Small electronic gadgets have really changed the way my family travels.
This weekend we're headed to New England to visit my uncle and to see a Notre Dame basketball game. You can't get tickets to games when ND plays in my area, but it was no big deal to get these. It's about a 5-hour car trip. 
My first-grader's biggest concern? "Can I bring my Game Boy?" Game Boys and Pokemon combine to give us a huge reprieve from the endless "Are we almost there?" interrogations.
My daughter will likely leave her Nintendo at home, but she won't leave the house without her cell phone and iPod. We probably won't hear from her the entire time. I hope she won't spend the whole basketball game texting her friends instead of watching the Irish sink some threes.
And my husband will try very hard to convince me to leave the maps at home, because he has a GPS now. He insists on using that gadget every day on his way home from work--a route he's traveled for nearly fourteen years. I'm just not sure I can put my paper map aside, plug in an address and trust TomTom to find the way there.
For some reason, the GPS makes me a little rebellious. I talk back to it. "You can't MAKE me go that way. I know my way is faster. HA! Now you will have to frantically recalculate my route. No, I'm not going on that highway." (OK, it makes me very rebellious!)
Maybe I'll have to bring my own mp3 player so I can ignore old TomTom. Problem is, I'd wind up ignoring my husband as well. Five hours is a long time to spend in a car when your traveling companions are all wearing earbuds.
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