A few days ago I found myself trapped behind the wheel of my 1988 Toyota Camry for seven hours. In a normal car the drive from Minneapolis to Fargo, ND would only take about three to four hours depending on how much you respect the speed limit. Sadly my good old mechanical baby can't go above 60 mph without risking a breakdown in the middle of the highway so the drive took a little longer than expected. I did a lot of things to try and keep myself occupied during this very long, very flat (thank you North Dakota for the boring landscape) drive.
1: Play I-Spy with yourself. If you grew up with siblings or spent a lot of time in a car you've probably played I-Spy before. It's normally played with two people, however, I modified it to be a single player game. I thought up obscure colors and would attempt to spot something of that particular shade. Obviously, green, blue, yellow, orange, and white were the easiest categories. Pink and purple took the cake for most difficult. It took me 45 minutes to spot a small speckle of pink as I passed by a farm house. Bless that family for allowing their children to play outside with bright pink bikes.
2: Crank your music and belt your heart out. I have a very carefully thought out "Car Jams" playlist that I curated on my Spotify to keep me in high spirits during both long and short car rides. It's important when creating a playlist for your commute to not exclude songs that you'd normally hate. For instance, I have three songs by Meghan Trainor who I'm not a big fan of. But really, no one can resist belting out the lyrics to "No" or "All About That Bass".
3: Memorize an entire musical and put on a one man/woman show. I strongly recommend putting Hamilton on your phone and blasting those beautifully rapped sound waves into your car on repeat until you know every single word and can perform each song and stanza with perfect articulation and emotion. Bonus points if you give the car driving next to you a sneak peak of your own personal number one Broadway hit performance.
4: Play "The Game of Passing. Now, my beautiful car, Bruce, has a speed limit that he cannot surpass. So when the speed limit is 60 mph and Bruce is only willing to go about 47 mph the cars behind me got a little antsy. Luckily when driving through the barren wilderness of Central Minnesota there's not much traffic but it is slightly exhilarating to pretend to be a game show host the moment a car speeds up behind you. Whenever I saw a car I would loudly proclaim "Hello and welcome to the Game of Passing! Will you pass now, when the coast is clear or wait for a passing car to amp up the stakes?" It was always very exciting when a car passed me and by exciting I mean tragic. I mean, guys, I was passed by a semi and a large truck with a slow moving vehicle sign in the window. But making it a game made it a little less depressing. A little.
5: Play "The Population Game". When you're driving on a small, unkempt highway through Minnesota you come across some really, REALLY small towns. To play the Population Game simply guess how many people you think inhabit the town you're passing before you see the population sign. I was pretty good at this; I passed the game with about an 80% average rating. The smallest town I came across had only 55 people in it. While the largest town I drove through before reaching Fargo had about 3,500 people.
6: Practice a language. I've taken Spanish since I was in second grade and you would think that I'd be pretty fluent by this point in my life. I can easily give you random vocabulary words but ask me to conjugate a verb outside of the present or past tenses and I'll just stare blankly at you while my brain freaks out trying to chop flop or place a correct accent mark. I've found that my Spanish comes back to me easily when I'm still awake at 4am or when I'm alone in my car. You can either download an app that'll give you phrases to say in a different language or simply pick out something in the landscape and describe it. I passed by a lot of farms and while I don't know how to say farm I could easily(ish) describe the house, the cars, or the crops in Spanish. I also took to randomly spouting out angry sentences in Spanish whenever birds flew in front of my car.
7: Practice your eyebrow dancing skills. Turn your radio on loud and admire your perfectly fleeked eyebrows in the mirror as you make them dance to the groove of the music. Extra points if you don't crash and die while you're practicing your mad skills. This is an activity best practiced when you're on a long straight road with the cruise control on.
8: Be your own therapist. You're alone in a car. There's no one there to judge you. Start talking to yourself. Talk about the murky things that are clouding your brain and stressing you out. You may only be minoring in psychology but psychoanalyzing yourself and talking through your own problems is a great life skill. As long as you refrain from talking to yourself in public.
9: Listen to an audio book. I was trapped in the car a lot as a kid (hurray for having separated parents) and took to listening to all the Harry Potter books on tape/CD. It's an easy way to pass time and engross yourself in a book at the same time. Libraries rent out audio books on CD and Audible has numerous different offers for free audio books or a free 30 day trial.
10: Make lists. Make a list of people you haven't seen in a long time. Make a list of books you want to read or movies you want to see. Make a list of vegetables starting with the letter "F". Make a list of languages. Make a list of things to do in the car while on a long drive. Just make lists and see how long you can make them. Not to brag but I made a list of Harry Potter characters that was pretty extensive and in depth.
