This one year for family vacation, my family decided to drive down to Disney World in Florida, all the way from New Jersey. I already knew I was in for a long haul, from the moment I looked down at my iPod touch. The iPod touch’s battery died very quickly, almost in one hour the battery was drained, and at the time, there wasn’t a car charger for an iPod. I had to pack all the cool snacks of the time, some gushers, some fruit roll ups, some double chocolate donuts, a bit of devil dogs on the side, and of course, the classic bag of Lays chips.

While hopping into our car, the 2006 Toyota Sienna, which was maroon red, I didn’t realise that we would be bringing my siblings! This actually made me very sad. They were young, four years old, and 6 years old. They were very annoying at that age, of course, I knew that firsthand. I knew I would be in for a long ride. Thank goodness I brought my snacks. When we all piled into the overstuffed Sienna, I noticed there was a sticker of Mickey Mouse on the back window, freshly placed by my Mom, who also happened to be a Disney enthusiast and expert. The sticker was glistening white in the sunlight, like the sun rising on a new day. She planned the whole trip out beforehand, and she will make it very obvious that she wants to stick to the plan.

First hour wasn’t so bad, I had my earbuds in and played doodle jumper on my iPod. When my score got on around to about 16000 points, my screen turned black. Uh oh, I thought. This would be a long car ride. Around 5 minutes of staring out the window, I would turn back, and take a pack of gushers from the snack bag. It made a crackling sound as I opened up the jelly filled fruit snacks made from pure goodness. I gobbled down the snacks very quickly, as I didn’t eat my bagel that my dad bought me form the bagel store. When I finished munching down we were 2 hours in.

Hour 3, around 15 more hours to go. It was around nap time for me at 10:00, I purposely stayed up all night the night before just so I wouldn’t have to sit through the whole thing. I passed out for the next 6 hours.

Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t  deep sleep if you know what I’m talking about. The nap was more like a half conscious kind of awake thing where you’re aware the whole time, and trust me, it’s not fun. It actually made me more tired than ever, which is not the ideal way to start off vacation. The worst part it, when I woke up, it was like one of those weird naps where when you wake up you don’t know where you are and you start panicking. Anyway, I start working on those devil dogs, when I noticed it’s pouring rain outside. The rain was coming down very hard that day, and there was even a little thunder mixed with lightning now and then. I start to reach back for a devil dog, and it took a minute to find the box, then I realised it wasn’t opened. I open the box and quickly take a squished one. I chomp that down too, and at that point around 15 minutes later I start to feel dizzy.
Later that night at the hotel, I got very sick. Which isn’t that fun while your on vacation and only a bit more than halfway through the total car journey. I really don’t want to go into much detail on it (because that would be gross), and that night wasn’t that eventful. The only thing I mainly remember about that night was that I barely slept, so that would be two nights in a row without sleep. And if you’ve never experienced it, without sleep for almost two days kind of messes up your sleep schedule, so you’ll want to sleep during the day.

The second day on the road was extremely painful. There was tons and tons of rest-stops. Most of them were for the bathroom because I wasn’t feeling so well, but a few of the others were for actual food, which I did not partake in having because of my current condition at the time. When the time came, we pulled into the hotel in Florida called “The Beach Club”. It was right outside of the Epcot resort, and it just so happened that everyone was excited besides me. The funny thing was, I was so tired, that I barely knew what was going on because I couldn’t think. When I had to carry my bags from the trunk of the car, I looked at the sticker in the window. It was all torn up, tattered, and covered in bird poop. It has lost it’s white, glowing radiance it was giving off. It was like, the ride took away its energy it was giving off.