Flynn Taggart

Few people know this, but I’m going on a trip in early June with my buddy Ryan. There is no destination because the trip is all about touring the United States. I’d love to say that we’re going coast-to-coast, but given the time restraints, we’re only going to get to Texas before turning around to come home. The current plan is to head out west to Niagara Falls, swing along the southern edge of the Great Lakes, shoot through Chicago, take Route 66 down to Oklahoma, then snag Route 50 all the way back east to Washington DC, before taking a northern turn up through Gettysburg and back home to New York.

That’s just over 4,000 miles of wide-open American highway and will take us anywhere from 7-10 days to complete. I can’t wait.

The funny thing is that I knew before the plans were made what the costs of this trip would be. No problem. What I didn’t plan on was the amount of piddly little things I’d need to pick up in preparation for the trip…

• MinoHD Video Camera? Check.
• Mini Camera Tripod? Check.
• First Aid Kit? Check.
• 500gb External Hard Drive? Check.
• Emergency MRE’s? Check.

There’s actually more to the list than that, but those are the main things I’ve had on my mind thus far. I can’t drive halfway across the country without getting video of the event, can I? And, sure, I can offload my videos and photos to my laptop each day, but what about backing them up? Got to have a backup hard drive. It would be horrible to lose all those memories to hard drive failure mid-trip. I’m thinking that the MRE’s might be overkill, but I’d rather have extra food on hand in case my Jeep breaks down in the middle of the Great Plains. I should probably bring some water too.

So much to think about! Thankfully, most of the planning is done at this point. It’s just a matter of letting everything fall into place while hoping for nice weather. Or a tornado. I’d be more than happy to actually chase a storm, rather than just advertise it on my license plate.