Road Trip Survival Kit

I hate road trips. Unless I can ride in a mini-van with the back seats out, stretched out across the floor, and completely miss the Great Plain States because I was playing cards, I would rather not. Setting off yesterday for New Orleans was no exception. The thought of thousands (seemingly millions) of miles ahead made me tired, crabby and sleepy all at once.

For those of you similarly inclined, I share with you my Road Trip Survival Kit:

Item 1: food. By food, I mean the hardest, most time-consuming food you can find. I suggest sunflower seeds.

Item 2: play with your food. Design an intricate trail of sunflower seeds that also heightens awakefullness when you make a sudden turn and send seed shells flying throughout the car.

Item 3: very loud radio music. When your cd player refuses to eject the cd you started the trip with, you resort to the radio after listening to the cd for the 6th time. This is a risky item, however, when you enter the south and the balance of the radio stations fall under Christian, conservative and/or country. If times get desperate, you can dance and/or conduct the music.

Item 4: begin housecleaning your car and/or life. This might include list making. More broadly, this can/may also include cutting your nails and/or cutting the plastic packaging off from around a new phone charger.

Item 5: play the catch-up game. By this I mean, catch-up with as many cars as possible. The more you catch-up with, the farther you have gone (somehow this logic works for me). This game is particularly successful in South Carolina where no one speeds. I mean, no one. Thus for approx 314 miles, I caught-up with every single car but four. I mean, every. single. car.

Item 6: intersperse your drive with visits to family and friends (who allow you to come late and at all hours of the night) who share food, beds, wonderful company and give you the strength to survive a drive that made you wonder if you'll make it when you hit the 6th of 7 states (Mississippi) and wonder if you'll really ever make it.

For fun, a picture from each state (and few of the cities) I traveled through to get from Arlington, Virginia to New Orleans, Louisiana: