Sweet Evil Read-Along: Road Trips

So I just started Sweet Evil today. And finished it.... today. Do you think I have a problem? Wait a minute, don't answer that.

This book is REALLY good. I fell in love right off the bat with just about all of the characters (hi Patti!), and almost beheaded somebody when I got to the end. Why must sequels take so long?!

I will be posting a review of this at some point in time, but I'd better get back to road trips before I create too big of a book rant for me to pull myself out of.

I personally love road trips. They're the one time when my family is either sleeping (hopefully not the driver, but I wouldn't really be surprised) or in a junk food induced coma and are actually quiet enough for me to read. And I mean the kind of reading that lets you tear through books one after another without care for things like bathroom breaks or breathing. I'm drooling just thinking about it.

But everyone has had their fair share of road trips gone horribly wrong, and I am no exception. So every Christmas, my family drives ten hours to Cleveland, Ohio (which just so happens to be the Rock 'n' Roll Capital of the World, thank you very much). For those of you who are unaware, Cleveland is located in the Snow Belt, that area right around the Great Lakes up north. Which means we get a hundred or so inches of snow every year. And it's not nice and fluffy winter wonderland snow all of the time. Oh no, it's more like a sacrifice-your-first-born-to-the-snow-plows-and-rock-salt-or-fear-the-wrath-of-Jack-Frost kind of snow.

Well, at around nine o'clock, we ran into one of those blizzards. The entire interstate was backed up for miles. You couldn't see a single thing, and all of the roads were covered in black ice. It was pretty obvious that we weren't going anywhere. We were stuck in that exact spot for nine hours! And not only does most of my family snore, but I had the pleasure of being the pillow for my dog while sleeping on the floor of the car.

But it's not like I was going to be getting much sleep anyway. Unless we wanted to be trapped there for the rest of our lives, we had to start the car up every half hour so the engine wouldn't freeze over, and then roll the tires back and forth so that they wouldn't be encased in ice by the time we were able to leave. And people say Ohio is boring.



But what is this I see? Slithering through the uninhabited corners of the blogosphere.... It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a GABBY!

Welcome to our very first Double Trouble post, where you have the misfortune of dealing with both of us at the same time. I wish you all the very best of luck. Hopefully we won't scare you so much that you never come back.

Have you ever seen the movie "College Road Trip" with Raven Simone? It about a girl who goes on a road trip (obviously) with her father to the college of her dreams: Georgetown. They have obstacles that try and hinder them from reaching their objective. In the long run, the daughter and father get closer and share a bond which nothing can break. Quite original, huh? Sadly, real life road trips aren't as interesting as Hollywood makes them out to be, but that doesn't make them boring either.

Me? I have had my share of road trips. Every summer, my family and I used to Go somewhere that involved driving.  One year we went to New York, another year we went to Orlando, Florida and yet another year we went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.  The 8 to 14 hour drives were never the most comfortable things ever, but they were always worth it. 

For one,  the trips gave us time together as a family that we otherwise probably wouldn't have had. We were in a four-by-four car stuck with one another, so it was inevitable that we'd talk.  We laughed and joked and had our family time. Granted, we shared dinner every night as a family, but there is just something "binding" about being stuck in a car with three other people for hours on end. 

So my point is that road trips are and can be beneficial. Sure they might be claustrophobic... agonizingly cramped.... and even tiring (it might seem a bit odd to be tired after sitting for 8 hours or more, but trust me, IT IS!!) but all in all, it's worth it. You get to bond with people and you gain a sense of accomplishment in the end.