"on the drive home" / "while I was driving home"?


How can I say "on the drive home"? I could come up with 帰り道に but this really
doesn't give any information about the fact that I was driving.

> "Thinking about it made me still smile while I was driving home."

So one of my attempts at it would be

> あれを考えて、帰り道にニコニコしちゃったよ。

But the problems with this are that for one, I lost the "still" and for
another I am not sure this sentence is even correct Japanese.... and is あれ
really a natural way to refer to "it/that"?

Another attempt would be:

> あれを考えて、帰り道までにニコニコしちゃったよ。

or

> あれを考えて、帰り道にもニコニコしちゃったよ。




If you need to explicitly include everything -- "to home", "to return/go back"
and "to drive" -- you have to say "運転して家に帰る途中". But 家に is usually obvious, and
can be omitted.

ニコニコする in this context sounds a bit funny to me. The common and handy word for
this is
[思い出し笑い](http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=%E6%80%9D%E3%81%84%E5%87%BA%E3%81%97%E7%AC%91%E3%81%84),
and the most common mimesis of 思い出し笑い is ニヤニヤ, not ニコニコ. ニヤニヤ is used both
when one suddenly recalls some very funny joke, and when one recalls some
happy news.

Using あれ/それ is not bad, but あのこと or そのこと may sound a bit neater.

  * 運転して帰る途中も、まだ思い出し笑いをしてたよ。
  * 運転して家に帰る間も、あのことを思い出してニヤニヤが止まらなかったよ。




If you need to explicitly include everything -- "to home", "to return/go back"
and "to drive" -- you have to say "運転して家に帰る途中". But 家に is usually obvious, and
can be omitted.

ニコニコする in this context sounds a bit funny to me. The common and handy word for
this is
[思い出し笑い](http://eow.alc.co.jp/search?q=%E6%80%9D%E3%81%84%E5%87%BA%E3%81%97%E7%AC%91%E3%81%84),
and the most common mimesis of 思い出し笑い is ニヤニヤ, not ニコニコ. ニヤニヤ is used both
when one suddenly recalls some very funny joke, and when one recalls some
happy news.

Using あれ/それ is not bad, but あのこと or そのこと may sound a bit neater.

  * 運転して帰る途中も、まだ思い出し笑いをしてたよ。
  * 運転して家に帰る間も、あのことを思い出してニヤニヤが止まらなかったよ。

