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| A cage for carrying 4 kids and their overwhelming boredom for thousands of miles. |
In the late 1980's my parents decided to load up the
four of us and take an epic trip to the homeland of my father's tribe, Florida. Not Miami or Orlando or anywhere of interest, hillbilly swamp Florida, Where it rains every day and the people still think they didn't loose the civil war so much as were sold out by coward generals. It is the part of the south that makes you wonder if the north fought a little bit too hard for that particular chunk of ground. But blood is thicker then gasoline as they don't say, so we were off on an epic road trip. They were, and still are - by most accounts, keeping Florida on the
other side of the country from Utah. That meant we were in for a very
long drive. We had an old pick up truck a cab over camper and nothing
but time so we headed off into the sunrise on our trip. The trip was
so long and eventful I will have to break it up over a few posts so
as not to milk it dry in one fell swoop. My dad really likes to drive
and will do anything to be behind the wheel putting down miles. So
all we had to do was entertain ourselves for 8 hours at a stretch
until we needed gas, He was from the 'ram it home' more then the
'stop and stretch' school of travel. One time he went to New Zealand and drove thousands of miles there, which is a harder trick in New Zealand. Usually one could pass time with
a nap or a look out the window, a game I enlivened by picking a bug
or rock chip and pretending it was a reticule and aiming at and
shooting everything. After that was used up I would start to annoy
one of my siblings, just to have something to do. Then we would fight
something would break or someone would cry and it would be over for a
bit and we could nap or look out for a bit more.
