I am recording my forthcoming ginormous 2500 mile road trip here, but I'll post each day's happenings here too.

California/Arizona/New Mexico Road Trip, February 2007

From SarahWiki

It is my intention that this page will be edited on-the-fly as I'm on the trip. I started writing this on Friday 9th February, two days before I'm due to set off. If you're reading this particular sentence, the trip report isn't yet finished, so you're going to have to be patient. LJ people may also like to keep up to date by reading my blog.

This trip was planned in something of a hurry -- less than a week, in fact, when I decided at the last moment to drive to a conference in New Mexico rather than to fly. 2500 miles in a week. Should be doable. I hope!

Preparation

Well, the first thing I needed was a car actually capable of a 2500 mile trip. I took my car along to Wheelworks in Mountain View, initially just to get a slow puncture fixed, but it ended up with a whole load of things being sorted out. It drives far better than ever now, so I'm not complaining -- given such a huge trip, I don't want to risk problems, so better to have it sorted out now than end up stranded somewhere.

T-2 days

Today, I went to the local army surplus store on my way home from work. I am now the proud owner of an orienteering compass, a small first aid kit and a US Army survival blanket. The first two are intended for emergencies-only duty, but the last one could well prove useful to protect my cameras from rain if I don't have time to pack up if a storm hits unexpectedly. No pictures today, sorry, but I'll take a couple while I'm packing tomorrow so you can see just how crazy I am.

T-1 days

OK, here I am in Starbucks with my venti vanilla nonfat latte. Oh how so very Bay Area. *coughs*

Well, the plan for today is to pick up the remainder of the supplies for the trip, to put everything chargeable on charge, and to go clothes shopping, because (swoons) I simply have nothing to wear. Which is actually close to true, but as much as I intensely hate clothes shopping, it's got to be done, if for no other reason that I don't actually currently own any decent rainwair. Or jeans without holes in them, but that's another matter entirely. Hopefully, by the end of today, everything will be in place, so all I'll have to do tomorrow is clean out the car, load up and go. I should probably put together a Road Trip Check List really. I'm going to be pretty amazed if all this stuff fits in my little VW Golf, however!

(cue wobbly montage special effect with background music and shots of me studiously rooting through racks of jeans)

Clothes shopping went well. I must say, if you happen to be of the (*coughs delicately*) larger persuasion, I'd very much recommend Avenue, who have a smallish but very good shop not far from here just off El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. So, I'm all sorted with clothes. I've bought a crate of water for the trip, enough trail mix and hard candy type survival food for several days hard hiking (which I certainly don't intend to have to do!). Next trivial-but-important job is loading up the iPod with Stuff to be Listened To en route, particularly lots of podcasts. I have a love/hate relationship with listening to radio on long car trips. I like the continuous discovery of new stations, but I hate it when a station just starts to get interesting as it goes out of range. I am also a bit of a talk-radio fan, so I've loaded up with vast quantities of podcasts from Radio 4, NPR and freeFM. I need to copy a load more music MP3s onto there from my other machine tonight too, so still lots that needs doing, albeit at a trivial level. I suppose if I'm bothering about this kind of trivialities, life can't be that bad.