Road Trip Observations

That is, when it comes to us driving on a road trip. As the weekend saw us being the driver for our makan trip up to Penang, we learned:

Our eyes get very tired initially when we hit the North South Highway.

We thinks it's because there's nothing to see except the sky - you know how nice it is to just lie down on the grass and stare up at the sky and slowly drift off to sleep? Something like that, except that that wasn't our purpose. And it didn't just happen once, but every single time we start hitting the road - on the way to Penang, on the way back from Penang, and even when we left iPoh.

We have no idea why. It's something akin to how we can automatically tune out and doze off at a lecture. Either it's due to that vast expanse of nothing save peaceful sky, or because it's daytime and it's either too bright (when we don't wear our sunglasses) causing us to squint, or it's too dark (when we do wear our sunglasses and it's dark and dozy) and we think it's naptime.

It's not really much due to the lack of caffeine, as we purposely made sure that when we left iPoh we had a venti Americano Hazelnut ready in hand. Even with company in the car we think we would be suffering slightly soon enough.

So what happens when Aidan starts swerving slightly and our eyelids droop? Make for the first R&R we come across, stretch a bit and splash water on our face, and we're good for the rest of the trip. Really.

Not that we're complaining here! Just pointing out, so should we be your driver for a long road trip you know to look out for this. :P

We listen to easygoing music when we drive.

Enya, soundtracks, chorals...stuff that put most people (not all) to sleep. Not really Light 'n Easy stuff, mind you. Not all of 'em works, we would think Lighthouse Family would knock us out, but generally we'll be telling passengers to sleep while we play something different.

Not a good driver-host, as we don't really layan our passengers.

Well, at least before hitting the highway we played Avenue Q and Spamalot for our passengers first. When they were asleep baru we plugged in our earphones and listened to our iPod.

We prefer to play our iPod compared to the radio.

Now since we've been driving Aidan we've no longer been able to play our iPod in the car - Aidan only has a CD player and the radio. We haven't gotten around to burning CDs to keep and play in the car, and during the Camland trip Esteban had an iPod FM transmitter he bought from Low Yat. Seems like a viable option to us now, but rather than simply getting any cheap FM transmitter we'd like the FM transmitter to look...elegant.

After all, some things just scream CHEAPO while some others get away looking simple yet classy. And so we've been shopping about for a nice FM transmitter to replace our now-defunct cassette adapter. Didn't seem to find anything nice, and Griffin's iTrip isn't really cheap for just an iPod FM transmitter.

Then we saw this in Queensbay Mall Penang on Saturday. The Belkin TuneCast II.

Simple. Clean. White. Pretty. Also expensive, at RM220. Well, at least now we know what we want when shopping for a FM transmitter - one that has an audio jack instead of the iPod dock. At least this way we can play any MP3 player (or even our Nintendo DS) instead of just iPods.

We don't have much luggage space.

We've mentioned this before, and even while this was a makan trip, don't think that there should be ample space what with each one bringing just one bag. Because we didn't bring just one bag. There was our backpack for clothes, a bag carrying our chargers and iPod speakers, a shoe bag, our Crumpler bag, and our Wii bag.

Then whatever space left is taken up by the homemade biscuits and salted chicken we bought. It gets a bit cramped in the back seat soon...

Fuel usage for the Penang trip was FUUUUUYOOOOOH!

Just why, why couldn't the price hike have been till after our trip?

Oh well. Road trips, regardless, are still fun and this Penang one was a helluva great time.