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Are We There Yet?
Posted at 5:05 AM on October 22, 2009
by Dale Connelly
(23 Comments)
Today we launch our Fall Member Drive at Radio Heartland, which is important moment in the Fundraising Year - it's the beginning of the on-air portion of our effort to pay the bills. Quiet work has been underway since the year began on July 1, but now it breaks into the open with a big first day to get things going - we hope to hear from 3,000 individuals today, and when we do, the Member Challenge Fund will release an extra 30,000 dollars for MPR's programming budget.
Thanks if you have already made your contribution.
Double thanks if you've become a sustaining member. That provides an element of budget stability. The more sustainers we have, the shorter the drives become.
Short drives. That's a worthy goal whether you're talking about membership or just piling the family into the car for a trip to grandma's house. We all get a little impatient after the first few miles and are anxious for the ordeal to be over. The difference between the member drive and a family vacation to Yellowstone is that in the member drive, you actually CAN do something to shorten the trip, so consider being a sustainer.
The longest family car trip I ever had was the move we made from Montrose, New York to Decatur, Illinois in the summer of 1967, when I was 12 years old. Two cars. Four people. Two dogs.
One of the dogs was Boltar, a 210 pound St. Bernard. It was my job to sit with him in the (covered) back of a pick-up truck, just to watch over him and keep him calm.
He was a good, good dog with bad, bad breath. Ohio was endless.
What's your most memorable long-distance car trip?
Comments (23)
I drove all the way from Clarks Grove, in Southern MN, to Emmaus, PA, in Eastern PA, which was a little longer than the drive you mentioned, Dale. I did it by myself with no dog to keep me company. Ohio is a very big state to cross and so is Pennsylvania.
I made the drive to Emmaus as part of a job I had which also involved a lot of driving around the Midwest. I had trouble staying awake and consumed a lot of hard candy which helped me stay awake but wasn't good for my teeth.
When I was 13 and my sister was 10, my folks took us on a three-week trip west, from St. Louis up through Colorado over to California, down through Arizona and eventually home. Unfortunately we took this trip in a wood-paneled station wagon and we followed our short-trip pattern of leaving early early early (read 5 a.m.) so my dad could drive in relative peace and quiet. The combination meant that my sister and I slept in the back of the station wagon, through ALL of the driving. The photo album for that trip is filled with photos of my sister and I, bleary-eyed and impatient, in front of some gorgeous, memorable vista: The Grand Tetons, The Great Salt Lake, The Grand Canyon. Still makes me laugh thinking of it!
Yes, Dale, that is how you pronounce Emmaus
oh Sherrilee, was your dad of German heritage? my dad was like that too - task oriented. get this trip done :-) ha, ha
Jim, it'd be my worst nightmare to travel for work (did in W. Virginia and it was always exciting - but not too much fun)
Dad and Mom took us to see their friends in Chicago and Michigan when we were quite young (2 and 8) driving from s. MN to the other side of Lake Michigan and we took a huge ferry across the lake - at night, but with no sleeping arrangements. (it was very difficult for Dad to be on vacation, let alone spending money left and right) think that was a long night for my parents..
best of luck in the pledge drive - nice ot hear your voice Joanne - hope we rake it in today.
We also took a trip that started early, and the time 2am sticks in my head, but seems ridiculous-maybe 4am?.
My brother and I got the cool idea to sleep in the car the night before, so as to not have to get up and go at that hour. Very exciting stuff!
We could not have driven for an hour when the fanbelt broke, and my dad called somebod he knew in that town who knew somebody with a garage who came down to open up and get us fixed up.
People used to do things like that then.
And for the record, both my parents are German-maybe that is why I procrastinate so much, still rebelling.
How about playing Take Me for a Ride in Your Car (car)? I think Woody Guthrie wrote and recorded it, but my memory is of Peter, Paul and the late, great Mary Travers singing it for kids.
Thanks
Greetings! Our longest car trip was driving from Green Bay, WI to Washington, DC when I wss 12 or so with only a few of my 6 siblings. We visited my aunt/uncle and their family in Fairfax, VA.
Being of German heritage, my father gave me the task of keeping track of mileage, where we were on map, etc. Long, hot and boring nevertheless. Although we had great fun and got to see our lovely capitol -- to this day I detest long car rides.
