Want to be a calmer driver? Drive with a variety of things in the car. Carrying fragile objects like crystalware and animals as well as loading the car up to the brim with heavy boxes makes you more careful.
The first time I realized this was when I picked up a dozen free crystal wine goblets I found on Kijiji. The drive over to Gatineau was fine. However, on the way back, I realized that I had nothing to tie down the box of crystalware with so it clinked and clanged the whole way back on broken Quebec roads. Thankfully, nothing was damaged, but it did teach me to ease in around slippery winter corners and avoid potholes.
I learned my lesson. Now I always have two foldable plastic boxes, a cargo net, and four tie-down bungee cords in the car. Be it transporting a $1 glass decanter from a garage sale or lugging around boxes of copy paper, I have the right equipment to make sure cargo stays in place.
All this helped when I moved. My car was so cavernous that it only took four carefully-planned trips to get everything from one end of Bronson Avenue to the other. I pieced different sized boxes together like a three dimensional game of Tetris in the cargo area to make sure everything was as tightly packed as possible. I managed to fit three deconstructed dining tables, four folding chairs, an air conditioner, all my clothes and shoes, and a mini-fridge all at once.
I didn’t want my heavy items to damage the interior of the car, so I lined it with a moving blanket and tied everything down to cargo hooks on the floor and child seat hooks in the headliner. The child seat hooks probably weren’t designed to be used to tie things down, but it stopped the mini-fridge from launching into the back of my seat whenever I stopped.
Most recently, I had to bring a neighbour’s cat to the pet store to pick out a little cat house. Cats don’t like to be thrown around, so I had to drive as if I had a sleeping child in the car. Dogs, I discovered, don’t like being thrown around either, especially tiny lap dogs. They turn their head around looking for a predator whenever there’s a violent jolt in the road. But it seems they both like Baroque music.
Next time you want to drive carefully, leave a box of unsecured glassware in the trunk and aim not to damage them.
