AreWeThereYet?AreWeThereYet?

Mother's Day: Carpooling

Gas prices have recently gone through the roof.  This expense factors into any summer vacation planning, as well as everyday trips around town with your kids.  One way to combat the increasing gas prices, not to mention reduce greenhouse emissions, is to carpool.  Here are two websites to check out:

• eRideShare.com  is a free service for connecting commuters, or cross-country travelers, who are going the same way.  You register for free, place your listing, search to find potential matches, and then click on contact names to connect.  Criagslist shares their cross-country rideshare listings with eRideShare.com, so you have access to that great resource as well. 
• iCarpool - leave it to Google to come up with another super idea.  iCarpool is also a free online service that helps you find carpool parters.  It claims to use a "high precision trip matching to find the best carpool match" (and if Google claims it, I believe it), and it is also available on Facebook.

While I can't imagine subjecting some poor sole to TJ's taste in CD's during a cross-country trip (Elmo's Symphony, Johnny Cash, and Elvis), on the upside, maybe we could find someone to sit in the backseat with him, feed him pretzels, read him books, and generally keep him entertained and happy (yeah, right).

Mother's Day: Use Seatcheck.org to Find Car Seat Inspection Events

So you did your homework, checked NHTSA's Ease of Use Ratings before purchasing an infant or child car seat, purchased the seat, and referred to the manual during installation.  Think you're done?  Nope -- there's one last important step to ensuring your child's safety in the car.  Find a child passenger safety seat inspection location, and take your car (with car seat installed) and child (unless you mangled the installation so badly you can't safely put your child in it-- I'm looking at you, Travelin' Dad) to get it checked out.  For an easy way to find the location of a safety check near you, go to www.seatcheck.org.  Either enter your state abbreviation or zip code, and it will give you tons of locations near you for inspections, including police departments, hospitals, and fire departments. 

We've had TJ's seats (first the infant pumpkin seat, and then the convertible seat) checked for proper installation and fit for TJ at an Allstate Insurance location near us (for free!).  Their volunteers are to be commended, and so are the parents who take the time to do this crucial check to ensure their children's safety.

Mother's Day: NHTSA Unveils Its Ease-of-Use Ratings For Child Car Seats

I was thinking about last week's post regarding how to use a car seat on an airplane.  Since statistically, children are much more likely to be injured in a car accident than in a plane, my next two posts are going to be devoted to car seat safety as it relates to . . . cars.  A novel concept, I know.

Before buying a new car seat for your infant, toddler, or child, check out the website for The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which just unveiled its 2008 Car Seat Ease-of-Use Ratings.  The five-star rating program evaluates how easy car features are to use.  All car seats rated by NHTSA meet Federal Safety Standards.  But as we all know, while those seats may be deemed safe in a crash-test scenario, they can differ in how easy they are to use - which of course can ultimately affect your child's safety.  A 2003 study conducted for NHTSA observed one or more forms of misuse in 72.6 percent of the seats inspected.    Some of the documented misuses included improper installation and secureness of the car seat in the vehicle, and secureness/fit of the harness straps or belts.  Faced with this staggering statistic, it's a good idea to buy a car seat that ranks high in NHTSA's ease-of-use ratings.  The five-star rating system helps consumers evaluate the following categories:  instructions, labels, vehicle installation features, and securing the child, and then provides an overall ease of use rating.  Just click on the type of car seat you are thinking of buying (for example, infant rear facing seat), and check out the listed car seats and the ratings they received in each category.  For further information on why a seat received a particular rating, just click on the car seat's name to see NHTSA's detailed analysis.

Five Great Sources for Road Trip Games

Having already discussed the benefits of using an online road trip planner, it's time to upgrade your car trip from tolerable to fun (or at least more tolerable).  How?  With those three magic words:  Road Trip Games. 

