Len Robbins

Perhaps my proudest accomplishment – other than writing 1983’s chart-topping “Total Eclipse of the Heart” – is that I recently drove from Homerville, Georgia, to the middle of Atlanta, Georgia in three hours and 20 minutes (3:20).

That’s 248 miles. In a car. Not a plane or a UFO-shaped balloon or a zeppelin. A regular automobile.

How’d I do it?

I’m glad I asked. The conditions had to be perfect. It was on a Wednesday, not the weekend (too much traffic). For my arrival, I was going against the traffic in Atlanta at around 7 p.m. (Note: If you hit the Stockbridge, Georgia, area on Interstate 75 at any other time, expect serious congestion.) I didn’t drink anything before I left, and, thus, only took one quick bathroom break in Cordele. And, apparently, the Georgia State Patrol took the day off.

Most importantly, I was alone.

See, in the past, when I made the very same trip and had the family in tow – wife, three kids, et al – add about three hours to the sojourn. Really. A 248-mile journey (Homerville, Ga., is seemingly 248 miles from everywhere) would routinely take over six hours, and 248 days off of my projected life span.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that the more people you have in your vehicle, the more you have to stop.

“Can we stop? I have to tee-tee.”

“Can we stop? I’m hungry.”

“Oh, look at the pretty red thing at that yard sale. Can we stop here?”

“Can we stop? I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Can we stop? I think my brother just jumped out the window.”

The requests to stop were relentless. And the kids also asked to pull over sometimes too.

I have devised a pretty simple formula to estimate how long a trip will take with the family via automobile. It is: Number of miles ÷ (divided by) 60 + 2. Using that formula, a 120-mile family trip takes four hours. A (yikes!) 360-mile trip lasts eight hours one way.

The main obstacle to making good time traveling with a group is the bathroom issue. And most regular automobiles don’t have room for a port-a-let.

But they do have seats… which spawned a brilliant idea.

A previous vehicle I had, for instance, had seven seats; two in the front, three in the second row, and two in the third. I rarely used them all. What if one of those seats lifted up and doubled as a commode? How hard could that be? They do it on buses. But unlike a bus, this would just be a toilet seat, not a full-fledged bathroom.

Think of the time your family could save on long trips to the beach if instead of having to pull over at a convenience store or a rest area every 45 minutes, you could just send little Jimmy to the back seat to go to the restroom.

Granted, there could be some issues with such an invention. As usual, I already have them addressed. For instance, any privacy concerns could be resolved with a long, thick curtain. Moving a person to the “commode seat” could be aggravating and awkward. Unless, as I suggest, you treat it as a cheerful game of musical chairs. Then, it would be joyous and fun, or not.

Of course, having only pretended to be an architect at my last class reunion, I don’t have the engineering expertise to devise such a wonderful concoction. I’ll leave that to the geeks.

But, please, make it snappy. I have a trip coming up with five people – 248-mile trip (of course) one way, or, according to my calculations, six hours of my life.

Or, with a commode seat – four hours.

© Len Robbins 2024