At Journey's Eve

I'm finishing up all the mundane, logistical details tonight -- the night before I take off on this pilgrimage. I've picked up the rental car; am washing, folding, and packing clothes; and loading up the iPod with good podcasts.

First stop on this quest? Baltimore, Maryland. I have to drive 1,000 miles starting Sunday afternoon for an Orioles/Red Sox game on Monday night. So if you're bored & have completely run out of things to do, feel free to give me a ring to help keep me awake. Check my Facebook page for my cell #.

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I plan on keep tabs on how much money this trip costs -- partly for future reference ("Wow, gas used to cost only four bucks a gallon?!? That was SO cheap!!"), and partly for any folks interested in how much a jaunt like this would cost them.

FYI on rental cars: by far the cheapest way to go is Priceline.com. I was amazed. I went from one rental car web site to another pricing them out, and about the cheapest option I could find was $450-$480 for my two-week trip. When I went on Priceline, however, these same rental car companies immediately knocked $100 off the price just to be competitive with one another. And then, you can even bid what you want to pay, and see if anyone will bite. So, I ended up paying $306.45 for my Avis rental car for 14 days. I got a compact in order to save money on gas. In my pickup truck, this trip would have costed me about $900 in gas; with the compact, about $400. So, the rental more than pays for itself, AND I don't put miles on my pick-up.

So, so far the Pilgrimage tab stands at $306.45.