Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Holiday Travel Statistics

Forty-three point six million will hit the road.
One million will also hit each other.
The American Automobile Association released its annual batch of statistics for the Thanksgiving Holiday.  Forty-three point six million people are expected to hit the road this weekend.  About one million will also hit each other.  90% of travelers will go fifty miles or more.  Ten of those miles will be back-tracking after taking a wrong turn or missing the exit.  Seventy five thousand pecan pies, forty-four thousand bowls of ambrosia salad, eighty-eight thousand string-bean casseroles, one hundred two thousand tooth-brushes, and ninety-five thousand pairs of clean underwear will be accidentally left behind.  Five hundred thousand McDonald's combo meals will be sold, and four-hundred fifty thousand of those will elect to "supersize" their sodas for "best value."  This will result in three-hundred thousand additional bathroom breaks, two hundred seventy-five repetitions of, "I told you to go before we left," and one hundred fifty thousand additional burps.  Five thousand of those burps will be longer in duration than five seconds.  Four thousand three hundred of these burps will elicit comments of, "Ewww.  Gross."  One million five-hundred thousand verses of "A Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall," will be sung. The median verse achieved will be "63 bottles of beer on the wall."  Two hundred thousand games of "Animal Vegetable or Mineral" will be played, five hundred fifty-thousand games of "License Plate Poker," and one hundred eighty thousand games of "I Spy."  Twenty-five thousand arguments will ensue over whether or not it's fair to "spy" something inside the car.  Another two million arguments will take place over what to listen to on the radio.  Two million, twenty-five thousand older siblings will complain that their younger siblings "won't leave them alone," one million eight-hundred thousand will complain that a sibling is "touching me."  Four hundred thousand five hundred children will get carsick.  Four hundred twenty thousand will manage to throw up outside the car.  Two hundred twenty thousand GPS devices will inexplicably and magnificently malfunction, taking people insanely off-track.
Twenty-five bloggers will write spoofs of annual traffic statistics as provided by the AAA.