have been lulled to sleep - as already mentioned the mechanics of driving
were so simple that we could both have caught 40 winks (until we crashed).
With this in mind we distracted ourselves by any means possible.
Harvey had a radio, an obvious source of distraction. Unfortunately US radio
is a bit like US television. Hundreds of channels, with very little content. The
fact we did not have a guide to the channels did not help, but from a scan of
the available stations we really were not missing much (other than
infomercials) when we elected to turn it off. Fortunately we had taken some
music tapes with us, and nearly wore a hole through our favourites during our
travels.
The 'find' in terms of best distracter were books on tape. We had three
of these as Christmas presents and they really helped pass the time. One
Stephen King unabridged novel (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon) was so
gripping and addictive that we almost drove through the night in order to finish
it. It is just a pity that these tapes are often prohibitively expensive. We also
developed a number of home grown activities to keep the tedium at bay (don’t
worry, this was not as kinky as it sounds). These included 20 questions, the
'story game' (make up a story one word at a time taking it in turns to say the
next word...not easy, or award-winning literature, but a useful technique for
writing this novel), and learn US history by listening to your co-pilot reading
Lonely Planet. Oh, and we also played the 'Tell me your secrets' game, until
the results freaked us out too much. Some things are better left unsaid!
Other people also provided distractions whenever we were in danger of losing
interest in our games. First, state troopers and other varieties of policemen.