I’ll be driving to Indiana this upcoming Thanksgiving week. The best part of the drive is the mind games I have to play with myself to make the drive endurable. I like the destination enough, its the road that makes me just a bit batty.
Colorado has a speed limit on the highway of 75, if the roads are dry and iceless then you can do a great jaunt to Kansas.
Kansas is the state that sucks. The most out of the drive. It is like driving across an empty piece of paper that is 410 miles long. There are ruined old shacks sitting in the distant empty fields and porn towns (gas station + adult store with ‘town name’ sign at highway intersection). To make my way through Kansas a little more exciting I’m going to poke my eyes out and drive with cruise control on.
Illi-noise, which is a special state where relatives live, is the dumbest state of speed limits that are falsely low. Instead of the speed of geniuses 75 MPH, they have a speed limit of 5 MPH. I know that doesn’t sound probably, but once you’ve been driving through Kansas at whatever your vehicle will do Illinoys’ 65MPH speed limit seems like a drug induced psychedelic experience of pain. I think I’d prefer to have a porcupine stuck in my shoes when I’m not looking than drive 65 through Illinaise. If you live in Illinoose how fast do you drive on the slow-ways?
Indiana has a speed limit of something I don’t recall. I think its 70. However, since I’m usually exhausted when I’m driving through it it doesn’t matter. I play the game with myself that Indianapolis is about half way through the corn state so that once I’m getting into it or out of it I’ve accomplished something.
What things do you recommend to make the drive more sane?
1) Remember that 65 mph is optimum for gas economy.
2) Take breaks (probably easier said than done with 2 little girls – helps with circulation and breathing and aware/awakeness).
3) Drink some good coffee.
4) Sing to yourself and to the Lord.
5) Enjoy the time the girls are sleeping to talk with your beautiful wife!
6) Drive really, really carefully so you get home!
Love,Mom
1. Occasionally drive long stretches backwards.
2. Out-running coppers can be loads of fun.
3. Children are much better drivers in Kansas then you would think.
6. Listen to an audio book of Anna Karenina
9. Two words: Para-sailing.
maybe while driving thru illinois you could stop and see grammie
FLY
When I used to drive back and forth from Amarillo to Colorado Springs I had a few time passers.
1. The Alphabet Game – Starting with the letter A, go through the alphabet by finding letters on signs, license plates, mud flaps, etc. The hardest letters seem to be J, Q and Z. On long stretches of empty road, this can lose effectiveness.
2. If you’re in traffic. Try to make up phrases from license plates that are not vanity plates. Again, no good on empty road.
3. Try to find a truck that’s speeding. Then tuck in behind it. At 20-40 feet you get 140% your normal gas mileage. (Mythbusters proved it!)
4. So for empty roads (a.k.a. Kansas), do math in your head. Try to figure out how many yards until the next town. Try to figure out how many minutes it would take to get to Indy if you were going 20 mph; 200 mph, etc.
Audiobooks 🙂
A lifelong resident of Kansas, I must agree with your assessment of our landscape. Our weather isn’t much better, to the point that—when we hear the tornado sirens—it is a call to “grab our video cameras and run outside.”
I personally imagine another vehicle averaging exactly 60 mph (which makes it easy to calculate on a clock) and attempt to stay ahead of that particular vehicle from point to point (it keeps me thinking [awake]) while driving. I also like to set my Garmin on French (or whatever) for a bit of a language lesson, to kill some time.
I also believe that any toll booths we have should hand out money to drivers along with the caveat “Sorry about the scenery.” 8-D