Plans Are Laid

Thanks to excellent internet connectivity at the Holiday Inn Express Fremont — almost as good as we have at work — and enough time on my hands to do so, I booked all of the hotel stays for our trip to Worldcon. Lisa and I had previously worked out a general plan of how we would make the drive (with somewhat different routes out and back) and places we plan to make stops, which means some days we can't drive as far as we can on those days where it's all drive-drive-drive. Also, we've tried (although always successfully) to keep it down to only about eight driving hours per day, and I threw lots of slow-down orders into the trip-planning software, which won't allow an average driving speed of less than 50 MPH. In addition, we're mostly staying in Holiday Inn Express properties along the way, which somewhat constrains where we stop; in one night's case it obliges a slight detour and a longer drive because the location that was the "logical" stop was already full.

( Road Trip )

It's a lot of driving: 1750 miles outbound and 1710 return, according to MapPoint, which means probably at least 10% more than that, or perhaps somewhere between 3500 and 4000 miles. I'd better get an oil change just before and just after the trip. And my regular mechanic urges me to let him give the van another once-over the last week I'm in the Bay Area before the trip just in case. I do not want to get stuck out on the road the way we were in Wells NV on the Denvention trip.