Goodreads asked Richard Ratay:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Richard Ratay I got the idea to write about family road trips while—you guessed it!—on a family vacation. I had been looking for a subject to write a book about for some time. While on vacation with my family, relaxing on a beach chair under a hot sun, it occurred to me that the vacations I had taken with my family—both while growing up and with my own wife and kids—were some of the most memorable events in my life. I reasoned that was the case for many other people as well. I also concluded that those experiences of traveling together were a big reason why my siblings and I have always remained so close even though we are such different people. Being the curious guy I am, I pondered how those great road trips of my youth (we ALWAYS took road trips) came to be. I wondered how we got things like our interstate highways, drive-thru windows, Fuzzbusters and 8-track tape decks. I puzzled over why our station wagons had fake wood paneling on the sides. And I questioned why it seemed nobody really took those kind of great, long family road trips together anymore. I set out to find the answers. When I did, I knew I had to share them.

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