When I was a kid one of the best and most exciting times of the year was my family’s annual, summer vacation trip to Grandma’s house.  These days by car the trip can be made in just over five hours, but back then the trip took more than seven.  Mom would pack our last-school-year’s lunch boxes full of snackie food surprises, we’d take books and paper and pens to stay busy, and I lost countless travel checker-chess-trouble-connect-four games to my younger brother.

The trip was made in my mom’s Toyota Camry.  It is a smaller car, particularly small for three nearly-adult size kids in the back seat.  Dad, true to his Viking roots, stands at 6’3″ tall and had to jam the driver’s seat as far back as it would go in order to wedge himself inside the vehicle.  My brother, sister, and I would argue about who had to sit behind him and which one of us got to sit behind Mom, who is purebred Japanese and not even five feet tall in shoes.  Usually the shortest person sat behind Dad and the tallest behind Mom, which for many years put me smack in the middle of the back seat.

Summers in Eastern Washington are HOT (it’s practically the effing desert).  My brother puts off heat like a space heater and tolerates ALL forms of discomfort insanely well.  My mom and my sister I’m convinced are both part desert lizard, and flourish in the heat.  My Dad was raised in a pretty drastic culture of poverty, so using the a/c in the car was tantamount to DEATH for wasting fuel efficiency, plus his internal thermostat has a comfort range of about 60* up or down (anything between 23* and THE SUN is tolerable to him).  
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