Home sweet, safely home

[gerisullivan]

No total mileage for my SFContario, Battle Creek, carnyjack's 36th annual SundayBeforeThanksgiving Brunch trip as I accidentally reset the trip odometor somewhere around 900-1,000 miles into it. I am more than a tad surprised to report I drove the last 924 miles in one fell swoop Monday, leaving Jack's in in the Central time zone at 7:45 am and pulling into Toad Woods at 1:28 am in the Eastern time zone. That's pretty much 100 miles more than my previous longest 1-day solo drive(s) from Battle Creek. Long gone are the days when 400-500 miles was my max.

Many good times behind, and more ahead in my immediate future. I pick Gavi up for her Thanksgiving break Tuesday evening. Her roommate is coming here for a couple of days, too. We'll drop Tricia off at her aunt & uncles on Thursday. But first, I must unload the Cardis. Yes, it was another one of those "keep squeezing more into the car even though it's obviously already full" trips. I love my car and am thankful it carried me home sweet, safely home once again, just as it has so very many times over the past decade.

Comments

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Does it help to know I was stopping for 15-30 minutes every 90-150 minutes, and that for the last 300 miles, I had hotels in mind to stop at as well as the willingness to do so if anything felt unsafe? The only time I was tired such that stopping right then was necessary was about 2 hours into the trip, well within the range of when anyone would think the average solo driver would be safe to drive.

I didn't have to get here yesterday. I knew that, and I even had hotels in mind (and discount coupons available) as near as 30 miles from home. Once I arrived, I was up for another couple of hours. The piece that made all the difference in the world is that I was up and on the road early, putting the end of the drive during my normally-active and high-performance night owl hours.

No one intends to drive unsafely, of course, and people don't always (or even often) recognize when they are. I've been doing long solo drives for decades, usually but not always breaking them up with one or more stayovers along the way. This doesn't mean my judgment will always be spot on, but it does mean I have a lot of experience assessing what shape I'm in and how far to go in any given trip. I've stopped within 50-100 miles of home several times over the years, usually on shorter trips than this one. I've stopped after 500 miles or so far more often than that. Yesterday, continuing on seemed reasonable, which is why I did. To me, it's not so much a set number of miles or hours, but a combination of driver alertness, road conditions, weather, and more.