Ms. Merino's Guide to Midwest Travel

Do...

• Check the weather.  It's no fun being surprised by weather.
• Check your car.  It's no fun being surprised by your car.
• Check the time.  It's no fun being surprised by the time.
• Check your itinerary.  It's no fun being surprised by your itinerary.

Don't...

• Be surprised by the weather.  Those meteorologists went to school to know what they're talking about.  So the odds of what they predict is about 50-50.  So don't be surprised when what they say comes true.  Or doesn't, for that matter.
• Be surprised by your car.  Check the oil so the engine doesn't get mad.  Check the windshield fluid levels so you can see when everything goes to hell.  Also recommended is a sense of reality when gathering everything to take with you on your trip.  Your trunk will never successfully channel Mary Poppin's bottomless carpet bag.  Shed a few tears and then move on.
• Be surprised by the time.  Your watch and all your clocks are in fact NOT plotting against you when you look at them only a "few minutes" after you looked last time only to find that your "few minutes" was actually a "few hours".  There are most likely clocks that are plotting the downfall of humanity but they are, mostly likely, not your clocks.
• Be surprised by your itinerary.  Or rather, the complete disintegration of your itinerary.  Trying to schedule last minute errands, work, travel, and a holiday get-together looks great on paper.  Not so much in real life.  

So, how do I know to make all these wonderful tips?  Oh, personal and recent experience.

How things went so wrong:

• The weather.  It sucks.  Rainy and then freezing and then raining again and then more of the freezing.
• The car.  It sucks.  Or rather, I suck for keeping so much crap in it.  This is nothing new, but always surprises me when I go to pack.
• The time.  It sucks.  I will never understand how walking out to the car takes over 8 minutes.  To any physicists reading looking for warps in the time-space continuum, I have found one.
• The itinerary.  It sucks.  Or at least mine did today.  It started so well.  I got to Tammany's and made it to work a minute early (woah!).  And that's when it started to go downhill.  Because of the weather, my part-timer couldn't get to work on time.  Because of the weather, I had to spend 20 minutes scraping 1/8" of ice off my car.  Because of the weather, it took four and a half hours to drive 30 miles.

That's the short version.  So I'm vacationing in lovely Anderson, Indiana in the middle of an ice and snow and rain storm.  I'm sooo excited.  Not really.  The roads were terrible and they only salted them after things had frozen.  They were so bad that I was slipping and sliding after inching forward a few feet at a time.  Go Indiana.  So tomorrow the plan is to finish the drive home.  Hopefully not at the same pace.  Because I'd like to get to Detroit sometime before the new year.  And then back to Indy of course where the kitties are fuzzy and hungry.