I’ve known Leticia for a while. She’s brilliant, kind, and lovely.
We’ve chatted quite a bit over the years but those chats, sadly, were ever only in passing — between keynote speeches and roundtable discussions at parenting conferences usually; the act of catching up squeezed into the crevices of a dense program schedule, beneath opulent resort chandeliers or palm trees kissing puffy white clouds or striped canvas umbrellas keeping tables of sweets out of direct sunlight.
Tech Savvy Mama and I have even run in the same concentric circles during press trips together, each a wonderful but whirlwind 24-hours. Again, more hellos and ‘how have ya beens’ but not space for much more than those kinds of easy pleasantries.
Just before Mother’s Day 2018, we exchanged a few messages online as she prepped a darling profile of my daughters’ entrepreneurial jewelry start-up.
We never had the time to sink into a deep conversation. We never had conversations in cars.
Conversation in Cars with Bloggers
This past weekend Leticia and I shared three glorious #ToyotaGrandSlam days in Florida, traveling from Tampa to Palm Beach to Orlando, for a trio of Spring Training baseball games, in a variety of exquisite 2019 Toyota cars, crossovers, and SUVs.
Yankees Aaron Judge rounding 2nd after a Spring Traning Home Run
Unlike the conferences of yore, we finally had hours to talk with nothing but credit card-flat swamp land and decadent winter-retreat mansions of the obviously rich and probably famous to distract us.
I have been doing a lot of driving alone lately, zigzagging around England for weeks on end with only two scoops of Talk Sport radio as my companion, but during this long weekend, as Leticia and I gallivanted across Florida, I quickly discovered the value of conversation in cars with bloggers.
2019 Toyota Avalon Touring
Whether it was the feasibility of using a spare ramekin as a soap dish (thumbs up) or the merits of merit badge accumulation during many father and a son Scout outings across the country (double thumbs up) or the long-lasting damage parents are doing to their kids when living vicariously through their successes and failures while simultaneously forsaking their own adults interests and passions (all the thumbs down), our conversations in sparkling new 2019 Toyotas were as lively as they were varied.
Leticia helped me workshop some pitches I hope to sell to The Washington Post (and maybe a book idea too, fingers loosely crossed) and I…well I likely didn’t reciprocate that level of assistance because she’s far too far ahead in every possible aspect of life to need my help with anything. Yet, as we shared conversations in cars, we shared ideas with plenty time to let them sink in as we sunk into comfortable seats, and ate donuts which [ahem] also did a bit of sinking in, all within the spacious cabins of a 2019 Toyota Rav4 Adventure AWD, Avalon Touring, and Camry XLE.
Legroom for days in the 2019 Toyota Avalon Touring (I’m 6’5″)
The Blue Flame exterior paint job (of the Rav4, below) itself put a pep in my step and got the hamster wheel of my brain revved up. [swoon]
Like a long hot shower in a fancy hotel bathroom (I’m looking at you, Epicurean), windshield time is a fertile environment for ideation; even more so when you share that time with a brilliant mind, in an energized space with pops of vibrant color and intuitive features designed to let you focus solely on every single thing that lies in front of you.
