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The 2014-2015 Season’s 10 Best Tailgaters


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2015 Ford F-150

The football season is officially in full swing. Now Sundays (and Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays for college, and Fridays for high school) will be spent staring at the TV, checking your fantasy lineup, and, if you’re lucky enough to actually go to the game, tailgating. Ah, tailgating—there are few things better in the world than cooking hamburgers in a parking lot on a chilly autumn day. There are two essential ingredients to tailgating: good food and a good vehicle. And here we have a list of some of the best vehicles for tailgating.

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Safe Vehicles for Carpoolers and Soccer Parents


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2015 Ford Explorer

The back-to-school season and fall sports have begun, and if you’re the parent of a child who plays any of the many fall sports, you know how important your vehicle will become when bringing athletes to their practices and, more important, games. Carpooling will become an essential part of your everyday commute, and you’ll want a vehicle that can hold as many teammates—and all their equipment—in the safest way possible. Well, we’ve compiled a list for you that takes all of that into account. We looked at the number of seats, the amount of cargo space available and the safety rating of all the minivans and SUVs on the market, and we found the best options for getting your athletes (and their friends) to games and back.

Every vehicle on this list has seating for at least 7 and a terrific safety rating. Seven of the 10 vehicles on this list have a perfect NHTSA 5-star safety rating, while the other three (the Dodge Journey, Lincoln Navigator and Toyota 4Runner) are just below the threshold of perfection and make up for it in other relevant ways.

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Bostonian Back-to-School Cars, By College


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2015 Chevrolet SuburbanIt’s time to welcome the new and returning students of Boston. All 250,000 of them. In Boston, the first week of September is a very important (and crazy busy) time of year. It’s the beginning of true orientation for new arrivals (and reorientation for returning students) as everyone settles into their new locations and prepares for the year to come. One thing many students may find useful in the Boston area (or anywhere, really) is a car. So why not pick a car that will accommodate the needs of your school, your neighborhood and your future career (if you’re thinking longish-term investments)?

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Get on the Road with Maps, not Apps


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I had forgotten about maps.

I’m not talking about the lovely little app on the iPhone or the fantastic online service provided by Google. I’m talking about actual maps. Like the kind that is printed on paper and unfolds to almost actual size.

Remember those?

Upon entering Canada this week I received an automated text message that welcomed me to traveling abroad.

“How nice,” I thought, “My service provider is keeping tabs on me and making sure I know I’ve left U.S. cell service. What a comforting feeling.”

What I should have thought was, “Uh oh. I’m about to take out a second mortgage to pay for receiving an email.”

As it turns out, AT&T likes to charge roughly $1,333 per megabyte once a phone leaves the country. I only figured that out once I received another text, then an email, informing me that my firstborn son is about to be confiscated for the privilege of getting online.

Needless to say I switched to Airplane Mode on my phone and haven’t been online since, with the exception of the occasional spotty free wifi connection.

I didn’t panic without my phone at first. In fact, I thought it would be nice to be away from the addiction for a while. Except an addiction isn’t an addiction when it’s a requirement.

Without even thinking I reached for my phone to plug a destination into my maps, and then panicked. How am I supposed to know where to go without my GPS?

Then my wife said, “Looks like we need a map.”

I’d forgotten about maps.

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Car Camping Across Canada


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Boat camping isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Imagine falling asleep to the quiet lapping of waves against metal pontoons while staring into a star-filled night sky. Then imagine waking up at 3 a.m. to the terrifying sound of massive thunder and the relentless flashing of lightning and remembering those metal pontoons in the water.

That’s the definition of fear. It’s also the reason my boat camping trip this week was cut short and replaced by a more reasonable and spontaneous car camping trip.

In Canada. Continue reading >>>