Long drive with spouse not advised

Maybe it was one too many $3.50 lattes that convinced The Other Half and me that we should drive to Austin, Texas, for our vacation last week. At least, we were feeling energetic at that time.

Our vacation was going to include two airplane tickets to New Orleans and a three-night stay in the French Quarter. That dream was cruelly crushed by a car with 92,000 miles on its odometer and that insidious black spot of oil spreading underneath.

A look at our latest credit-card statements revealed the situation clearly: We'd have to drive somewhere. And a motel stay was out of the question.

Enter my dearest friend Melissa, always willing to throw open the door on her suburban Austin, one-house, one-kid, one-husband, two-pet lifestyle and let me sojourn in the guest room for awhile. And it's a mere 12-hour car trip from my door to hers, she told me.

"Twelve hours?" you're thinking. "In a car? Through ARKANSAS?"

But obviously, you're thinking like a person with working credit cards. Rationalize it this way:

Say you decide to fly somewhere. It's a solid two hours to Lambert International Airport in St. Louis by the time you park the car and get in. These days, you've got to be there at least two hours in advance if you're going to get on the plane. Then there's the possibility of an embarrassing pat-down, exposure of smelly feet or being forced to drink your own breast milk. (Remember that news story out of JFK International in August? Yuck!)

Then the plane could be late. Then you've got your in-air time, which we'll conservatively put at two hours. Then there's exiting the plane, claiming your luggage and finding a rental car.

That comes to a conservative estimate of eight hours, and that's mighty close to the 12 hours quoted by Melissa.

Right? (Work with me, here.)

However, there are some definite advantages to air travel that I'm willing to concede. First among those would be that there is no open-container law on airplanes for the passengers and, the way things have been going, perhaps not for the pilots. That means a plane can be viewed as an airborne cocktail lounge with some spectacularly cheap happy-hour treats being served.

Second, a plane trip offers several bursts of activity: receiving the boarding pass, passing through the security check, boarding the plane and so on.

On a car trip, the meal break is pretty much as good as it gets, even though constantly grazing on chips while the car is in motion is a given. Three times a day, you get to pick among the hundreds of combinations of fast-food offerings at our nation's interstate exits for "real food." Some even feature the few fast-food restaurants not found in Cape Girardeau County!

Other than that, there's the stimulating conversation with one's spouse to keep things going. My favorite opening line is: "What are you thinking right now?"

Mr. Half tells me he doesn't think as much as I think he does.

Finding new radio stations in different cities and commenting on their relative merits takes up a little time too. And then you might make a few comments on the fall foliage or other scenery, but that's pretty much it.

Maybe it's the sheer boredom that makes a car trip more effective than Valium on me. Most of our conversations go as follows:

ME: Hey. I'll be ready to drive as soon as you get tired.

MR. HALF: I'm not really tired right now, but maybe when we reach --

ME: ZZZZzzzzzzzzz.

We were zombies by the time we staggered into Melissa's home and collapsed on our temporary bed.

But we were thrifty zombies.

Heidi Hall is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.