An obvious but important step to any road trip is getting the car in order. It is bad to have car problems, it is worse to have car problems when you have kids in the car, and it is a disaster to have car problems when you are stuck with kids 500 miles from home.
During our drive from Utah to Austin, in our old Escort with no air conditioning, we suddenly lost our ability to accelerate above 50 miles per hour. This happened somewhere near Phoenix. Since we were moving at the time we had the car packed with stuff, including our 6 week old baby, and the roof was piled two feet high in a travel bag. We were dead. Luckily we had "family" (third cousin once removed through a common-law marriage) that lived nearby who were able to help us out. Our trip was delayed two days, but we made it to Texas only to find out that some minor overdue service, replacing the spark plugs, could have saved us a major headache.
So today I invested four hours of my life taking the car to Midas. (I am a big fan of Midas.) They checked everything over for me, gave me the price for all of the work that "should" be done ($850+) but also told me what needed to be done in order to make sure we had a safe trip without any foreseeable headaches (~$400). As you can guess I had them do the latter.
When you are stuck on the road with kids everyone suffers. The kids get cranky. Mom gets cranky. And since it inevitably forces the plans to change, Dad gets cranky too. I have learned to do whatever possible to avoid these headaches.
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