I planned to present a list of some of the best road trip games but, when doing my research, I discovered there are several sites that cover road trip games much better than I ever could.  After weeding through the dozens of sites that offer the same old lineup of I Spy, The License Plate Game, and Punch Buggy, I created a list of five websites with some unique road trip game offerings:

1. Mom'sMinivan.com:  This is the mother of all road trip game sites.  Pages of different games, including several (like car bingo, scavenger hunt, etc.) for which you can print out pre-made game sheets.  It's also one of the few sites that does a good job covering appropriate entertainment for different age levels, including babies and toddlers.  My favorite game here?  "Counting Cows", in which you divide the two sides of the car into teams.  If you pass cows on your side of the car, you count as many as you can and your cumulative total is your "score."  But, if you pass a cemetery on your side at any point and the other team shouts out "Your cows are buried" you go back to zero.  Most cows when the trip is over wins. 
2. RoadTripPlanning.com:  Okay, most of the 18 games listed on this site aren't exactly new, but you could probably drive peacefully from New York to California if you played every one of them.  My favorite game here:  "Buzz", a counting game in which you try to reach 100 without making a mistake. Sounds simple, but for the fact that, every time you get to a number that's divisible by seven (7, 14, 21) or has a seven in it (17), you must say "buzz" instead of the number.  If you master sevens, you can always use a different number as the "buzz" number.  Should you remember this one from your college days, you'll note it's slightly easier when not played as a drinking game. 
3. Kidshealth.org's Road Trip Boredom Busters:  This site's boredom busters offer some ideas to really exercise your kids' creative muscles, like journal jotting and team storytelling.  My favorite game here: what they call "word play", where your kids write down words they spot on road signs, bumper stickers, storefronts, etc., and then create a song, story or poem from these words.  I can easily see this one passing the time until at least the next rest stop. 
4. About.com's Family Vacation Section:  Next to Mom's Minivan, About.com had the most comprehensive coverage of road trip games.  It too has a good list of games to print out (including some different ones from Mom's Minivan) and also does a good job providing age appropriate entertainment ideas from babies to grade schoolers.  My favorite game here:  an easier, faster version of the "license plate game" in which you simply need to find a license plate that starts with each letter of the alphabet.  In other words, a car with the plate QVT120 and a car with the plate SRD218 will knock Q and S off your list, even if they are both from Pennsylvania.  This is especially helpful to play when driving through a state like Texas, where you can go hundreds of miles seeing only Texas plates. 
5. Are We There Yet Auto Travel Game:   This last entry isn't for a road trip game site in general, but for one particular game.  Since several people have mistakenly stumbled upon this site looking for the road trip game "Are We There Yet," I figured the least I could do was post a link to the game.  I can't say I've played it, but if the name is any indicator, I'm sure it's fantastic.

Hope this list helps the miles pass by quickly and enjoyably.

Comparing Five Free Road Trip Planners

On a recent car trip from Chicago to St. Louis with TJ, I discovered that car travel with children is measured in dog years;  your trip feels seven times as long as it actually is.  Which is why our five-hour jaunt felt more like a day and a half.  Which is also why I'm game for any tool that will make future road trips go more smoothly.  With that in mind, I tested out five free road trip planners.  I used a hypothetical trip from Chicago, over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house in New York.  Here's my road trip planner review, with each service receiving a rating of one to five Elmo DVDs (), because that's what brings us peace in the car:

