Does anyone still read this thing? This poor blog is on life support. I wrote - what I now believe to be - the greatest blog entry of all time about our trip to Korea last March. Then I accidentally deleted it. The world will never know its glory, but let me just share that it included this photo:
But it's a new year and our adventures continue. So consider this a rebirth. We start with a family road trip to the Javanese coastal town of Cimaja.
Previous road trips in Indonesia have taught us the following lessons: 1) do not underestimate how bad the traffic can be and how crappy the roads will be; and 2) do not underestimate the amount of snacks needed to compensate for #1.
We take these lessons to heart. Cimaja is about a 3.5 hours from Jakarta as the crow flies. But it's also the direction of popular weekend getaways, which means the roads clog up to such extremes that you can sit in your car for the equivalent of a work day before you've left the outer city limits.
Team Moyer doesn't do traffic with grace so we chose a religious holiday to drive to Cimaja, a day on which everyone would either be at mosque or slaughtering a goat. This plan worked brilliantly.
We set off in our loaded-up car: surfboards, snacks, our son. John even revived the mixed CD he made for our first ever road trip five years ago. We were out of the city in no time and starting our climb into the hills toward Bogor. The roads narrowed, the inclines increased. We noticed a certain festive nature about the traffic: at one point a man driving a scooter and carrying about 150 mylar balloons passed by, followed closely by a scooter with two men on it, one of whom was holding a living goat (who was not shy at all about expressing concern for his imminent future).
And on we proceeded. The early morning light of our pre-dawn departure gave way to a gorgeous, sun-soaked sky. We began to to get giddy about having our toes in the sand before lunch. And then, from nowhere, came the unmistakable sound of a one-year old blowing chunks from the backseat.
Vomit was new to Miles. He found it curious. As soon as he finished, he looked around, unsure of what just happened. We, on the other hand, had no doubt. We could smell it through our holiday day dreaming: banana yogurt and Babybel cheese wheels. In the words of my father, "he bought a Buick."
But with the pit-stop skills of a Daytona crew, we had that child changed and that car seat hosed down and were on our merry way.
But here's the thing about car sickness. If you don't eliminate the windy roads, the hot sun and, most importantly, the car, from the equation it is destined to return. There was no avoiding the hairpin turns if we wanted to make it to the beach. And nothing says, "I'm feeling better. That should be the last of it," like riding in a car that smells like puke.
This is how we discovered that Miles gets car sick. That first incident turned out to be a little sputter of what was to come, a preamble, if you will, to an entire Constitution of car sickness.
Three pit stops later and the resale value of our car seat was shot. We were also running low on fresh clothing. After the third incident we had to make a calculated decision. Was this trip too ambitious? Should we turn back? Instead, we stripped him down, coated him in sunscreen, and put him back in his car seat in nothing but a diaper. Never to early for character building.
(We made it and had an awesome weekend. And then spent so much time in traffic that on the way home I actually booked a hotel from the car so we could pull over and spend the night. We just couldn't take it any longer.)
