Well, I am sitting in Dorchester just a scant 15 hours before the pup and I hit the road for a pretty crazy next two weeks followed by some interesting months ahead.  Before I head to bed, I want to have the car packed up to have as little to do in the morning.  That means that between now and bed time, I need to finish laundry, pack three suitcases (two for me, one for the pup .. no, its for his food, you jackass), pack a couple of laptops, finish printing off seven audit checklists for work, get the trash out, the dishes washed, and the house as ready to be locked down as possible.  OH … and I have to do my taxes too.  I’ve spent some time planning the route, trying to be smart while respecting the distance I need to cover.  With that, here is the plan:

Tomorrow is a heavy drive day, usually not a good thing for a first day, but I am racing the weather too.  My goal is to be up at 5am, shower, feed the pup, and be on the road by 6am.  Which means I can accept getting out by 7am, which really means I won’t be on the road until 8 or 9.  The route will take me straight west out of Boston on I-90, before hopping on I-84.  I’ll be on that for a while: thru Connecticut past Hartford, a short cut across southern New York, and to Scranton.  I catch I-81 there but only long enough to find I-80 and the LONG run across Pennsylvania.  No sooner do I get to Ohio, then I move to I-76 in Youngstown, hop onto I-71 south of the C word, then find I-70 in Columbus.  End of Day 1 – a scheduled 13 hours later – is in Dayton, OH.  If I can get to Pennsylvania by Noon, I think I will be doing pretty good, but there is nothing easy about the day.

Sunday then is a little less grueling, but not by much.  It’s a 12 hour drive.  After getting onto I-70 in Columbus, I will stay on it until Kansas City – that’s including Indiana (around Indianapolis), Illinois (thru Vandalia, which the last time I visited there I replaced the battery in the same car I am driving on this trip), and St. Louis (by which I mean, East St Louis).  Then its down the old flint hills road on I-35 until I reach Wichita.

I am working in Wichita all next week, something I had planned to do anyway, just planned on flying there and flying back before this plan came up.  So you could say it is my down time too.

We hit the road again the following Saturday to work through the last two days of a drive.  That part is going to be a bit easier – and pretty straight forward.  9+hours to Albuquerque along US-54 (which is as interstate-y as highways get), then 10 hours into LA.

Yes it’s a lot of driving, yes its insane, but as my inspiration for all things stupid (Jeremy Phillips) once said (then said all the time) … It’s Time to Take Stupid to a Whole New Level.