“My butt has a maximum drive time of seven hours.”

“...once I realized that Australia’s top highway speed of 110 kilometers per hour was the same as going 65 in the U.S., all my hardened American enthusiasm for speed went limp until it felt like the car was hardly moving at all. Even worse, most stretches of the highway are restricted to 60 kilometers per hour, which is how fast Americans go when we’re, like, passing a stopped school bus disembarking small children, or driving through a herd of puppies in the road.”

“I grimace, thinking someone should come up with a new phrase for 'I left the ocean without a kiwi-sized chunk of my lower-left butt cheek' to replace the rather nebulous term 'exploratory bite.”

“The car doesn’t so much drive as float above the road, like we’re making our way to Sydney in a hovercraft.”

“Didn’t you read the invitation? There’s going to be a game in a little while--the big Twister game in an hour. Make sure you eat plenty of bread.”

“Are we turning back? Because if you’re just trying to solve my post-traumatic stress problem by exposing me to rock sharks until I’m desensitized, trust me—that ship has sailed.”

“When some smart ass asks you if you’re driving, you say, 'Nope, just kicking the tires.’ You have to make sure you actually kick them all on your way around to the passenger side. Otherwise it’s like lying.”