1. Have a vehicle. Treat the vehicle well. Don't call it Betsy or the Old Girl unless you WANT that breakdown in the middle of nowhere. Here's my car (well, an image of a 2003 Monte Carlo SS, which I bought used and which is like a palace on wheels, in my humble opinion.) Big 6 3.8 litre engine and a heart like a thoroughbred.
Get the oil changed, ALL the fluids checked (and if the tranny fluid is bad, change it before you go), all the belts checked, the tires checked and rotated (and the warning light reset if you have one that warns you about low tire pressure), and the air pressure in the spare tire checked. A donut tire should be at 60 psi.
2. This is a map:
It's folded, but you don't have to keep it that way - maps are pretty forgiving. But it's good to have one, no matter how adventurous you may end up being. Just because your mother will worry less or something. It's also good for shooing wasps out of the car.
3. This is a first aid kit (pretty fancy).
Take one (even a dinky one) along to ward off the certainty of needing a bandage in Santa Rosa, NM after a fall (there are no drugstores in Santa Rosa. I know. )
4. There are a ton of other things you can bring. Me? I bring enough underwear to last 10 days, a couple of T-shirts (well, 4 Earnhardt shirts, 4 plane shirts), and socks and a couple of pairs of pants. I have one pair of shoes. I wear them. No packing. BUT, since this is a car trip, you can bring along a lot of stuff! One of the most important is your stuffie, if you have one. Mine's named Jake: this is Jake
5. Everything else you bring is totally up to you. But there is ONE thing (well, other than the portable DVD player and all 3 seasons of Supernatural) that you should do everything possible to obtain. For a blazing 3.99, I got one of those eyeshades you use at night to block light. DO it! Don't forget it because it's the only way you'll manage to sleep through the night in a motel with windows. It's worth it, people...and it isn't as expensive as an oil change.
6. Practice driving and/or sitting (if you're going to spend time at shotgun) for more than 10 minutes at a time. It helps make that first 10 hour driving day less...er...overwhelming? Bring a gag if either driver (you and whomever) has a tendency to chatter to fill silence. Unless you LIKE chattering to fill silence. Then be ready to gag yourself...or not (heh).
7. Have an idea of where you're actually going to go. Maybe not a totally solid idea (Nebraska is better than "Someplace in the Great Plains"), but some sort of notion.
8. Have money (toll roads happen) and whatever else you use to purchase (as opposed to shoplift) things.
9. It's totally cool to have a cooler (I SO didn't write that. My evil twin Skippy did), but remember to plan to stop and change the ice/water every day.
10. If you're driving along (that would be me), remember the phone numbers of everyone in the world who needs to know precisely where you are at the end of each driving day. In my case? My parents, my best friend from Arizona, my kids. Don't assume the phone isn't going to break: write out the numbers just in case the worst happens and you have to (gasp) replace the phone and lose your speed dial. All I need is some police officer stopping me because my hysterical children hadn't heard from me and notified the state police from one end of my trip to the other.
The Day of the Trip
1. Don't plan on starting at 0300 unless your body is accustomed to being super alert at that hour. Sleep until 0430 if that's what you do (or 1300 if that's what you do). Do NOT jostle the biorythms until you absolutely have to!!! (I speak from painful experience. I did the 0300 thing a couple of times and fought falling back to sleep so hard that I couldn't have seen a deer crossing the road if I'd tried. Ended up sleeping at a rest area for a solid two hours before my brain was functional. And I could have spent that time in my own warm bed...idiocy is my favorite game. Did I tell you that?
2. Check everything you've packed against your itemized list (yes, you'll have an itemized list. It's a self defense mechanism). Then check again.
3. Load the car.
4. Go back to the house and do a room by room walk through. Make certain that you have turned off the stove, unplugged the iron, taken the pet to the kennel (or put the pet into the car. That's a complication I wouldn't dream of), included your medications (if any. If none, be sure to have pain killer at least).
5. Check the car to make sure everything you think you put in there is actually in there.
6. Room by room in the house AGAIN (NO I'm not OCDd, but I have forgotten things.)
7. Lock everything down and head out to the car.
8. Get in, settle yourself and get the hell out of Dodge, or Milwaukee or Kingston, Ontario
9. Stop at the first rest area you find (or in the parking lot o your local coffee house, whatever your mood or whim may be) and go through everything again.
10. Hit the road. You're on your way!
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