The first family road trip that I can remember was in 1984. My parents loaded my brother and me up into an old truck with a camper shell on the back, and we went to Yellowstone. That was the first, and thus far, only time I’ve ever been to that park. I don’t have a lot of memories of that trip, since I was only four at the time, just a few vague recollections of riding in the camper top, sitting in a mechanic’s office when the truck broke down, and maybe a couple of other random fragments. Like I said, I was four.
Over the years, we took a lot more road trips. Never again in that truck, but my parents bought a first-generation Ford Aerostar minivan and towed a twenty-foot Komfort trailer to the Grand Canyon, Pismo Beach, and a variety of other places until 1993. Then they traded the Aerostar for a full-sized Econoline E150, and we went to Alaska. After that trip, the Komfort got traded for a bigger trailer which would be more capable of dealing with a bunch of hungry teenage boys. The family road trip was an annual highlight that only ended for me when the van dropped me off at college in 1997.
I haven’t made nearly as many road trips as an adult, though there have been a few. I love them, there have just been job issues. The last one I took was in 2015, navigating my heavily loaded Saturn Vue from Seattle to Sioux Falls in the big family move. That wasn’t an especially fun trip. I was alone, I had a deadline, and my car was so filled with stuff that I could barely see out the passenger side windows.
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| My one photo stop, somewhere in Montana, on the way to South Dakota. |
But now things are changing. Like I said in yesterday’s vlog, this week I’m off to PAX South, and for the very first time, I’ve got a buddy with me. I’d promised the kids for years that they could start coming with me to PAX when they were thirteen. Why thirteen? Because that’s the age when the convention lets them do their own thing, and not require they have an adult present at all times.
I’m excited. It’s a chance to introduce my favorite convention to Mini-me. It is, I hope, the start of a running tradition that will see a growing crew attend a PAX event every year for a good long time. For this year, it should also be the start of some more meaningful road trips. We’ve got a long way to go, and a short time to get there (as the song says) but there should be time for a few short stops along the way. Mini-Me has never been to Texas before. I’ve never been through Austin, or spent any amount of time in Dallas. I’m looking forward to an exciting trip.