The Great American Road Trip

Em and I turn 10 next week. I mean to say we are celebrating out 10th anniversary. We are marking this milestone by taking a road trip. We used to take road trips all the time and we enjoyed it. For whatever reason, we have tailed off in the last couple of years. Time to get back in the swing of things.
The checklist for going on vacation is long and the price, in terms of money and time is high. What it costs just to get out of town to relax for awhile is astounding. In some cases, it is very nearly enough to poo-poo the whole thing and throw your hands up, open up your laptop and watch a You Tube video instead of working like any other day.
Take the car to the shop for a checkup, oil change and a tire rotation, agonize over each packing decision, eat out because you can't leave food in the fridge, call your one remaining friend still willing to take care of the cats (because she owes you and she knows it), let the neighbors know to keep an eye on the house, and on and on and on.
My parents employed a well reasoned, supremely organized checklist that was conceived slowly over time and revised to absolute perfection. It hung on the fridge door, taunting us six months before vacation even started. Why they needed this checklist is a mystery to me in the first place as since time immemorial we went to the same hotel in the same beach town with the same group of people to sit on the same sand and have the same conversations year after year after year after year.
You would think, repetition being such a good teacher that after 25 years of making the same trip with the same people to the same place they would have the planning portion of the trip pretty much down pat.
But from the "One Month out Checklist" to the "Final Last Second Checklist" each item was systematically dispatched in the proper order thus assuring the planet would continue to spin on its axis and God of the Heavens would continue to smile down fondly upon the Uebbings' yellow station wagon. And the last line of the last checklist was always "check toilets."
This was a curious and seemly random tradition in our house growing up. I never quite got it. The toilets never ran amok in my Father's world - that would not do. I guess he was consumed by the thought there was some vast plumbing conspiracy that would kick in the minute he left the house, assured of some imminent catastrophic failure that could only be averted by a direct inspection of each commode by multiple people. I mean, it wasn't just the fact that we were made to traipse around the house to check all three bathrooms, it was the Jack Bauer method in which we were made to do it.
"It's ok down here, Dad!"
"Are you sure? It's not running is it?"
"Um, no."
"Why did you hesitate? This is a zero fail mission! Do you know how much it would cost to let that toilet run the whole time we are gone? Do YOU have money to flush away? Maybe you don't WANT to go to college... Stare at that bowl boy, that is your future going down the drain..."
And so on.
Then there was the inevitable discussion on which route would be the best to take. Really? We have been there 25 times in 25 years. It hasn't moved. WE, haven't moved! But in spite of this there was the feverish (and totally one sided) conversation about this one simple decision. You see, only my Dad cared. I wouldn't have known one way from the other. My Mother NEVER drove (except in one failed experiment that is an entirely different blog post) and I am sure she didn't give a wit, either.
I am so different from this well ordered operation. I pack at the last second with inadequate planning or forethought. I once brought a swimsuit for a trip to the aquarium, but not to the beach. I don't agonize over the route to take, or try to time everything to the last nth. I just want to go. I just want to have fun.
I guess it is easier without kids. Em and I calmly change our plans with little pain and we can remain flexible knowing we can provide for our own means... if it's a little cold when we get there, we'll buy the obligatory "I'm a Tourist" sweatshirt. A memoir of our laissez-faire method of relaxation. Simple when you are not charged with the health and well-being of minors.
We are too cool to care that on day three we are out of clothes, the car is on fire because the check engine light really meant it this time, the money is gone, the travelers checks we bought has a misprint rendering them utterly useless and as a result we will never see the world's tallest midget two towns over.
It's all part of the fun.
Still, I have spent hundreds of dollars and a great deal of what could have been otherwise productive time just in the preparation of leaving town for this humble road trip.
I wonder how much worse it would have been if I wasted all that time planning.