Road-trip Rituals

Any dedicated road tripper has rituals for the ride: Necessary preparations, must-listen-to music, requisite snacks. Speed limits, shmeed limits. These are the really important rules of the road.

For today’s Three-fer, we bring you always hilarious, excellently outrageous Joe Rhodes, a frequent contributor to TV Guide, Reader’s Digest and The New York Times. Joe has decided to live in a decked-out Mercedes van for the next few years, wandering the backroads of America “like Charles Kuralt in a bad mood.” He’s coming to your town, so protect yourself by checking on his whereabouts at Traipsathon.com. And for more Joe than you can control, follow his Twitter feed: @earlkabong.

***

Joe Rhodes is coming soon to your town. You've been warned.

Before strapping in for a road trip (by which I mean putting on my Astronaut Diaper), I pack salves and unquents, jugs of water and Subway coupons I may or may not have stolen from the neighbor’s mailbox. I get my traditional Road Trip Buzz Cut, so I can stumble out of bed and into my vehicle without it being obvious that I haven’t washed or combed my hair. (Seriously.) I always have at least one new Road Trip Album (last trip: Radiohead’s Kid A), and find (often via Yelp) at least one new restaurant/music venue on my route. (Last trip: Flagstaff’s spectacular Tinderbox Kitchen). I double-check GPS, bluetooth speakerphone, IPod cassette/speaker connector, and hit the highway. Also, whenever I cross a state line, I wet myself a little. Those Astronaut Diapers are handy.–Joe

The best road trip album EVER. That's all.

I’ve heard that other road trippers like to compile a new playlist for every trip. That sounds nice but I never make time for it. Instead I rely on two playlists, or, I should say, need! to listen to two playlists over and over when I drive from here to there: Lucinda Williams’ Car Wheels on a Gravel Road and Yummy, a mix I created about a decade back. Car Wheels is, simply, the best travel album ever recorded. It works on highways, back roads, at rest stops… And Yummy, which remains, to me, as fresh as the day I created it, has a song for every mood, from Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s “Over the Rainbow” to Modern English’s “I Melt With You.”–Jenna

"A treat in itself." Note the "food groups" icon. Grapes, apples, nuts, gummy bears.

I’m not a foodie. (I like Peeps, fergawdsake. Also those orange circus peanut thingies.) So it makes peculiar sense that my road rituals involve food. And by food, I mean “food.” My road trip food groups are gummy bears, beef jerky, and trail mix. For variety, sometimes my gummy bears are worms, sometimes my beef jerky is peppered, and sometimes my trail mix contains M&M-ish things. I have never returned a rental car without gummys fused to the upholstery and trail mix wedged in the seats. And, by the way, I now know exactly what happens if you leave a bag of gummy bears in the glove compartment on a trip through Death Valley. It resembles this, only swirlier.–Sophia

Advertisement