I'm not talking about using credit cards, I'm talking about prepping all of your electronic devices prior to leaving.
The weekend before we left for Ocean City we got the car ready by taking it to our mechanic to have the oil changed and the tires rotated. Someone in my family was supposed to get the gas tank filled on Sunday but they got sidetracked and we had to fill it part way while in New York state (where gas is expensive) before we crossed over into New Jersey (where gas is cheap) and topped it off.
Our suitcases were all packed Sunday evening leaving only one bag with our personal hygiene to be packed in the morning. All seemed good.
Sunday night I also took the time to charge up all of the cell phones and electronic devices that I could find chargers for. We also packed the chargers because you never know when something will run out of juice.
Monday morning we packed everything in the car and headed out. Everything was looking good except for one thing...
About five miles down the road we hear a whine from the backseat, "Oh no! Red light!"
Yup, the one device I could not locate a charger for was my daughter's DS Lite. She had already packed it!
So here we were, five miles from home and the one item we counted on for giving us some enjoyable driving time was out of juice. Can you guess what my daughter said next (BTW: My wife was driving)?
"Daddy, can I use your DS?"
Yes, dad has a DS and he made sure to charge his before leaving. Being the good dad I let her use mine for the trip down. I still had my PSP in my game bag so I knew I would have something to do when I was not needed to give directions.
Oh yes, my job in the passenger seat is to be co-pilot. It is a job that I excel at while my daughter excels at the job of backseat driver. If only the directions I printed were worth anything.
See, when I go online for directions I want to use a site that allows me to mark out way points without having to get directions to the center of the city.
For example, the first set of directions we got had us going through downtown New York City and crossing the GWB. It then had us taking a ferry from New Jersey! Neither of these things did we want to do.
I had to go in and create some way points in the trip to get the mapping site to send us the way we wanted to go. I had to add White Plains so we could cross the Tappan Zee Bridge but the site had us go to White Plains and then continues south so I had to add Nyack as a way point.
To avoid the ferry I had to add Dover DE as a way point. The only problem we encountered was that my wife got tired of driving just before we hit Dover so she took over as copilot. Because she is not an experienced copilot she forgot to ignore the part of the directions that had us go to the middle of downtown Dover.
After about twenty minutes of asking, "Where do we get back on SR 1 again?" I finally turned around and got back on where we got off. If the mapping site had only allowed me to tack in way points without getting the directions to the middle of the city we would have been fine.
What is the point of those directions anyways? Why not just put a quick line in there saying, "pick any exit here 'cause this is Dover." It would have been much better for everyone involved.
