Well, the planning and preparation for OTR 10 has finally started. If they say that a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, so too does a road trip of 10,000 or however many more miles. The first step for this year’s trip was ordering a satellite phone to take with me. It seems that all my trips happen to be around the time of hurricane season when the demand for satellite phones is the greatest, so I placed an order for one to be delivered the week before the plan to leave, which right now is September 3rd.
Of course, the question any reader here is asking is, where am I going? Actually, I do not know. If I have one plan, it will probably be to visit some of my favorite campsites from my nine prior trips, of which there were many. Right now, I am inclined to start the planning and preparation and then on September 3rd, or whenever, get in the Defender and make my decision at that point. And from there, I would make my decision day-to-day basis. My only goal for the trip would be to make it home safely.
I also stopped by Dean’s, my mechanic, today to make an appoint to take the Defender in for its pre-trip checkup. It is running beautifully so there is not much to be done. I did ask him to install new tires even though my current tires are just fine, but they are at least five years old with maybe 40,000 milers on them. I learned my lesson long ago that the best investment you can make for your vehicle is good tires. What I do when I get new tires is to take the two best of those being retired and install them on my two spares, one of which rides on the Defender’s bonnet (hood, in American English).
Tomorrow, I think I will pull up my To-do and To-take lists from last year and route them out for this year’s trip. That will be a major task accomplished once I do that.
As an aside, but an important one, today is Montag’s birthday. Montag was my first dog (see top photo, below). Forty-six years ago he was born. It seems like only yesterday that Connie (my wife then) and I drove down to Springfield in our VW Beetle to pick up that little tyke at eight-weeks old. Little did I realize what an impact that simple decision to get a dog -my first- back in 1973 would have on mt life. What joy I got from him and then, after him, Sonnatg, Kessie, Leben m Erde, and now Donner.
Time to play taps and call it a day.
ED, from off the road.
Photo below was by an AP photographer during a two-foot snowstorm in DC in February 1979, just a block from the White House. The photo appeared all over the country and beyond.
