Location: Scotch Plains, NJ
Miles traveled: 263
Cost of gas: $1.79 / gal
Weather: sunny / cool
Mood: nervous
Tunes: Prodigy

< !Start right after THIS!>The stage is set. We begin. The part we will probably remember the least. I know I will forget packing up the car. I will forget squeezing the plastic trash bins into the trunk of the Neon. I will forget the 10 year old toaster oven left beside the dumpster. I will forget how squeaky the floor on Apsley St. was. I will remember the first time I saw that apartment in August of 2003, but I will forget the dozens of times I drove there from Manchester. Memory is sometimes picky about what you burn in there for life and what you spend all day doing and forget in a month.

Everything is set in motion, including us. Our storage containers are on their way west. The three boxes that wouldn’t fit were sent “parcel post” to return to us in Irvine. Ze’Neon is here in NJ waiting for our arrival on a cold December morning. I’ve never seen a “to-do” list longer then the one in my Palm. We’ve made calls, reservations, plans, checked weather, checked the moon, called back, sent email, and confirmed plans. A going away party Saturday. In the car Sunday morning. The motion is almost perpetual.

Location: On The Pike
Miles traveled: 900+
Cost of gas: $1.83 / gal
Weather: muggy
Mood: upbeat
Tunes: Sugar Ray

< !Start right after THIS!>A few weeks ago I picked up the DeLorme Earthmate GPS (USB edition w/ Street Atlas USA 2004). We first set this up with my laptop, etc. in the Subaru for Maine Forest. Considering the amount of hardware in the car, it turned out pretty well. The setup is a PIII 500 laptop running Win2K, powered 4 port USB hub, 120GB USB drive, USB WiFi, and the DeLorme Earthmate.

Wardriving Rumford: After some experimenting with the tools. Net Stumbler seems to be the best product for this purpose. I’m amazed at the numbers of hotspots we found on Route 2 alone. The Rumford Public Library was one of the most convenient spots we found.

Tracking down bugs: WinAmp was skipping pretty badly. I found that this was because of the Xircom PCMCIA Ethernet card. When it’s in and connected to the net it won’t skip. When it’s in and not connected to Ethernet it skips the sound output. Once GPS is up and tracking everything works awesome. Unfortunately this sometimes takes over 20 minutes. We have yet to figure out the right “sequence” to get the GPS up and tracking quickly every time. I think it’s a combination of me not being patient and some driver / software issues.

In the car to Jersey: We transferred all of the equipment into the Malibu. I gained about 20 more cubic feet of space to put stuff. This will be helpful crossing the country. The GPS only dropped out once on the way down. On the way back however it took a while to get it working. I blue screened the laptop twice. More gremlins to track down.

Location: Route 495, Massachusetts
Miles traveled: 10
Cost of gas: $2.05 / gal
Weather: hot / muggy
Mood: pleased
Tunes: Robert Plant – Now and Zen

< !Start right after THIS!>We are headed to Maine this weekend, for the Maine Forest Rally. I loaded up the Subaru with the gear that we would be using to cross the country. After several minutes of setting wires, switches, and cable ties, I booted up the laptop. I had to re-locate the GPS once (more towards the center of the rear window) and play with the sequence of “startup” and “shutdown.” Once the GPS was tracking, the USB hard drive spinning, and the WiFi adapter beeping, I was ready to give her a full test.

Started up Street Atlas USA 2004. Started up WinAmp. Connected to the Internet over WiFi. “Lift off!” We are now in Beta! Testing should continue this weekend. I hopefully will get some Maine pictures posted to rallynotes.com. I’m curious to wardrive rural Rumford, Maine.

Today on Route 93 in Manchester I spied a DeLorean heading North. I find this car silly for a few reasons. Now don’t get me wrong – it is a cool car and I could probably repeat pages 1 through 156 of the “Back to the Future” script. But it’s 2900 pounds of irreplaceable body panels. The “good” motor has 190HP. It sticks out more then my rallycar on the highway and you probably shouldn’t drive it in the rain. All good reasons to make it a daily driver.

Heh – well I’m a bit of an attention whore myself. So, why not?!

Is this a great graphic or what? I can hear this jingle in my head that sounds like a 50’s TV ad. “RoAd TriP, You ESS AEEE!!” That’s when I knew it would work. When the psychotic jingle popped into my head. “Let’s go! Let’s GO! Get packed! Get PACKED! It’s TIME for RoAd TriPp, U! S! A!” *aherm

Christine and I have been packing stuff into boxes for the last few days. The logistics have been worked out. I have to separate stuff into essentially three piles. (A. Moving to California.), (B. Moving to storage.), (C. Trash, burn, or ebay.) The speed of which I do this will pick up as we get closer to July.

I pulled out the camping gear and cleaned off the bugs from the flatware. I’m starting to make a list of stuff that we will need in the car. The exciting part for me will be trying to cram 100 pounds of electric / computer / radio gear into a 2000 Chevy Malibu. The short list of cool gadgets to have: Digital Camera, Digital Video, CB, FRS, Scanner, WiFi, GPS, probably 2 laptops , MP3, USB to Motorola v120 Phone, USB Hanspring data cable, Power inverter, Phone chargers, etc. This will allow us to not only thwart an alien attack, but blog across the US.

So, those of you living vicariously through me , or mildly interested in a planetkris road trip – we’ll be leaving towards the end of August. We’ll be blogging the whole way. Pictures, bad hotels, places we hold up, you’ll get it all! Watch for the graphic! “RoAd TRIP, you ess AAEEEE!”