Your Vacation Isn't Over Until You Pull in the Driveway

Anyone who's ever made the decision to drive to a far away vacation destination knows that the drive home always seems twice as long as the drive there. But in 2009, when we made our yearly trek to Disney World with our three children, it truly was the never ending journey.

We had spent a very enjoyable week on Disney World property. Having spent a number of years making the trip via our Chevy Suburban, we had the routine down to a science. On the trip down from New York we took off at early evening, allowing the kids to watch a movie and then sleep through the night as we drove, arriving in Florida just as they were waking up for the day. On the return trip, we spent half a day at one of the parks, had a late lunch and started our journey back. We stop on the way once for dinner, and have the kids sleep through the night arriving early morning at our house.

On this particular visit we had picked Typhoon lagoon as our final park visit. The kids had tired themselves happily out on the slides, the wave pool and generally running around. We sat at one of the restaurants lazily finishing our lunch when my husband contentedly said "This was the best vacation ever." I looked at him in horror. "What did you just do?" I asked, "You NEVER say something like that until you pull in the driveway." I sighed "that's it, you've jinxed us."

Jinx aside, we exited Disney World as planned and got on the road on schedule. About a half an hour south of Jacksonville, my husband quietly turned to me "I really don't want to tell you this, but the car isn't accelerating." I luckily had my laptop and a wireless WAN connection and found a Chevy dealership in Jacksonville.

Our exhaust system, particularly the catalytic converter on the car needed to be replaced. The mechanic who could have taken extreme advantage of us, offered to poke holes in the exhaust so that we could make it home and have the exhaust system replaced at a much lower cost. We thanked him and went on our way now an unexpected 5 hours later into our planned drive.

The problem with poking holes in the exhaust system is that it doesn't clear out the building gas, which in turn causes the car to slow to a crawl. In order to vent the system you have to pull to the side of the road and let the gas dissipate. As the evening hours turned to night, the car which could only go 55 mph, would suddenly decelerate, and you would have to pull quickly to the shoulder while trucks zoomed up to your rear bumper and careened past you at 80 mph.

To make matters worse, my husband and I thought we were starting to feel the ill effects of fumes backing up into the car. We felt weak and nauseous and had to pull over to a few rest stops to try and walk around and regroup. The kids thankfully felt no ill effect. Which should have given us a clue right? We went on vacation in May, 2009 when the Swine Flu was at its height. We got almost through Virginia, before my husband couldn't continue to drive or ride for that matter, and stopped in a hotel by the highway. By this time it was morning of the next day, and the kids, who had slept, were now fully recharged and didn't want to be cooped up another minute. My husband became violently ill during the day to which he fondly refers to as "redecorating the bathroom" while I dragged weakly along behind my children as they ran the hotel corridors. My husband managed to get up mid-afternoon to try and resume the trip with me behind the wheel as we sadly limped through the I-95 corridor through Maryland, Washington DC, New Jersey, and FINALLY New York. It was the slowest most painful last leg of a trip I have ever made, wanting desperately to floor the gas, knowing that would have no effect on our dragging Suburban.

We pulled into the driveway around 5 am of the second day of travel (a trip we have always done in 21 hours.) We dragged ourselves into the house and into bed, waking and directing the kids to do the same. We don't talk often of the drive from hell, and we are still willing to drive for short vacation trips. But we do exchange knowing smiles as we shop for airline tickets for more distant vacation spots.