My dad was a fishing enthusiast so our family trips were almost always spent at lakes in Minnesota or Ontario. I think I was 7 the first time we drove to Black Duck. It was probably only a 10 hr. drive from NW IA, but at that age, it seemed never ending. Thinking back, the nights before our trips were long too. I was so keyed up about getting to go somewhere, I hardly slept. I know this is not very fascinating, but it's all I've got this morning. I used up a motherlode of energy posting multiple times yesterday.
GO MEMBERSHIP DRIVE!
to be fair to the Germanic folks - first Hub (no German in him) and i, in 1967, decided to do the "Circle Tour" around L. Superior for our honeymoon. i think we made it around in less than two days :-) mostly making time to get somewhere in Canada w/ TV reception so that he could watch (i think the last) "Fugitive" episode. don't think we stopped to see much - i remember craning out of the car window to see the Soo Locks - ha, ha! but finally got to tour Sioux St. Marie and surroundings a couple summers ago, with second Hub.
My family did a 2 week trip to the east coast/New England when I was about 10. Lots of driving in a vaguely air conditioned car - my brother had just gotten his driver's permit and did a lot of the driving when we were out in the country. There was a lot of visiting of graveyards (and sometimes libraries) as part of what we were doing was tracing the family tree. Though in that trip we did find out that there was a founding aunt in the family who successfully defended herself in the Massachusetts witch trials...(not Salem, but not too far away).
I grew up (in the early 1960's) on the island of Madagascar and remember traveling across the island on 1-2 day trips. There were eight of us in a small station wagon, no AC, few paved roads, picnic lunches along the way. Often a bridge would be washed out and we would wait for days – or the locals would ferry us across the river on a makeshift platform on canoes.
Very fond memories. To this day, I stlll love getting in the car and heading out on a long drive.
we do a lot of long car trips. la to minneapolis. nyc to minneapolis, banff jasper to minneapolis, all non or virtually non stop and a regular trip to orlando with the munchkins to see mickey and the gang.
last year was memorable because we had 5 drivers (bless the 20 year old kids they are finally good for something)and the driving rotation became tolerable. one was the sons significant other and she held off on her turn in the driving rotation until 2 am when we were going through the winding mountain roads coming into chatanooga she had been in the drivers seat about 5 minutes with my son riding shotgun and me behind him in the van when the passangers front window imploded leaving little bb's of glass all over my son and his significant other completely freaked out. it was 2am, about 30 degrees on a beautiful december morning and there was an agenda with a florida arrival in precisely 10 hours. we ended up buying one of those blue tarps and a coupel rolls of duct tape to get us down the road 50 miles at a pop until the tape would pull loose and we would pull off and re tape on down the raod until we got to florida at 8 am or so when it warmed up to 70 degrees or so. we arranged to have the window fixed in the parking lot as we pulled into the motel and had a memorable event to file away for story telling occasions exactly like this. thanks for the opportunity
go membership drive
The long family car trip took place when I was about five, from western Wisconsin to southern California. The agenda was Yellowstone and Disneyland, but when we got to Yellowstone, there had been a heavy June snowstorm, and we were turned away due to impassable roads.
Somewhere in the flat middle of the country, we stopped at a cafe for lunch. I was carrying a small red and black stuffed zebra, and left it behind in the booth. As our car was pulling out of the parking lot, a man came sprinting out of the restaurant and flagged us down, waving the zebra. Crisis averted.
I kept that zebra and repurposed it as a Christmas decoration, so I think of that man and that little kindness at least once a year. Had we gotten more than a half a mile or so from the restaurant before I missed the zebra, there would have been no going back - I had one of those German dads too.
Good morning, all.
Completed my contribution online!
Took quite a few car trips in my younger yezrs. Drove to San Antonio for my brother's wedding with my Dad. I don't think we said more than a dozen sentences to each other the whole time. (I was an angsty teen.) I remember Dad waking me up at 3am because he'd heard that there was an ice storm coming and he couldn't sleep. He said, "You rolled over, so I thought you were awake. Anyway...let's get moving."
