I have driven 15,000 miles since May, so you can probably understand why I feel like I’ve been living out of my Prius. I need to bring enough stuff to make the trip productive plus a few other things to maintain some minimal level of comfort. Loading and unloading all this stuff into car takes me 2-3 trips.
What the hell could I be bringing, you wonder? Here’s a list of items that stay in the car all the time:
• 2 or 3 DeLorme road atlases, each one with about 70 pages of maps;
• 1 flashlight;
• 1 fishing hat made from genuine Mississippi River mud, even though I don’t fish;
• 1 tripod;
• 1 bag of trail mix (replenished every couple of weeks);
• several containers of tic-tacs, so my coffee-saturated mouth doesn’t scare off the museum volunteers;
• napkins;
• 1 pair of hiking shoes;
• 1 pair of white socks to wear with previously mentioned hiking shoes;
• 1 notepad;
• 2 pens.
I recently added the following items to my trunk:
• 1 tent;
• 1 sleeping bag;
• 1 air mattress;
• 1 folding chair;
• 1 towel.
When I leave for a trip, I also bring:
• 1 laptop computer;
• 1 digital voice recorder (writing while driving is a bitch);
• 2 or 3 1 ½” binders with notes about attractions to check out;
• 1 iPod to listen to all my leftist NPR shows via podcast;
• 1 digital camera, 2 lenses, and miscellaneous photographic equipment;
• 1 cell phone;
• 1 cell phone charger;
• 1 satchel for collecting brochures, pamphlets, etc.
• 1 travel mug for my daily dose(s) of caffeine;
• 1 water bottle;
• running clothes (that I haven’t used in 2 months);
• 1 medium-sized backpack full of clothes to wear while hiking through the brush and climbing bluffs and fresh clothes to wear in the evening so I don’t look like a bum all the time.
Just for fun, contrast this long list of crap with what I brought to Central America – one medium-sized backpack and one small day pack. For two months.
Packed for one weekend in Iowa
There is, however, a fine line between living out of a car and living in a car, or so I’m told. That line gets thinner with every trip. Take last week, for example, when I was in La Crosse. With sunny skies and temperatures in the mid-80s, it didn’t take long for me to become a stinky, sweaty mess. Because I would be meeting friends for dinner, I felt a need to clean up and change into fresh clothes. How very thoughtful of me. Lacking a motel room for that purpose, I thought a park restroom would make a fine changing room.
When I started searching for a good candidate for my transformation, all of the bathrooms were locked. Unfortunately for me, the La Crosse Parks Department locks the bathrooms around 5pm. Undeterred, I headed to Houska Park, a quiet isolated park just south of downtown. I used the drinking fountain to improve my personal hygiene, changed clothes in my car, then brushed my teeth while sitting in the front seat. Oddly, it all seemed perfectly natural to me, like people do this all the time. Well, at least the people I hang out with. Whether the cop who pulled in just as I was leaving would agree is another story.
Packed for two months in Central America
Today’s Bad Decision: Going on a brewery tour before eating lunch. After spending Friday morning chatting with a friend, I had a busy agenda for the afternoon – two museums, a brewery tour, and a church. I thought I could race through the brewery tour, then grab some lunch before touring the museums. Poor, naïve, Dean. If I had known how much free beer and frivolity was on tap, I would have eaten first. The City Brewery makes 6 types of beer; tour participants get a 3 ounce sample of each beer, plus a 12 ounce serving of whichever of the 6 they want to sample for a second opinion. That makes 30 ounces of beer, or about 2 ½ cans. On an empty stomach. If the company at the bar had been less entertaining, I would have skipped the 12 ounce beer and moved on, but I was having too much fun. So, after my 30 ounce liquid lunch, I ran over to the Hmong eggroll restaurant for a quick snack, then toured the two museums before they closed. I wasn’t very impressed with either museum, but maybe I should give them a second look when my concentration is a bit more, um, focused.
© Dean Klinkenberg, 2007
