Yes, I did become something of a Garmin junkie during LA/XC — but deep down, I’m all about maps. About getting directions in advance. About being prepared. About knowing where I’m going.
I was actually going to say we’re a map family, because I have this picture in my head of Matt, my oldest son, diligently tracing the route from Westport to New Milford on the Hagstrom’s as we drive to a Pop Warner football game. But he hasn’t worn a Pop Warner uniform in 17 years, and that might be the last time anyone in my family, besides me, looked at a map. Certainly not Greg, my middle son; he won’t even let you give him directions. Greg’s M.O. is to wait until he’s in the car; then he’ll call, ask for the address, and plug it into his GPS. Robby’s at school in L.A., but he leaves the navigation to JetBlue. And Carol? Ha! Not big on advance planning. No-no-no-no. She gets to an intersection, or a fork in the road, and then goes with the option that feels right.
Where I’m going with all this, of course, is back to my LA/XC trip with Ricky, and the abuse Carol heaped on me for taking this
supposed seat-of-the-pants, cross-country lark — this “boys-only” road trip — and then choreographing it pretty much stop-by-stop with help from the Triple-A office in the Compo Shopping Center. And it occurs to me now that I never got around to telling you how blown away I was by what they can do for you at AAA, which prior to my adventure, I’d never thought of as anything more than emergency roadside assistance.
Well, let me tell you now. The nice folks at Triple-A will lay on you every regional tour book, every map, and every destination guide you could possibly want for travel anywhere in the US of A — free.
(Provided you’re a member, of course.) They’ll help you choose your route. They’ll arrange AAA discounts. They’ll even take care of your hotel/motel reservations, if you want. And if you’re lucky enough to get Jan, my own very special consultant, she’ll do even more. Noticing how crestfallen I looked when I turned my nifty United States map into a smudge-ridden mess after I used her handy-dandy green circle stamp to highlight my destinations, she, on her own, gave me a new map and re-did the destination marks herself. Leave it to Jan to spot obsessive neat-freak tendencies in a client who’s trying his best to pass for normal.
I dropped in on Jan recently to give her a belated “thanks” and to tell her how much Ricky and I enjoyed our adventure. Turns out she followed the whole deal on BEAGLE MAN. She said she was even tempted to enter my “guess-the-mileage” contest, but her conscience got the better of her. Since she was the one who planned my route and knew the distances down to the tenth of a mile, it might have been a bit of an advantage.
And yes, if this post seems to be a brazen and transparent attempt to trade on the glory days of my cross-country-road-trip-with-dog, when attention to BEAGLE MAN was at its peak — it is. But don’t worry, fans . . . Ricky and I will hit the road again sometime soon. I promise.
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