Road Trip DVD Players for Cars

As a Briton, I'm not used to long, American style road trips. If I tried to drive hundreds of miles in any direction, I'd probably end up very wet.

Hence the summer of 2006 held many new adventures for me, not least the chance to settle down for a whole day driving from Nevada to California.

My lovely friend Shonna was at the wheel and it was she who picked up the mini DVD players.

I was dubious. Why would we need to watch movies en route?  The two British people on board were going to be enthralled with the unfolding scenery, we certainly didn't need any distractions. There were conversations to be had!

Plus, if I'm honest, I have a natural aversion to background noise, due to being deaf in one ear. I suddenly had visions of this exciting road trip turning into a nightmare. A whole day spent resenting the noise from television shows and movies, because it would exclude me from participating in conversations.

"They're not for us." Shonna reassured me. "They're for the children. And we do have headphones."

Ah! That was the other factor.  A baby in arm and a four-year-old would also be making this journey with us. I did wonder how that would go.

But their mother was right.  With rest-stops timed to coincide with the ending of animated movies, we didn't hear a single complaint from the back. Those children were entertained throughout and good as gold. The portable DVD players did the trick!

As the only adult in the car, it was down to me to drive, keep the youngsters occupied and take responsibility for anything that might be amiss. For much of the drive across Wales, this was fine. We sang, I told them stories from the Mabinogion (adapted on the hoof for five-year-olds and infants) and we talked about what we could see from the window.

Then we hit a very long stretch of road, with high hedges concealing the majestic view of the mountains, and no way to easily pull over.

That was the moment when the baby started to cry.  I called out to him. I sniffed the air. I had his big brother check to see if he felt wet, then to give him his bottle. Nothing was obviously wrong and he didn't want feeding.

He screamed. And screamed. And screamed. (He's seventeen now, and I still recall the utter helplessness of having nowhere to stop, yet having to hear that desperate cry for attention.)

It took about twenty minutes of crawling through traffic and out onto an A road, before I could finally pull into a lay-by and check on my tiny nephew. 

As soon as I leaned over him, he stopped crying and gave me the most beatific smile known to humanity.  He was warm, dry, full and rested. He was just bored stupid.

It was hardly a condition reserved for the baby either. His five-year-old brother had memorably resisted my valiant attempts at distractions earlier in the same journey.  "Ooh! Look at the cwm!" I'd tried, injecting my voice with endless layers of enthusiasm. "Isn't it pretty?!"

"I'm sick of cwms!" Daryl had replied, arms folded and pouting. "Cwms are boring."

How I wished then that I'd known about portable DVD players for car journeys. I'm sure that Jim Carrey's The Mask and/or a few episodes of Teletubbies would have enlivened the trip miraculously for my young passengers!

I've recently discovered the wonder of watching DVDs in cars, when I did it myself. I was in a minibus en route to Auschwitz, when the minibus driver pressed play on a documentary about the camp.

Suddenly this episode from history was brought vividly to life, all of us watching in the certain knowledge that we were about to walk in those same footsteps. Fortunately not in identical circumstances, but upon the site. We would view those buildings for ourselves. We would stand upon those railway tracks.

It enhanced the experience dramatically, and ensured that we arrived at Auschwitz State Museum in a suitable (and informed) state of mind.

I could so easily do the same for visitors to Britain - playing documentaries about castles before I delivered them to Caernafon, or another about Owain Glyndwr, on the way to Sycharth. It would only take the purchase of a DVD player for my car to pull it off.