Making a Long Journey Shorter - Some Ideas About How to Pass Traveling Time With a Group

Making a Long Journey Shorter - Some Ideas About How to Pass Traveling Time With a Group There´s a lot of advice available about preparing for a long journey with kids to keep them from being bored and ensuring their good behavior, but not much advice for traveling adults.

On a normal journey you may have a long conversation with your friend or relative traveling with you, or you may need only a little small talk to get by with strangers you meet on the journey. But what about a six-hour journey with a group of people you know, but not really all that well? I was always fascinated by the fact that traveling football players seem to play cards for hours on and, as a non-gambler I couldn't see the point of 'wasting' hours trying to win very small sums of money in boring games. But many people are not keen readers or talkers and games of cards or dominoes are a good way for them to pass the time and enjoy each other´s company. In his excellent book about Hollywood, 'Adventures in the Screen Trade', William Goldman explained how the famous studio bosses used to meet every Sunday to play cards for high stakes. These were powerful and rich men who could talk when they wanted to, but tycoons like Louis B. Mayer, Cecil B. De Mille, Jack Warner, Carl Laemmle and so on were fierce rivals in an enclosed and cut-throat industry. The fact was that these guys couldn´t afford normal conversations on a Sunday because they each had too many business secrets about movie stars or contracts, or how they were going to bamboozle each other in the coming week. So they played cards for hours on end. Goldman discloses that the wives of the studio bosses accompanied their husbands on these social visits and were content to let them gamble. What the wives didn't know was that, in order not to alarm them, 'the boys' dropped two zeroes from their wagers so that when they said, 'I raise a hundred dollars,' they meant ten thousand! For anyone who doesn´t want to play cards and can´t talk for six hours it can be a good idea to have an organized discussion and vote on each person´s top ten favorite movies. It's too difficult to do this with books as there will not be enough common ground. Everybody has a favorite movie and most people can explain why they love a particular film while someone else in the group is going 'ugh' at the thought of that movie. This is a good way to pass a few hours although it works best if the group is more or less of the same generation. An adult leader of a youth group might have a hard time even recognizing the name of movies the youngsters watch today, while the youngsters just won´t believe that there was a movie called 'The Sound of Music' or 'The Sting' But as well as passing the time the exchange of opinions and memories across the generation gap can be a rewarding and educational experience for everyone. Making a Long Journey Shorter - Some Ideas About How to Pass Traveling Time With a Group