The Easy Riders

By Chris O''Malley

It's drive time at the O'Malley household. About now, perhaps as you're reading this, my wife Nancy and I are in the van heading north on I-95 with our three children (ages 3 to 10) on our annual trek to Grandma's house in New Jersey--a kiddie cosmos away from our home in South Florida. And we won't stop there. Gluttons for punishment...er, family togetherness, we'll soon leave Grandma's and head for the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the rocky coast of Maine. And we love it. Except for the parts we don't.

For parents like us with demanding full-time jobs that often consume days and evenings--Nancy is an elementary-school teacher and I write (but usually about somebody else)--the annual drive can be an especially rewarding opportunity to spend some captive-audience time with our kids. It can also be a challenging time, as most parents know too well ("We there yet?" "He's touching me!"). For reasons I don't fully comprehend, since I'm not fond of driving and do all of it, I actually look forward to this two-day, 1,300-mile sojourn. Perhaps it's simply a change of pace from my frequent-flyer life-style. For Nancy, who doesn't travel much, I suspect it's a refreshing combination of getting out of the house/classroom or maybe the sustained euphoria from school's being out for the summer.

Euphoria, of course, is a fleeting thing for a family of five locked inside a speeding vehicle (for the record, always within posted state limits). And like most families, we are a diverse group. Our eldest, Emily, is blissfully inclined toward reading, crafting and almost any do-it-yourself project. Six-year-old Zack is apt to need outward stimulation--like playing arena football in the car. And Abby, our toddler in tow, is still of an age when keeping the eyes busy and the stomach full is the best you can reasonably hope for when sleep won't come.

So we have the familiar characters, ready to play out their traditional family road-trip roles. But we have something that significantly alters the plot: a technology-laden vehicle, in which, for hours at a time, our kids can forget they're traveling at all. Rather than opt for another minivan or sport-utility vehicle when we went car shopping a couple of years ago, we followed the lead of a neighbor (who drives to Connecticut every summer) and bought a luxury liner, better known as a conversion van, custom-outfitted for long road trips. Among its many perks: two stereos, a TV and a VCR.

Our GMC Savana is bigger than a Chevy Suburban but smaller than a Winnebago, and there's nothing mini about it--especially since the Explorer Van conversion company got through with it. It's a full-size van with a raised roof so you can easily move about the wood-clad cabin. Its sheer size gives you an enviable advantage over just about anything else on the road--personal space. Its two rows of captain's chairs and a rear bench seat mean the kids are rarely within reach of one another. Which, of course, is how sibling love flourishes on lengthy excursions.

Then there's the audio-video setup I like to call our car theater. With a TV and VCR perched above the roomy passenger area, the stage is set to keep our crew merrily mesmerized for hours. It's rare that you can pick up a decent TV signal in a moving vehicle, but videos look as clear as they do at home. That's probably a good thing, since we're necessarily in full control of what they watch. We supplement a small library of store-bought videos (including a few never-before-seen titles to ensure maximum attention) with movies and programs recorded from TV. This year, prior to departure, we taped Abby's morning tube routine (Barney, Arthur, Blue's Clues, etc.) to get her off on the right traveling foot each morning. Ditto for the elder kids' video faves, which tend to be less enlightening fare (though Flubber has much to teach us about physics, no?).

At first, having the kids watch TV for hours in the car felt a little bit like cheating--but only a little, and not for long. Much as we'd like to believe our children would be content for hours reading the abridged Jane Eyre, nothing keeps them in good spirits the way some not-so-classic kid vid does. And our results speak for themselves. For successive summers, we've trekked nearly the entire Eastern seaboard with three small children and exactly zero major fighting or crying episodes (not counting Dad's getting stuck in D.C. traffic).

Our mobile-entertainment center will give us some other options to pursue as the kids get older too. It's got room for a Nintendo system, which I've resisted even at home in favor of allegedly more thought-provoking computer games, and a second stereo system in the rear so that the relentless strains of 'N-sync won't drive the old folks up front 'N-sane. Happily, there's a headphone jack near every seat for music and games as well as TV. On this trip, all passengers will be issued a pair of headphones as they enter the van to minimize the chance that Dad might rip Barney and his chirpy friends from the VCR and toss them into Chesapeake Bay.

Such creature comforts aren't cheap. Our van cost about $35,000 and has a Big Gulp thirst for gas. But since posh minivans and sport-utility vehicles were dragging us into that price zone anyway, we tacked another year onto the loan and got the full deal, including a built-in cooler (great for cold drinks) and leather seats (great for when you spill cold drinks) and haven't regretted the decision for a minute.

We don't rely entirely on our vehicle's hardware, however. In addition to frequent rations (steadfastly inverting the FDA nutrition pyramid), Nancy employs a clever bag of goodies to keep the peace. About a month before our trip, she begins collecting small toys and games--a deck of cards here, a cache of toy soldiers there--and wraps them as presents to dole out whenever backseat warfare appears imminent. We're going retro this year with Viewmaster reels, portable Parchesi, Mr. Potato Head and other childhood relics that our digitized kids find oddly intriguing.

Which is not to say we aren't eager to put our travels in neutral once in a while. I confess I'm not (yet) the adventuresome sort of Dad who delights in the detours of his family vacation. But I'm learning. Last year we stopped in Virginia to see relatives, the year before in Savannah,Ga., to explore its charms. This year we'll take the time on Day Two to putter about the nation's capital for an afternoon, in part to prove to Emily and Zack that important documents existed before inkjet printers. And Nancy and I will sneak away to Manhattan for a night. (It's important to give the grandparents some quality time chasing the children.)

But it's our two-week "cooling-off period" in New England that constitutes the bulk of our family vacation. Since we breathe only conditioned air during the summer in Florida, the biking and hiking and swimming and antiquing up north provide a refreshing antidote for us all. We've found that splitting up now and then can make for a better family holiday. Dad and the older kids revisited a mountaintop last summer, for example, while Mom and toddler opted for the lake. This year Nancy would like to do more outlet shopping, a sure way to get me to volunteer to take charge of the kids.

As much as is practical, we try to give the kids a voice in what we do, especially now that Emily can read a map. Invariably, that includes amusement parks like Storyland and Clark's Trading Post in and around New Hampshire's White Mountain National Forest. Given the chance, though, they opt for some of the more natural wonders of the region. Not surprisingly, they seem to take extra enjoyment from outings of their own choosing; at least they can't whine about being dragged there.

As for me, merely sitting on the back porch at night and being serenaded by the babbling stream adjacent to our rustic rental seems reward enough for endowing the kids with a summertime to remember. Provided, of course, that I don't think about the long ride home.