My family never took long road trips. In fact, we rarely traveled for vacations, instead usually sticking closer to home for weekend trips to Santa Cruz. (One exception is the memorable Disneyland/Arizona trip during which I believe Jason quit the family several times.)

Heather's family, on the other hand, made at least one annual road trip to her aunt's in-laws' cabin in Long Beach, Wash. Long Beach is a quaint little seaside town just above the mouth of the Columbia River at the Washington-Oregon border. In 2000, after we'd been dating a couple of years, I went along on what turned out to be the family's last trip there (the cabin was sold two or three years ago.)

Someday I'm sure I'll write about Long Beach itself, but what was remarkable was that my now-father-in-law always preferred making the 14-hour trek in a single day. We left at something like 4 a.m., stopped in Tracy for breakfast, somewhere in Oregon for lunch, and were in Long Beach by dinner.

There were six of us in the van: me, Heather, her parents, her sister, and her sister's friend. Other than the time I rode from Santa Monica to Anaheim in a rented Dodge Caravan (Or Equivalent) with six other adults at rush hour, this is the most uncomfortable I've ever been inside a vehicle in my life. I've never really been able to sleep any place that isn't a bed, especially a moving thing that isn't a bed and happens to have other humans in it all competing for a limited amount of fresh air. Thus, I wasn't able to sleep, but I don't really know that I was awake. I think I was actually in purgatory for a little while there.

Thankfully, we split the ride home into two legs, making it slightly more bearable. And the time spent in Long Beach itself made it all worthwhile. But just barely.