Togetherness

Hello and welcome to a traveling Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is March 25th.

Our family is on the road, on our way to another robotics regional. Since we’re in the car together for an 8-hour trip, I thought we could write a post together because isn’t that what car rides are about? Togetherness?

Fifth Grader: The Ad-VEN-Ture! (cue dramatic music.) Okay, that’s all I’ve got.

She sits in the way back of the van where she has the entire space to herself. That singular act describes her personality – happy to be by herself, having room ALL to herself. In regular intervals, she quietly munches on the snacks she spent the last two weeks squirreling away specifically for this trip. I hear her voice and when I look back, I see she is supervising an animated conversation between two gummy bears.

Second Grader: This is not a blog post just for me – it’s from our whole family! Except for my older siblings. Today we’re going to La Crosse and we have nine hours ahead of us. That’s a lot! We have two hours and fifty minutes left. We’re almost there! But we need to get there completely. That’s all I’ve got for now.

The Second Grader sits in the middle section right where he likes to be. Whatever his sister’s doing; he wants to do to. If she puts a blanket over her head, he puts a blanket over his head. If she whines about the seatbelt getting in the way while trying to lie down, he whines about his seatbelt and grunts in creative way to express his dismay about how uncomfortable it is to fall asleep in the car with a seatbelt crossing across his chest. “It’s restricting,” he’ll say, touting his authority and assuredness with a big vocabulary. And, lastly, if she nibbles on a gummy bear, he wants a gummy bear, but she reminds him that she brought snacks and he didn’t so that’s his problem.

“MOM!” he bellows. ”She’s not sharing!”

The Husband: I said plenty already. You’re a great person, I love you very much. I have my chocolate from the north, pickles from the south, cheese from the left and the coffee from the right. The only thing that’s missing are my beer and kombucha. Two kids are great. I wonder why we decided to have five kids.

He does most of the driving. I appreciate it. I think it reminds him of his younger days when roadtripping was in his blood and he’d bang out a 1,000-mile “jaunt” in a weekend. This is a guy who seriously considered how to drive from St. Cloud, Minnesota to the Hudson Bay over a Labor Day weekend. “I’ll take Tuesday off just in case.”

An Aside: If the Hudson Bay is on your bucket list, a guy on Reddit said, "Hey man, I'm in Northern Ontario. Here's my advice on what you should do: drive north on 11, go through North Bay up to Cochrane, and take the Polar Bear Express to Moosonee." And because I really went down a rabbit hole on the whole, "Is it possible to drive to the Hudson Bay?" inquiry, here's one guy's 2004 blog post/call-to-action to do the trek with MINI Coopers. (I don't know if he ever made it.) Here's a map created by a Google User showing potential routes to Hudson Bay. And here's all you need to know about the James Bay Road of Northern Quebec. Who knows, maybe WannaskaWriter and Chairman Joe add a stop on their next bottle run!

I offer the Second Grader a few chocolate chips. (From my husband's chocolate-pickles-cheese-coffee stash.) When the Fifter Grader piped up and asked, “Can I have one?” the Second Grader answered on my behalf. “No. You’ve already got a bunch of snacks back there.”

Me: My husband is on to something about the two versus five kids. Normally, a long car ride involves just enough bickering among the children to regret the road trip. But the little 2.0 kid crew of only two kids makes this trip a breeze.

Tomorrow the WAKWIR and Chairman Joe share a birthday. The kid will be 17. Chairman Joe, I'm not sure exactly, but I think you might be able to reverse the WAKWIR's age - and add a few. ;)

That’s all for now from sunny skies, dry roads, and melting snow!