While driving back from vacation last weekend, I started to think of the rules by which to travel by. How to survive a ten hour car ride by yourself and keep sane. It has been about seven years since I have taken a long road trip by myself. And by long road trip, I'm talking four plus hours in the car by yourself. It's a lot easier when you have someone in the car with you. Someone to talk with, someone to share the drive with, someone to keep you focused. By yourself, you find your mind wandering every once in a while. At least I do. I want to watch the scenery go by. I want to look into the fields and watch the countryside. With someone else in the car, you can stay focused on driving and not hitting a car or being hit because you start to swerve.
Music is key for a trip. With the right music, your road trip goes by quicker. It doesn't even have to be music. When I left the Soo, I listened to Colin Cowherd's show, The Herd until the station went out. I've enjoyed his show for the past couple of years and find myself agreeing with him on many levels. The times I don't agree with him, well that's okay because that's part of talk shows. I found myself talking back to him on the points I agreed with and the points I didn't. Once I got going with my music, the car went from quiet to quite loud. Loud music keeps me focused and singing doesn't hurt. Who doesn't sing in the car? I was Jack White, Iggy Pop, Johnny Cash, and the Beastie Boys all in the span of two hours.
Another element that helps with the road trip is the weather. I've driven in pouring down rain in Kansas as well as straight line winds. Heavy snow was an oft occurrence going back and forth in Michigan during college. There was one trip after Thanksgiving that there was a pile up on the highway and our three hour trip turned into six hours. It was horrible. I was tense the entire time and in a bad mood because of it. When we left Minnesota, we drove through two hours of rain. It makes me tense up because the road conditions are affected, but some drivers don't take that into consideration. Either that or drivers take too much precaution when driving on wet roads. Once we got ahead of the rain, it was smooth sailing. Coming back, there was no rain, no wind, and just enough cloud cover to keep from squinting for ten hours. Without the sun beating down on the car, there wasn't any need for the A/C, which is nice because it cools you down, then you get too cold, turn it off, and then it warm again. It's a mess.
The best way to keep fresh when driving by yourself is stopping. Can I power straight through for six hours without stopping? Yes. How do I feel at the end of those six hours? Horrible. I tried to break up the trip into three to four hour blocks. It worked out just about perfectly. Every town I got to, I kept looking at the one past it to see how many miles it was and thought about skipping it for the next one. There's a decent size town in Wisconsin about every fifty miles along the route I take. I found myself breaking down the trip into these small gaps as opposed to saying I was going to be on the road for ten hours. It worked. Going from point A to point B is only fifty miles, for example. After point B is point C and that is sixty miles. I'll stop there. All of a sudden, you have over one hundred miles under your belt. It sounds a lot better than 'I only have nine more hours in the car.' Stopping when you are tired is the best gauge for anyone. Either that or when your back really starts to hurt.
The biggest mistake I started to make half way through the trip was watching the time. It's best to not pay any attention to it. Judge your trip by the mileage and count down. Seeing the clock go from three in the afternoon to five o'clock goes by slower if you keep checking the clock every ten to twenty minutes.
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