Hitting the Open Road in "The Hulk"

We took our first road trip in The Hulk this summer. The Hulk, in case you don’t recall, is the kids’ affectionate name for our 12-seat passenger van. No, it’s not painted green with purple tires. Yet. 

Pulling out of the driveway all loaded down felt like leaving harbor in the Titanic. It seemed a little unnecessary for the neighbors to blow an air horn as we drifted down the street. I probably didn’t need to christen The Hulk before leaving though either...

Despite having more than double the cubic storage of the old minivan, we were still packed to the windows. Churchill said, “the price of greatness is responsibility.” I guess the price of children is superfluous luggage. 

Due to the Titanic proportions of The Hulk, each kid is currently adjacent to an empty seat. This is a luxury to be sure, but a fantastic bonus to traveling in a bus. And you think I’m joking, but we pulled up next to one of those short buses and The Hulk was longer by almost a foot. 

The harmony inside The Hulk, afforded by additional personal space for each kid, wholly offsets all the angry drivers outside the van flipping us the bird for going 65 in the right lane on the toll road. It felt kind of how I imagine riding a lumbering elephant in front of a never ending line of tardy cheetahs might feel.

We haven’t done much family travel so I wasn’t sure what the rules of the road would be for taking breaks. Since the drive was going to be a little over four hours, I figured we’d have to make a potty break at least once. Perhaps it’s because my passengers are 6:1 male, or perhaps it’s because my kids are dehydrated, but there was no stereotypical, “I have to go to the bathroom,” situation. 

Actually, we had to incentivize them to go potty by offering the choice of snack at the convenience store once they went because no one wanted to go. This was partly due to the rocket engine hand dryers in the place we stopped. You could hear these things lifting off in the bathroom the second you walked inside. A great deterrent to potty breaks. 

We managed to get everyone in and out and back on the road within 15 minutes and I was feeling good -- until I realized we forgot one of the kids at the rest stop. 

Just kidding. We sounded off to make sure everyone was accounted for, buckled, and armed with their snack of choice and headed on. I had a baseball game on the radio for most of the ride, but Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down” was playing in my head the whole time. 

We took a ferry to get to our destination and I highly recommend never doing this. Don’t get me wrong, the kids thought it was great. They saw barges, dolphins, and the vast inefficiency of the Department of Transportation. But squeezing The Hulk into the narrow outside lane on a ferry that looks only slightly larger than the van, on choppy waters, after being cooped up for four hours is just too much like being a sardine for me. Well, a sardine in a really big can. 

We made it across the water, to our destination, and had a great time. The Hulk performed admirably and fulfilled the two most important expectations of any vehicle: it fit the stuff we needed to bring and it got us there and back. And with extra legroom.