Published: October 27, 2009 09:20 am      

Soothing the savage beast

Greetings from Daytona Beach, Florida. When a family in our church couldn’t use their timeshare, they gave it to us. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” is one of my favorite proverbs. Its exact meaning is irrelevant; a free vacation on the beach is not.

It’s 1,030 miles from our house to Daytona Beach, and after airline and car rental snafus in June, I vowed to never fly to Florida again. Long story short, we drove.

The silver lining to our odyssey was satellite radio. Recently, I traded in my Jeep for a fuel-efficient car that included a 3-month subscription to XM Satellite Radio.

For the most part, radio doesn’t factor into my day; it’s noise that interrupts the silence of a peaceful drive. That’s why those guys who pull up to stoplights with their radios blaring louder than the crowd at Lucas Oil Stadium are so annoying. I don’t want to hear my own radio, much less theirs.

However, the beauty of satellite radio has changed my outlook. XM Satellite Radio is one of two services in the U.S. operated by Sirius Radio. XM provides pay-for-service radio, analogous to cable television.

For example, two Saturdays ago I listened to the coverage of the President’s Cup on a drive to Indianapolis. After watching 14 holes on TV, I listened on XM as Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker made up two strokes to win their match over the international team on the 18th hole.

XM subscribers can also listen to dozens of music, news, talk, entertainment and sports channels without interruption or static. We listened to a series of talk radio programs through Kentucky and Tennessee, and then the “balloon boy” coverage got us through the state of Georgia.

My parents once drove our family from Atlanta to Anaheim for a day at the “Happiest Place on Earth.” Disneyland was awesome; the drive was not. The direct route would have covered 2,170 miles but my dad’s idea of vacationing is a mixture of education and amusement.

We stopped to eat crawfish in Shreveport, visited Indian villages in Oklahoma, toured the Grand Canyon, walked on the White Sands in Alamogordo and explored underground caves at Carlsbad Caverns.

Along the way and between each stop, my mother did her best to entertain her children. We sang, searched for license plates and played the alphabet game.

And we made that epic journey in a station wagon without air conditioning while driving across the desert.

In Genesis 45, Joseph sent his brothers home to tell his father that he was alive. Because he knew his brothers better than they knew themselves, he shared some unsolicited advice: “Don’t quarrel on the way” (Genesis 45:24, NIV).

My mother’s gamesmanship served the same purpose as my XM satellite radio: It helped to pass the time, and it kept the occupants on the journey from killing each other.

My wife and I covered 1,030 miles without arguing once. That alone is worth $12 a month for subscribing.

• Tony Thomas is a church pastor, a high school basketball coach and author of “A Smidgeon of Religion.” He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com