No one needs a lecture on how to ‘do’ these big road trips; but our experience might help you not end up in a scary motel in Kentucky having not eaten, changed your socks or used a porcelain toilet for days – let alone come face to face with a hippo when you’ve had a few too many.
1. Book every stop in advance. Planning is all, unless you’re a nineteen year-old stoner who’s going to ‘wing-it’ or someone who is happy sleeping in a car at a truck-stop. This ceases to be romantic or glamorous after the age of 35. This is not a sepia-tinted 1950’s movie. In nearly 50 nights spent on the road in the US we failed to book once – in Portland Oregon. Once. We spent the night fully clothed in a motel with blood splatter trails on the ceiling and sheets that were disturbingly rigid and pale brown, blood stains in the bathroom and hair in the bed.
2. Get up and out early. Before 9am. Always. This should be rule #1.
3. If you’re going to a location where you know you’re going to get off your knockers on the local sherry, plan a two night stop. You need these once a week. Work it out in advance and be honest about your personal weaknesses or inability to handle the local hooch/meth.
4. Plan short driving days every so often, you don’t need 400 miles the day after a night on Beale Street or the Highveld. And vice versa; the big 400 plus miles days are better after being in a quiet small town.
5. In particular, on US road trips the food is not important! It’s to keep you going, European food-freaks should not consider it a gastro-tour of northern Spain. You will be disappointed, badly. Our daily bread was usually nachos, salsa, guacamole and loads of water.
6. Do not touch alcohol until the car is parked for the night. Try not drinking for a few days occasionally. Hangovers make for miserable days in the saddle. Use the two night stops to go mental.
7. Use maps, relying on Sat Nav is not healthy. Maps are great for finding weird and wonderful places and then the sat Nav helps you get there. Sat Navs are also indispensable in cities and when you’re scarily lost – although the only time we’ve been lost was Sat Nav related. You also lose any sense of what’s around you and why the fuck you’re there if you don’t use your map. It’s an old fashioned tool but it works.
8. Discuss where you are heading each morning (the ‘map meeting’), it’s so much better when you both – or however many there are – know roughly where you’re going.
9. The driver will get tired at odd times. Don’t forget that. It’s cumulative.
10. The navigator feeds information on where you are, what’s around and where’s next. This is important and more stimulating than them just sitting with their cute toes on the dashboard.
11. Fill the car with gasoline/petrol – it is deeply uncool to be low on fuel in a wilderness or the High Sierras. Just keep filling it up, gas stations are also some of the most amusing and quote-friendly places out there. You are not a drummer in a shit power-punk band who tries to be funny at the US immigration – be straight.
12. Always have some supplies in the car. Number One, WATER and the ubiquitous Nachos, guacamole and salsa, or bread, fruit and cheese just in case everything is shut for miles and miles and miles…it happens.
13. When you see multiple road signs warning you of impending animals, take them seriously. If you’ve ever hit an elk you’ll understand. Avoid elks, they are big and hurt cars; bears bounce off. Goats get squashed.
14. In the Great Deserts do not think, “Ooooh it’s hot, I’ll wear sandals.” Your feet will turn into pork scratchings in a couple of days. Wear socks and desert boots. Moccasins were made for a reason. Also if you’re in snake country, always have a rattle snake stick in rattle snake season… either that or don’t go out.
15. In European cities try to avoid driving. Dump your car in an overpriced underground car park and walk. These cities were not built for cars, they were built for donkeys and plague-carts. Public transport is not uncool (see 11) so walk.
16. In third world countries make sure you have a decent car, don’t hire bottom end, the locals all drive Toyota terrorist trucks. The car needs to handle the pot holes.
17. If you argue, and you will, don’t forget you are so lucky to be here. Remember ‘We May Never Pass This Way Again.’
18. AND WHEN YOUR NAVIGATOR GOES MENTAL, SIMPLY WEAR YOUR STAB JACKET.
