Tomah Shuffle

The act of stopping during a road trip for the sole purpose of shuffling passengers and drivers either within one car or across multiple cars in the convoy.

The reasons for a Tomah Shuffle vary and include but are not limited to: foul odor, fatigue, quarreling between passengers, payload issues, excessive banter, or because one was scheduled.

The origins of the name come from an abnormally cool late summer day. The boys were in the middle of the five hour trek from Milwaukee on their way to Minneapolis to visit LEGO land at mall of America as well as a round of mini golf if time allowed. Since it was lunch time. The boys decided to stop in Tomah, Wisconsin and visit the Kentucky Fried Chicken buffet to sample the local fare. However, to the disappointment of the boys, the buffet was taken out during a remodel prior to their arrival. Since there was no other reason to spend any amount of time in Tomah, the boys decided to get back into the car and continue their journey. Due to the excitement and later devastation caused by the buffet, the boys forgot their seating arrangement and had to make a new one on the spot, thus the Tomah Shuffle was born.

Since we were four hours into our nine hour drive and I was getting too tired to drive, we decided to pull onto the Casey’s general store parking lot and pull of a Tomah Shuffle to choose a new driver so it was safe to continue the 30 mile drive to the nearest kwik trip where we could stop and buy some coffee and Mac and cheese before finishing the journey.