Remembering a roadtrip with Dad

Back in the day, I was heavily involved in the motorcycle industry. You may have heard of Florida’s world famous annual event, which is a crazy mix of long-haired Harley riders, their distant brethren enthroned on their Japanese technology, and the reason we were there: the clean-cut motocrossers.

Toss in the fact that Spring Break kicks in at the same time and you have to admit — what’s not for a 60-year-old curmudgeon to love?

It was March 1986.

The Boyfriend and I (who would become The Husband and eventually The Ex-Husband) were heading to Florida to recruit riders, to make new connections and to renew old ones in the world of motocross.

Recently out of university, we finally had a vehicle that would make the trip — a 1984 Mini Ram Van. New-to-us just a few months before, it was a cargo version of the Caravan, Chrysler’s wildly successful first foray into the minivan world.

It featured a 2.2 L, four-cylinder engine with a four-speed manual transmission.

It also featured no back seats, and no rear side glass. This was not a passenger vehicle.

Our first job? We made foam couches for the back, with very snazzy race-inspired covers.

Voilà —passenger vehicle. A totally illegal, crazily not-safe passenger vehicle. A little tongue-and-groove panelling finished the interior off nicely.

Of course, all of these things seemed to make perfect sense when paired with our next decision. We asked my parents if they wanted to come along. My mother said yes. Just like that. My father squinted into the interior of the van, and asked where he would sit.

I pointed to the passenger seat — The Boyfriend and I would trade driving, my mother would be sentenced to pitching around in the back for the whole trip, and one of us would alternate joining her.

My sister Roz pulled me aside.

“Do you remember going to Saskatchewan?” she asked.

“Well, yeah.” We’d been twice, and slowly, like someone who has suffered heavy trauma, snippets of memory flashed.

Flying past motels late into the night as my father pushed for one more mile before stopping, homemade sandwiches instead of restaurants, pee breaks as rare as hen’s teeth and my father blindly reaching backwards with his right arm to make us behave.

I stared at Roz. “What have I done?” I sobbed quietly.

The scenery throughout the northeastern part of the United States is really beautiful.

The highway ribbons through verdant forests, straining up one side of a mountain, screaming down the other. Truck run-off lanes remind you just how fast you can actually get barrelling down that mountain. Or, your father can tell you. Repeatedly.

There were few highway access gas stops in this part of the trip. Coupled with the fact that the whole region shuts down at 5 p.m., it made judging the trek a little tricky. Ever conscious of a limited budget, the plan was to travel as we always did — driving straight through and sleeping when we got somewhere.

This had been gently explained to Dad, who in essence quite liked it (after all, this is a man who took only five-minute breaks, even when he was doing all the driving). But he had apparently changed his ways when I wasn’t looking.

He kept looking at the gas gauge. He kept asking when we should stop to eat. He kept frowning at the temperature gauge. He kept telling me when to shift. We finally threw him in the back so he could torment my mother.

Highway signs would indicate a town, but not how far off the beaten path it was, nor if the gas station closed down at dinnertime. We made several futile forays down country roads, with co-pilot Al informing us we’d screwed up.

We hit a snowstorm in Georgia — a true sign, as if we needed one, that this was a Roadtrip From Hell. Now I got lessons in driving in snow. And told when to shift.

We reached Tallahassee after 24 hours of pure torture, and headed to hotel rooms without even discussing the “we’re not married, will my father kill us for sharing a room?” issue.

A new day always brings new hope. Rested, we headed down to Daytona, marvelling at all the motorcycles magnetically brought to this mecca. Actually, for many of the Harleys, it was more trailer than magnet, but I wasn’t going to tell any of them they should consider a more reliable bike.

With my father a little settled, we gave him back the front seat.

He didn’t know where to look first the leather-clad bikers flying their colours, or the little Spring Break tartlets barely clothed and rarely sober.

Oh forget it. He knew exactly where to look.

While the Daytona Supercross was a hit (my father, late in life, had finally found a sport he loved that didn’t involve killing things), most of the rest of the week was a rerun of every driving holiday of my childhood. Every agonizing moment.

Each night, we had to eat at the same Sizzler. Sizzlers are a kind of eating contest of bad food. But Dad decided he liked it, and nobody had the energy to fight. The fact my British mother couldn’t get a decent cup of tea (“you want hawt tea?”) was pushing her to the brink, though she was stoic and adapted nicely.

The Boyfriend and I discussed the trip back, understanding that apparently any bliss on the trip down had been due to our ignorance. The return loomed like a black storm. I looked over at this man who I loved fiercely, who had raised me in his own image in so many ways.

And drove to the Daytona airport.

Lorraine Sommerfeld appears Thursdays on Wheels.ca. lorraineonline.ca