Back before coeducation, U.Va. gentlemen would travel to far-flung women's colleges to meet girls. Nowadays, you have to join the Engineering School just to avoid them. But while sexism has vanished on Grounds, one tradition that lives on is the college road trip.
Road tripping was invented in the seventh century B.C. as a replacement for the less popular activity known as "not road tripping," in which people would not go on a road trip. Shortly thereafter roads were invented, and things really started to get going.
Examples of landmark road trips in history include the first medieval pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and the flight of the von Trapp family to Switzerland. Most experts agree, however, that road trips are more fun when you aren't being chased by Nazis.
As any good textbook on road tripping can teach you, road trips are classified by three measures of excellence: sweetness, crucialness and epicness. A lot of schmoes out there think that just because their road trip was epic it was also crucial and sweet. Not so. In my time I've seen unsweet, uncrucial epic road trips more often than I've seen sweet, unepic semi-crucial ones. Think about that schmoe.
When you're a college student, whether you're going home for a family reunion, driving up to D.C. for a convention on globalization or crossing into Canada to smuggle booze back into the U.S., road tripping is always good, wholesome fun.
Of course, there is a right way and a wrong way to road trip, and the rules and guidelines are copious. I had the opportunity last weekend to take a road trip of my own and discovered just how important following the rules of the road trip is.
The first thing I had to do before setting out was round up the kids. Of course, there were no actual children involved in this road trip, but I had to refer to my companions as kids so that I could use the term "round up the kids." You can't say "round up the companions," as that sounds stupid. See, it's all very straightforward.
Similarly, as soon as we piled into the car we started chanting, "Vegas, baby, Vegas!" We did this though fully aware of the fact that Las Vegas was thousands of miles away from the nearest point in our itinerary. But "Vegas, baby, Vegas!" is yet another set phrase in the road trip lexicon.
Delicious snacks are essential to a good road trip. I recommend foods that are both tasty and healthful, such as ... I recommend cookies. No matter how many cookies you pack, though, you will at some point need to stop and grub.
Being out on the road, you get acquainted with all sorts of fast food eateries. One piece of advice I have is that Taco Bell's menu is pure nonsense. The item names are all preposterous conflations of Spanish-sounding words that befoul the very essence of Mexican food. I still eat there because it's cheap and convenient, but that doesn't mean I don't get embarrassed when I have to ask for "one 'Double-decker baja enchi-chicken stuffed cheesma-rito supreme.'"
I imagine the executive chef at Taco Bell has a lot of fun spitting out different permutations of the same six ingredients at board meetings. "How about this: Bed of lettuce. Meat. Tortilla. Bed of lettuce --"
"Fred, I hate to interject, but you already said, 'Bed of lettuce.' Are you starting over or --"
"No, idiot. This dish has two beds of lettuces. That's why it's called the 'Iceberg-rito fiesta.' Dummy."
Another cool thing about road trips is the car games. My new favorite is called, "Uncontract the Contracted Words in the Song Lyrics." You haven't lived until you've sung a chorus of Journey's "Do Not Stop Believing." Anyway, that game is a whole lot safer than my old favorite, "See How Long the Driver Can Keep His Eyes Closed Without Panicking."
If you're in for a long haul, remember to split up the driving evenly. Studies show that energy is maximized if your group sticks to seven-minute shifts. The constant switching of drivers requires flexibility and communication -- or you could do it the "legal" way and pull over.
On my recent road trip I realized that Virginia State Route 3 is exactly one-twentysecond as cool as the fabled Route 66. But I also realized what made the trip crucial and epic: the people. And what made the trip sweet: the cookies.
Dan is a Cavalier Daily Life columnist. His column runs weekly on Tuesdays. He can be reached at dooley@cavalierdaily.com.
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