6 rules for traveling in tight quarters
By Larry Johnston
 
The Johnstons just completed another three-month motor home journey. Three months is a long time to be on the road with someone else in a vehicle not much larger than a Wal-Mart dressing room.

To avoid a blowout, you must exercise restraint, understanding and diplomacy around your traveling companion.

For anyone ever tempted to travel small, let me share with you what I learned. You also can apply these guidelines to cruise ships, extended car rides or even being on the same continent with certain odious people.

Rule 1:
Happiness in small spaces is not so much traveling with the right person as being the right person. Take the following request: "I wish you would take your feet off the coffee table." What do you do? At home where there is room to run or space enough for the grumbled whisper to be unheard, you could do most anything.

In confined places, if you want to survive the trip, what you do is remove your feet and say, "Sorry." Eventually, your travel mate will take the hint and do the same when he or she commits one of the thousand offenses you find intolerable.

Rule 2:
Remember women are indirect. "Is it hot in here?" is not a rhetorical question. There are no proper verbal responses. Take the question as a directive to stand up and turn on the air conditioner.

Men, on the other hand, are direct but do not always use verbs. Men say, "Hungry!" This is a woman's signal to either throw food at him or avoid the path to the refrigerator.

Rule 3:
Temperature control. Men and women have their body thermostats set differently. Whatever temperature one perceives as cold, the other will find positively blistering. There is only remedy. Dress in layers, carry mittens and set the climate control opposite to what you think it should be.

Rule 4:
Remember, not everyone communicates directions using the same terminology. Some people turn right; others go south. To learn whether you can follow each other's directions, play a game of hide and seek while still at home. One of you should find a place to meet for lunch or dinner and give directions to it without using the name or address.

If you need cell phones to find each other, you will stay hopelessly lost in strange cities. Improve your directional skills before you go.

Rule 5:
Offer to do something your traveling companion has always wanted to do, even if it was the last thing you wanted to do in a thousand years. The trick is to do it without grimace, groan, twitch or vacant expression.

Rule 6:
Do not change any song your companion has selected. This is likely to be the song they could listen to on an endless loop for the rest of their life. Even if the hated song reminds you of a former spouse or fingernails on a chalkboard, just sit and listen. It is less painful to debate religion than explain to someone why you don't like a song.

So there you have a list of the six most important small-space travel rules.

Being so close means your partner can feel what you are thinking. This can be dangerous.

To avoid detection of an unkind thought, your only remedy is to hop outside to get some distance between the two of you.

I did this once. Unfortunately, we were going 70 mph. Still, it was less painful than an argument.