Ten things to do before your next road trip

Before you leave on your next road trip, here are the 10 things that are essential for you to do before pulling out of your driveway or parking lot:

1. Prepare your vehicle. There are four fundamental things to be sure of before you leave: tire pressures, oil, coolant and brake fluid. Most everything else can be inspected en route, but check these before rolling away.

Your tire pressures should be checked when the tires are still cold (recommended pressures will be printed in the vehicle’s handbook, or on a sticker in the door jamb). Once you’re rolling, the tires will heat up and the air inside them will expand and give an incorrectly high reading. You want them to be at their recommended pressures in order to maximize their life, the handling of your vehicle, and your fuel consumption.

Your oil level should be checked before leaving because it’s the simplest and most basic way to ensure the vehicle is properly maintained. If you find the level is down, top it up and take the rest of the oil container with you, as you may have to top up again.

Check the coolant level before the car starts running, because it’s a lot more pleasant to top it up when the engine’s cold than when it’s hot. And if you let it get too hot, the engine can be severely damaged. The same goes for checking the level of brake fluid in the reservoir, which can be done by sight but is too important to not monitor regularly.

Avoid getting your vehicle serviced before immediately starting out. Try to drive locally for a day or two to be sure that everything was tightened and replaced properly. There are too many tales of loose nuts and broken wires to be ignored.

2. Prepare your wallet or handbag. Make sure you have the vehicle’s up-to-date ownership (and that your licence-plate sticker won’t expire while you’re away), your insurance (ditto) and your driver’s licence.

If you’re crossing the border to the U.S., bring passports for everyone travelling. Also, bring some cash – I usually carry $100 – and a credit card, as well as any gas company points cards you might have.

Perhaps most important, have a second credit card to carry in a separate place so that if your wallet is lost or stolen, you have a way to pay to get yourself home. And make a note of the numbers of every card in your wallet or bag and e-mail it to yourself, just in case.

3. Call up your credit card company, if it’s a long and unusual (for you) trip, and let them know what you’re doing. Visa or MasterCard both use fancy software to watch their users’ habits, and if a string of purchases takes place in unfamiliar places, then they might assume the card has been stolen without you noticing.

Twice, for this reason, I’ve had a credit card cancelled halfway through a cross-country road trip. On one of those trips, the card was reinstated immediately over the phone when I called from a phone booth in Utah; on the other trip, I was told in the Yukon that a new card would be mailed to my home. Fortunately, I had a spare card on a different account to fall back on to get home.

4. Get and carry a spare ignition key. This isn’t necessary if you have OnStar, when the operator can unlock your car with a radio signal, but otherwise, you’ll be relying on a locksmith or tow company.

This isn’t just for when you lock your key inside the car (which is hard to do with modern vehicles, which use electronic fobs), but for when you lose your key down a grate, or to a pickpocket. You want to at least be able to get into the vehicle to get at your things.

Canadian Tire sells those small magnetic boxes that can hold a spare key and fob and which can be easily hidden out of sight, just in case. If you ever need to use it, you’ll love it. If you do, remember to wrap the key in Saran Wrap to protect it from dirt and moisture and from rattling around in the box.

5. Join an auto club. The original is CAA, which partners with AAA in the States, but there are several other competitors now that warrant checking out.

I’ve been a CAA member for the last decade and have probably called for assistance – a boost, a tow, a locked-out car – every year since. The last time was when I ran out of gas in a minivan on the 401, absorbed by a radio show and not noticing the flashing gas warning. The CAA guy was there within the hour with a can of free gas to get me going again.

Aside from anything else, auto club membership is peace of mind to know that you’ll always get home or at least to a mechanic who can help. And CAA members get 10 per cent discounts at hotels and motels across the country that can pay for the membership after a week away.

6. Check your phone limitations. This is especially useful if you’re travelling in the States, where roaming is frequent for phones with Canadian providers, and many basic plans don’t allow you to incur roaming charges without preauthorization.

Check with your cell phone provider beforehand to make sure that you can call from the U.S., and consider buying a roaming package that will allow you a blanket number of cheap minutes in a month from wherever, instead of $2 a minute while roaming.

And get a calling card for your home phone account so that you can use it to call from a hotel phone, avoiding the huge surcharges that can accumulate.

If you’re travelling in more remote areas, check if your cell phone provider is recognized there. I discovered this year that Rogers coverage is sketchy on Cape Breton Island and Newfoundland, and just doesn’t exist in the Yukon, whereas Bell phones have no problems in those places.

7. Get a GPS, or at least a decent map. A GPS is a comfort if you’re trying to find a specific place, or a certain address. It can also find you a Starbucks or a Timmy’s or a bank machine on the other side of a large, strange town. But they’re not much good for plotting out the day’s route.

For that, I use Microsoft Streets & Trips to figure out distances on my laptop in a hotel room, and then compare the suggested route to a decent paper map, to see if there’s anything interesting nearby along the way. A GPS won’t have a little red ink note that points out the world’s biggest ball of twine or the Spam museum.

If you can, pick up a new map at the provincial or state welcome centres – they’re always the best for clarity and promoting things to see.

8. Check your lodging options online, or book somewhere online. This season is much busier than last year for travelling, and it’s not always a simple thing to drive into town and check into a motel or hotel – especially if you’re arriving late.

Before you leave each day, decide on roughly where you want to end up and then go online to sites like expedia.ca or hotels.com and see what’s in the area. If you want the peace of mind of a room waiting for you, then book it there and then. If you want the flexibility to choose once you arrive, then at least you’ll have some advance knowledge of what to expect (and the local prices) when you see the choices.

It’s a good idea to write down the local phone numbers for some hotels, too, in case you want to call from the road once you have a better idea of where you’ll get to that night.

9. Program your iPod and arrange your discs beforehand. If you want to listen to specific music or podcasts or whatever while driving, program several playlists on your laptop before synching your MP3 player to it, so that you won’t be fussing with the player while driving – which is illegal in Ontario, anyway.

If it’s a long road trip that involves all-day freeway driving, go to your local library beforehand and sign out some books on disc, so that you can listen to a good book while driving. The time passes much more quickly with a book than with just music as a background sound.

10. If you’re carrying kids, consider getting a portable DVD player for the car if you don’t have one already installed. C’mon – it may be educational to travel, but they just won’t appreciate the endless scenery and spirit of adventure as you will, and if your trip includes hours on a monotonous freeway, bring along some movies to help them pass the time.

All airline flights come with movies – why shouldn’t boring drives?

Limit the watching to maybe two movies a day, or 50 per cent of the travelling time, so that they’re not completely immune to their surroundings.

Don’t get a simple player that rests on their lap because this will hurt and damage their necks, but get a player that attaches directly to the headrest in front of them.

I bought mine – one player, two monitors – from WalMart eight years ago for $150 and it still works just fine, and can even be taken into a hotel room to finish watching the end of the movie.

And make the most of the break it’ll give you for some adult conversation in the front seat while they’re wearing their headphones.

Road trips really can be fun!

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