Top Ten Reasons People Hate Road Trips

Pavement markings on Old Route 66 on on Cajon Blvd. in San Bernardino, California, August 29, 2001. released into the public domain by Philip J. Erdelsky


10. passengers who forgot to shower

9. getting stuck in rush-hour traffic with no juice boxes

8. tacky gift shops at road-side facilities

7. aunts who refuse to eat at any restaurant with the words "road kill" in the name

6. paying $4 per gallon for gas

5. needing a potty break along an isolated stretch of highway

4. getting stuck in the back seat with a four-year-old who is pretending to be a bumblebee

3. drivers who try to stop at restaurants named after road kill

2. glares: sun, spouse, snow, small child

1. that 99 bottles of beer on the wall song


I’m not 100% sure that these are the top ten reasons people don’t like car trips. Personally, I find it really difficult to maintain my temper while in rush hour traffic with an impatient passenger who is angry because we’re lost ( usually this is my fault--I get lost a lot), but refuses to read the road map and also complains when I pull over to read it myself. (OK, this has only happened a few times, but it was not fun for anyone involved.)

I have asked a few people why they don’t like reading maps. Most of them think maps are hard to read. Others are afraid of getting us lost. And, although this might seem weird, many people are afraid of folding maps incorrectly because of some past experience with an authority figure who had rather forceful views on keeping maps as pristine as possible. This experience has a way of making people actually afraid that if they misfold any map under any circumstance, then something very dire and bad will happen to them.

This won’t happen in my car. I really don’t care if my maps get “messed up”…bending, folding and spindling (ok, spindling is less frequent) are all par for the course for a map in use, and frankly, I think the maps should just grin and bear it and stop making people nervous. My friends are good, kind, intelligent people and they deserve better than to be bullied by maps. Unfortunately, early conditioning is pretty powerful—just think about Pavlov’s poor dogs, drooling when they heard a bell, even if they didn’t get any treats.



Celestial map from the 17th century, by the Dutch cartographer Frederik de Wit. Image is in the public domain. I doubt that it was ever folded, bent, spindled or mutilated during a road trip.

When I think of trouble with map folding, I always think of Colonel Parmander of F-Troop. He had a lot of trouble with maps. And, given the number of other problems he had, like the antics that Larry Storch’s character was continually getting up to with the local “Indian” tribe (I don’t mean to be offensive here. This term should be understood as indicating a bizarre Hollywood construction based more heavily on Peter Pan than any actual Native Americans past or present.), you’d think that maps would be the least of his worries. Not so. Apparently, when setting out for battle, much like setting off on a car trip, it helps to know where you’re going.