I can’t even begin to stress the importance of proper planning when you are taking a long road trip. Seriously, a nice trip can take a SHARP left turn into We-Messed-Up-Ville really fast! A few weeks ago, my friends and I decided to go on a road trip to celebrate the last few weeks of summer before college started up again. We were just really excited to get going, and figured we would wing it. Winging it is 1000% the one thing we should not have done.
We set off on our weekend of fun, in my newly acquired 2017 Chevy Cruze hatchback, not a care in the world. We had a vague idea of where we wanted to go, but no real set destination, just see where the road took us. We had several changes of clothes, some sneakers, blankets, pillows, snacks…road trip things. We were on top of the world. We managed to arrive at a campground and decided that even though we didn’t have any tent sleeping outside would be a lovely idea. It would have been if it didn’t rain. So we all piled into the Cruze, arranged the seating as best we could and slept in the car. It worked out surprisingly well considering there were 3 adult women attempting to sleep in there.
After our impromptu camping, we stopped at a few restaurants, and parks on our way and had a lot of fun. Things were significantly less fun, however, when we were on our way home. Somehow we forgot that filling up on gas was a thing we needed to do. It would have been fine if we didn’t hit traffic on the highway. There must have been some kind of crazy accident because we were in bumper to bumper traffic for over an hour, at which point we noticed that our gas tank was at E. We were in the middle left lane of four lane traffic and moving towards the outside wasn’t an option, and unless we wanted to take some risks with some guard rails, escaping to the left was decidedly not an option either.
All we could do was keep going and hope that we could somehow get over and find an exit before the tank completely emptied. It was a waiting game NONE of us wanted to play. We were doing well. There was an exit in sight and we were making strides to get over to that exit….until the car started slowing even when the gas pedal was to the floor…nothing. We ran out of juice. It was done, man. Game over. We were sitting in the middle of traffic, no gas and all we could do was sit and wait till the traffic cleared and we could get the car over to the shoulder or have a tow truck come save us.
The moral of this supremely humiliating story: remember to fill up your tank! Your vehicle may have incredible mileage, but friend, YOU STILL NEED GAS TO DRIVE. Heed my words friends. Try to plan better than we did. It will never hurt you to be prepared.
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