1. Freetrip.com:  Freetrip.com got off to a bad start, as it appears to provide only city-to-city directions, rather than address-to-address.  While I'm sure you know how to get to all major highways from your house, you might not know how to get to your destination's exact address.  Also, while Freetrip.com provided a few nice bells and whistles, like providing links to hotels in a pre-selected price range at each point in your trip, if you wanted more detailed information like restaurants, gas stations, or parks, you had to join the "inside track club" at $19.95 per year.  Although the paid product might be fantastic (admittedly, I didn't shell out the 20 bucks to find out), in my opinion road trip planners and velvet-roped VIP sections don't mix.  Especially a road trip planner called "free trip."  Rating:    **ADDENDUM** (3/12/08):  I revisited the Freetrip site on 3/12/08 and it appears there have been some significant (in a good way) changes from the time I originally test drove it.  Users of the free program now have the ability to search for not only hotels along their journey, but also gas stations and national parks.  You wouldn't think a national parks finder would be that handy, but 16 different national parks popped up on my Chicago-to-New York route, along with a nice link to the official website for each.  What's more, if you click on the red car icon next to any particular attraction, Freetrip will automatically recalculate your route to include your new fun-time detour.  As for the gas stations, Freetrip's website indicates that it's "planning to launch a discount fuel card for use at thousands of Truck Stops across the USA," which would be a great development in this age of $3 gas.  So, it looks like Freetrip.com merits a serious Elmo upgrade.  Revised rating:  
2. AAA Trip Tik Travel Planner:  Anyone remember the pre-internet dark ages, when the best road trip tool you could get was the hard-copy AAA Trip Tik, where you flipped  pages over like a spiral notepad until arriving at your destination?  Well, now there's a slightly less bulky Internet version.  AAA Trip Tik gives you free point-to-point driving directions.  Then you can zoom in on the map at any point of your trip to click on details for lodging, restaurants, gas stations, attractions, construction information, and more.  Once you locate a potential restaurant or hotel, you can then click to receive detailed info on the food it serves, or hotel amenities.  Granted, they're not critical reviews but rather ads by the establishments; but it beats the days of pulling off the road and saying, "I don't think anyone's ever died in that place, let's give it a shot."  For example, if we decided to stop in Clearfield, Pennsylvania to break up the trip, we learned we could stay at a Holiday Inn Express, dine at Denny's Beer Barrel Pub (which AAA tells you is home of the "gut-busting" 6-pound burger), and visit the Grace Clearfield Community Museum.  Now there's a rest stop.  The only con I found with Trip Tik: you can easily lose your place zooming in and out of the map to focus on select destinations, which is the only way to discover the various gas, food, lodging, and culture along the way.  A minor complaint, really.  Rating:
3. Mapquest:  Often a gold standard for point-to-point directions, Mapquest unfortunately offers little else for road trip planners.  You can plug in multiple stops, or do a separate search to chart out the lowest gas prices along your route, but Mapquest doesn't offer anything in its trip planner regarding lodging, food or attractions.  If you just need directions, Mapquest works fine.  If you're looking to stop and smell the local attractions along the way, look elsewhere.  Rating:
4. Rand McNally TripMaker:  Rand McNally offers great point-by-point directions and some nice added features, with two caveats.  One feature missing from TripMaker is the ability to search for restaurants along your route.  Anyone who's been on a road trip knows that food stops, especially those with local flavor, are a key road trip component.  So, TripMaker gets a one-Elmo demerit from my stomach.  Second, although TripMaker offers searches for categories like "fun and games", "arts and culture", and "local highlights" as well as hotels (through a kayak.com link), it offers this information only for your starting point, final destination, and any stops you pre-program along the way. Not a big deal, as most road trippers probably have an idea of where they plan to stop.  But, since it's not as flexible as AAA's TripTik, we'll charge them another Elmo.  Lastly, the first question TripMaker asks you is whether you're traveling with kids.  I think this is great, except I can't figure out what difference answering "yes" means for the results given.  Maybe they're just making conversation.  Rating: 
5. ETravelougue.com Road Trip Itinerary Planner:  ETravelouge's road trip planner seems great in theory, somewhat less great in practice.  For example, you can choose to receive information on more than 25 categories along your route, from roadside attractions to restaurants to hotels to sports acitivities.  There was even a "family/tourist fun" category.  You can also choose how far off your route you're willing to go for these attractions; another great idea.  Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like ETravelouge has collected much information yet, however.  My search for "family fun" stops within ten miles of our Chicago to New York route yielded one result:  The Historic Speedwell in Morristown New Jersey.  And the link for that was broken.  Likewise, my searches didn't turn up a single roadside attraction or restaurant within ten miles of my route, which leads me to think that the data just hasn't been input yet.  If that's not the case, I may open up a museum/diner about halfway between New York and Chicago and really clean up.  On the plus side, ETravelougue certainly has its hotel data in place.  More than 10 pages of hotel choices popped up along my route.  Unfortunately, the only information provided for each specific hotel is a name and address, but it's something.  So, ETravelogue looks like it's got the mechanics in place to be a very helpful, but now just needs to collect the information it's capable of providing.  Rating: 

