What to do during a 14 hour car ride?

sing TV sitcom songs and fuss about the words. that should hold you about an hour.

Crosswords, Soduko, write some letters, update your calendar, sleep!

movies, movies, movies.

A simple car game (let me see if I can explain this w/out sounding like an idiot. ha!)

A word game.

First person says a letter (e.g. A)
Next person says a second letter, w/ a word in mind that they are spelling (e.g. A-P thinking to self of word apple)
Third person says next letter (e.g. A-P-R thinking of word apron)

etc.

You lose/round ends when a person spells a word. So in example above….third person might have said A-P-E thinking of the word aperture….but b/c APE is a word, they lose.

Get it?

…and if she is really desperate to pass the time, a dose of Benadryl. I am kidding. Sort of.

a) sleep (skip sleep the night before) or take drugs
b) look out the windows
c) listen to the radio
d) read a classic novel.

Read a Cook book so she can cook you nice dinners when she come back :)

Stop and stretch or run around the car several times periodically to avoid loss of circulation and possible amputation of toes or rear end. 14 hours? I shudder.

@gailcalled Try it w/ two preschoolers. fun, Fun, FUN!!!

See how many times you can say, “Are we there yet?’ “Are we there yet?” “Are we there yet?”

Fluther, sleep, repeat.

I LOVE long car & train rides.

@Snoopy; Thanks but I have served my time (and never for 14 hours).

Will she take a turn at the wheel? That breaks things up. Being able to stop and stretch occasionally is a great blessing.

Taking videos (with a Flip?) of the scenery and other cars and trucks on the road, with impromptu commentary, is good for some entertainment. Here are a few other ideas:

—Singing along with CDs, as long as your singing doesn’t incite murderous thoughts in others.
—Memorizing a sequence of words that each person adds to (whether alphabetical or not).
—Counting certain objects and landmarks competitively (first person to spot five bridges, twenty barns, ten green VWs).

And there’s always sleeping.

Sometimes I amuse myself by imagining things for a moment from the point of view of drivers in other cars: who are they, where are they going, how does it feel to be them (knowing for certain that they are the most important person on the road)?

@Jeruba: I’m laughing at your comment about singing, those are exactly the thoughts that arise when my husband sings in the car!

If she’s heading south, Cracker Barrel has (had) a program where you buy a book on tape, and can trade it in, pay $1, and get another book on tape.

When I was a kid, we would take horribly long roadtrips twice a year. I would bring a tape recorder with me, and record the random thoughts , narratives, and song ideas that popped into my head along the way. Some of them made their way into short stories and poems, but some were just goofy, and good for a laugh (or a “what the hell?”) later.
There were 8 of us total, packed into the ugliest station wagon on the face of the planet. The entire trip was spent trying not to drive dad into a homicidal rage, while salvaging as much personal space as possible.

Get a cellphone that has IM and Facebook.. that will keep you entertained for a while.. Also get some tv series and a portable dvd player and watch them all day long.. you can buy one of those charger things at radioshack so the dvd player wont run out of battery!! IPOD for sure… its so sad we need to turn to technology for this, but really, its the only way to survive.

@Perchik, a little more context would be helpful. How many people is she traveling with? How well does she know these people – best friends? Strangers? How much of the trip will she be driving, if any?

The Ass Game…Take a movie or song title that has more than one word in it, and replace one of the words with “Ass”. Hours of fun!!

99 bottles of beer on the wall…

Ah well she’s gone now, but lets see.. these are really good friends. Although she’s volunteered to drive, the three guys would rather drive…so she probably won’t be driving much. I just heard that she slept the first 8 hours so she’s not worried about killing the last 6.

Thanks for your input!

Assuming each verse takes ~7 seconds to sing,
you might want to start with 7,200 bottles of beer.