July 15, 2025 – Andy is in OurLittleCorner today

Still (Driving Me) Crazy After All These Years

The other day NPR’s Here and Now ran a story about a hot new online game called Internet Roadtrip . You play the game by joining other players to help navigate a virtual road trip by voting on which direction to go and on whether to honk or to change the local radio station (which you can actually hear live). Evidently thousands of folks have squeezed in and out of that virtual car since the game was created in May of this year.

According to the game’s creator, Neal Agarwal, people inherently love road trips, especially with traveling companions, hence the game’s appeal. He even went so far to say that the game has created friendships and a sense of community among the participants.

This sounded like my kind of game. It doesn’t require the keen hand-eye coordination or the fine-tuned motor skills needed for games like Nintendo’s Mario Kart — a game at which my (then) 10-year-old grandson Silas would routinely and mercilessly annihilate me. Internet Roadtrip, according to the blurb, only requires that you click to vote. So I decided to try my hand at the game and see how much fun it would be to go on a road trip with virtual strangers.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance to experience the joy of joining that virtual road trip and forming friendships with those virtual others because I couldn’t figure out where to click for a virtual “vote” — although I did get pretty good at honking the virtual horn (which undoubtedly annoyed the other passengers). Hence, I reluctantly let that virtual car go beeping down the virtual road without me on board.

It’s probably just as well that I missed that virtual road trip given my in-person road trip experiences with Ann. While our 40 minute round trips to do errands in Sonoma may not seem like actual road trips, when you consider that Ann and I run such errands at least twice weekly, the cumulative effect over the years adds up to hours alone together on the road. To my way of thinking this qualifies as a legitimate proxy for an extended road trip.

Suzanne Phillips in her recent Psychology Today article (Driving With Your Partner — A Chance for Stress Regulation) could have been writing about what goes on in our little Kia. Phillips points out that although driving with a partner may sound “romantic,” the possibility of it turning bad is always just below the surface. Factors beyond our control, such as traffic and road conditions, can make driving stressful and lead to verbal exchanges that are anything but romantic. Some of the hypothetical bits of conversation Phillips uses to illustrate her point hit close to home:

• “I want to get there alive — what is the speed limit?”
• “ You know, going this slow is not only torture, it is dangerous!”
• “ Are we trying to get into an accident?”
• “Why get a GPS if you won’t follow it?”
• “I didn’t cause the traffic.”

One trigger for tension in our car is the screen on the dashboard that displays the speed limit and our actual speed on a map. Ann finds it a useful tool to evaluate my performance while I’m driving and, often to my irritation, she is not hesitant to let me know how I’m doing.

Phillips offers a number of suggestions for “stress regulation” in her article, but I didn’t find them very useful. You can look them over here.

I did, however, come across some other thoughts about all of this that rang true to me. Mary Mcnamara in an LA Times article suggests that marriage can be analogous to a road trip: “Marriage is like a road trip; no matter how much you love the other person in the car, if it lasts long enough, you will drive each other a little nuts.“

I particularly appreciated the following bit of her wisdom:

On our road trip Ann and I have managed to stay in the car and, most important, we’ve managed to keep moving forward. That’s pretty good for over 58 years on the road.