So, to sum up my little road trip planner review exercise:

= AAA Trip Tik Travel Planner

= Freetrip.com; Rand McNally TripMaker; ETravelougue.com Road Trip Itinerary Planner

= Mapquest

Mother's Day: Winter Coat Car Seat Safety

With winter in full swing, it's important to re-evaluate your child's car seat safety.  As we all know, it is imperative that car seat/booster seat straps fit snugly against your child's chest.  Travelin' Dad and I were driving TJ to a park the other day to play in the snow, and TJ was dressed in his puffiest winter coat (the one in which he looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man), and although we were just going around the corner, I had a gnawing feeling that it wasn't safe (as I had to extend the straps quite a bit to fit around the monstrous coat).  After a little research, I realized just how unsafe that trip was.

According to the Texas Department of Public Safety , in a collision, the extra fabric and padding in a winter coat will compress and cause slack in the harness system, which allows the child to move forward during a crash, increasing possible injuries.  The Regional Emergency Medical Services Authority (REMSA) also warns that a winter coat or snow suit changes the way the child fits into the car seat, and there is a chance the child may be ejected from the car seat or that there is just enough space between the child and the straps to cause serious injuries.

So, I get it.  No heavy winter coats while strapped in the car seat, whether on a long road trip or just going around the block.  Some potential solutions are:

• Put TJ in regular clothes (jeans, a onesie, and a sweater), warm up the car in advance, and throw the winter coat in the trunk to be used after we reach our destination.  Although Al Gore may slug you with his Nobel Prize if he witnessed this un-green solution. 
• Buckle TJ in regular clothes, and then put a blanket over him (making sure it sits on top of the harness system and isn't wrapped around his back).  Watch TJ kick the blanket off 30 seconds later.
• On warmer winter days, dress TJ in his thinner corduroy jacket - the harness straps still fit snugly against his body.  (Next time if he is in the car without any jacket, make sure to again tighten the straps.)
• Buckle TJ in regular clothes, and once the harness is secure,  put his coat on backwards, pulling his arms through the sleeves.  Watch TJ get mad because the coat hampers him from easily digging into his snack trap.

If you want to determine if your winter coat is too big to be safe (like the Stay Puft Marshmallow coat), or acceptable (like the corduroy coat), REMSA recommends the following test:

1. Take the car seat into your house.
2. Put the winter coat or snowsuit on your child.
3. Put your child in the car seat and buckle the harness as you normally would before car travel.  Adjust the straps to the appropriate fit for your child.
4. Take your child out of the car seat without loosening the straps.
5. Take the coat off your child.
6. Put your child back in the car seat again, and buckle the straps without tightening them.
7. If you can fit more than one finger under the harness at the child's shoulder bone, the coat is too thick and is not safe for use with the car seat.

By following these few precautions, you can make sure that your child stays both warm and safe this winter while riding in the car.

On the Road Again, with Nickelodeon

Hertz recently announced that, in addition to renting your car from them, you can rent a media player pre-programmed with more than 40 hours of Nickelodeon shows like Sponge Bob Squarepants and Dora the Explorer.  The "Nick on the Go" system will cost $17 a day and can also be played outside the car like a regular portable DVD player.  The product is available for rentals at about two dozen of the country's busiest airports, with another 25 locations to be added in 2008.  I tried to learn more information on Hertz.com, but I didn't see any announcements regarding the program.  Instead, it looks like Nick on the Go will be offered as an add-on option once you've input your pick-up airport on the webite. 

My first thought?  What a cool feature.

My second thought?  Seventeen bucks a day?  Even assuming you're not one of those people who usually lugs a portable DVD player to entertain the kids, wouldn't it be worth buying a cheap one for a five-day trip, rather than shelling out $85 in rental fees? 

My third thought?  I guess this offer could still be valuable for some situation where you couldn't or didn't want to bring your own DVD player, or where your worst travel nightmare came true and your own player broke on the trip.  It may be difficult to put a price on peace and quiet, but in these scenarios, seventeen dollars a day sounds about right.