ORIGINAL: DamnSkippy
I get what you're saying RLSH, I did the mind numbing peeve my parents off immeasurably (I was a bad kid back in the day, now they call it HDD) so I was bouncing around avoiding plastic paint stirrers (they hurt and are good for close quarter combat aka child discipline in an auto back in the 70's) and enduring my mom and dad telling me to stop touching my sister (insert WV/VA joke here).
BUT, now that I'm a kid, if it's more then four hours (trip to mom in VA from NJ), I will typically go 3 hours w/o movie, then plug notebook into inverter and sound into tape adapter and quell the rumble from the back seat. Maybe I'm shirking, but all I know is the mindset of all involved is notably better upon arriving in VA (or back in NJ) at the end of the trip.
LOL! I remember those days just in the 80s to early 90s primarily. I learned very quickly that even if my dad was driving we were not to do anything to make him mad, because the driving wouldn't prevent him from disciplining. We primarily would get travel games that we would play together and when my parents finally decided to get a tape player for the minivan we would listen to books on tape which we still do when we ride together.
When I go to visit my parents its about a 7 hour drive that I have to do by myself so what I do is I say a set of prayers, schedule my driving to listen to my favorite radio shows, have selected CDs ready, and various other forms of entertainment.
The most interesting trips though have to be the ones that my parents and my one aunt and uncle go together on and brought all of us. We would rent a full-sized van and take a trip to say Colorado. Which takes a couple days. On the way down, I would sleep on the floor as my uncle would drive 13 hours straight with the speedometer bouncing between 80-90 the whole time as we listen to stories about Dirk Pitt (a James Bond like character). Those trips were interesting.
I hear you about the Laptop thing. My father had to get an adapter one time because he had to get his tax work done before the trip was over and the battery would not last 7-8 hours, though his first laptop was able to use a regular adapter.
anthem SS, that is a point I never thought about. Having a TV in a vehicle could cause motion sickness. I can remember when 7 passenger conversion vans were the first vehicles to have TVs. I remember asking my parents back in 1991 if we could get the conversion van over the Caravan over that. Didn't happen, and looking back I'm glad. Who would want to drive one of those awkward things? We tried bringing our 7 inch black and white compact TV one time as it had a power adapter for the van, but it couldn't hold a signal and we came to the conclusion that it was more trouble than its worth.