular duties, but if you really think
about it, vacations are anything but free and at least twice the
effort of academics or a regular job.
We’ve all done it. Even making plans for a weekend road-trip
can be an unbelievable task, especially if the trip involves more
than one person.
First, the driver usually sets a preliminary itinerary and establishes
a rough time of departure. The passenger(s) are given an opportunity
to throw some clothes together, pick up some cash, turn in a paper,
or find their wallets.
With luck, two or three hours after the proposed departure time,
the show gets on the road. By the time gas, chips, beer, soda and
cigarettes are purchased and actual travel begins, vehicular speed
must be recalculated to 94.2 mph in order to reach the destination
on schedule. No problem.
After the state trooper drives off, and the sweat drips off your
chin onto the tickets in your hand (inspection stickers are always
expired), intense furor steadily subsides – with a few choice
expletives – into a beaten-helpless state of “law abidance.”
You distinctly remember saying, “see you around dinnertime”
on the phone just a few hours ago and now you must rationalize that
you really meant dinnertime in Tokyo.
Once underway, the passengers rally around the driver and confirm
the officer’s anal retentive personality complex; all but
the one girl in the car who is very silent. She foresaw and repeatedly
forewarned. She knew. Girls always know. Why is that? The remainder
of the trip is usually eventless aside from the occasional bladder
breather or soda splashing.
Sodas splash constantly all over the world, but none are more disconcerting
than the automotive variety. The driver gets a little cocky while
steering and sipping simultaneously and places the soda carefully
between his or her legs in such a manner as to prevent spillage.
I’m not quite sure of the physics involved, whether the motion
of the car, gravity, or the squirming of the driver is responsible,
but the soda, without exception, will spill backwards directly into
the individual’s crotch and continue its trek rearward.
For the driver, all possibilities of a pleasant voyage are destroyed
at this moment. Because of the lives involved, the car will only
swerve a lane or two, followed by spilt Cheetos, more cussing and
a frantic, futile attempt to flick already absorbed soda off an
already saturated, sticky lap.
The bladder breather is distinguished from the conventional pit
stop in that there is no restroom. Invariably some idiot in the
car (quite possibly you) with a bladder the size of a Hackey-Sack,
who insisted he or she had no need for the facilities at the last
gas station but now emphatically states, “I really need to
go … I mean NOW.”
Finding a private, secluded bush alongside a major interstate on
a weekend is an impossibility, forcing the car to the shoulder for
the ol’ “we’re just checking for cargo shifting”
charade for passing motorists. Generally, an open car door will
do for privacy, but female who ordinarily might scream at an apartment
spider will venture like a commando across waist-high thistles in
a swampy, stagnant, arachnid-infested drainage ditch and clamber
over a rusty, tetanus-teeming barbed wire fence in shorts and sandals
to find that perfect potty amongst the rattlesnakes. Always honk
at these people.
In spite of the wet upholstery, doughnut crumbs (you know, those
little white ones which have now turned to paste in the seat), orange
Cheetos dust covering your fingers and the fact that your damp jeans
are now glued to sensitive leg hairs, the post bladder breather
bliss will emotionally carry most motorists on to their destination.
The above scenario – having occurred to me more than once,
and probably to most of you -- prompted me to sell my car and proclaim,
“Never again!” Struck by brilliance, I purchased a large
touring motorcycle to eliminate all traveling headaches.
All automobile headaches that is. First, no passengers. It’s
difficult to find travelers with death wishes. No doughnuts or soda,
unless you can puree the two and suck it through a 27-inch flexi-straw
while driving 75. No seat spillage (no soda). No bladder breathers
(no soda) and no tickets. Cops apparently assume you’re an
eventual road pizza, and a citation would only prolong your fate.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? Freedom, and all that stuff?
After six hours on a bike, your butt goes numb, you’re as
drenched as if you showered in soda, peeing isn’t necessary
because you’re medically dehydrated, and all those bastards
in air-conditioned cars are trying to kill you. I even unintentionally
power-swallowed and insect once. Finally, the damn thing will break
down in Caldwell at a barbeque stand, forcing you to hitchhike to
College Station dressed like a biker thug. It is still there.
After living on a boat for two years, I can tell you marine travel
is no picnic either…
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