Then I drove to visit my brother in Montgomery, AL. Car broke down in Paducah, KY but not a major problem. The trip back, I left at 8:30am, a good early jump. When I hit Bloomington, IL, I was looking for a hotel but they were all booked up. Tried all around the area but there was some big convention going on and there were literally no hotel rooms available. By the time I hit Eau Claire, I pulled over at a rest stop and passed out for a couple of hours. I got back to Duluth by about 11am the day after I left. I called my Mom at work to give her an update. She said, "Where are you now?" I said, "In the living room." Pause. "You mean ~our~ living room? You mean you drove all that way in -one night-??? Are you crazy????" Etc, etc, etc.
ah, long car trips...
as a kid, my trips with the family were usually from sioux falls up to our lake superior cabin. i have fond memories of us four kids taking turns in the "way back" and riding our bikes up to the local drugstore before leaving to stock up on candy for the long trip--giant sweettarts and black cow suckers were popular for being long-lasting.
more recently, my drive from the twin cities to kanab, utah, was a long one, just me and the cat....kind of exciting, and made bearable by books on CD.
now that i'm here, i like driving more than i ever have before, because everywhere i go is mile after mile of beautiful, interesting scenery!
have a great day, dale, barb, donna, cynthia, et al..
this is such fun readhing, folks - thanks!
and thanks to Dale and Mike for giving us this great communityj
yeah, GO MEMBERSHIP DRIVE!!
Backatcha Kay!
I met a girl in a Minnesota college who moved back to New Jersey. As I could not possibly have lived without her, a mutual friend and I decided to drive after her.
Somewhere near Ohio, I learned that our '49 Ford belonged to my friend's brother who "..probably will be OK with us borrowing it."
I also learned that it would be better if we didn't ever turn the car off because the informal "borrowing" meant that we didn't have the keys and the ignition was sort of uncertainly wired.
So we drove, nonstop, to northern NJ, through a snowstorm that moved East at exactly the same speed as our car.
I stayed East for a time. My co-pilot returned alone. Decades later, I married another, and he and the girl became a couple.
The coolest car trips my family took were to Colorado, and I think our trips were similar to Sherilee's, without the station wagon.
My most memorable, tho', was a solo trip in October 1976 from Brooklyn, NY, where I was leaving a bad (but blessedly brief) marriage. I had stuffed my first VW van (the Type 2) with all my belongings and 3 frightened cats. I got to drive through the Pennsylvania and Ohio forests at the height of their glory -- as Jim said, very big states to cross, but that time it was fine.
OMG, I just heard my voice on RH doing my thing for membership -- I just hope it helps people join. Why do we always hate the sound of our own voice?
During the summer between 9th and 10th grade, my parents, my 17 year old sister and I took a 30 day car trip. We drove from Minneapolis to San Antonio, then across Arizona and Nevada to southern California, then up the coast to Oregon, returning back home through Montana and North Dakota. We visited several relatives and saw lots of beautiful sights.
It could have been a great trip. Except that on day 2, about mid-Missouri, my dad announced to all of us that he had quit his job the day before we left.
What was he thinking? Maybe he thought mom would have to react civilly, cooped up as we all were in the mid-sized Buick. (He was wrong). Let's just say it was a quiet ride, with a lot of notes passed in the back seat.
In retrospect, it turned out to be the best decision of his career. Because he left a high stress, very demanding job, he was able to travel and never worked full time again. Since he died in his mid-60's, it was like he got an early, unplanned retirement.
But man, that was a very long 30 days.
Oh no! I missed your boardcasted message, Joanne. Do you think we can get Dale to use it again?
I also heard myself. I didn't think that mine would be used because I kind of mumbled. Maybe it worked because I used Jim Ed's name in the message and I sounded a little like one of the funny voices that he created. I guess that's okay since I said the blog comentators are, in a way, replacements for Jim Ed.
Thanks Jim and Joanne for your fine testimonials. I will be using them again, but not until next week. I'm taking tomorrow (Friday) off to deal with some family issues, though with the co-operation of JASPER and Mike Pengra it will sound like I'm in the studio, just as it did during the week I was on vacation.
I also have some nice comments from Barbara in Robbinsdale that I hope to prepare for use next week too - I simply ran out of time.
Anyone can record a message for this drive or the next one, or for any time inbetween. Call (651) 290-1515 and follow the directions.
And what great stories. It IS a fun group, and it's great to hear from some people whose posts we don't get to read every day, like Bill in Wi, Lisa and John Borge.
Thanks all!
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