At the beginning of this year we relocated from New York City to Honolulu, which involved shipping the car from California, so given the choice of paying an extra $1000 to ship it by ground from New York to LA or to take a solo road trip (my wife and son had gone ahead in August, so she could start a new job, and he could start school at the beginning of the year), visiting friends and family and making photographs along the way, and having the peace of mind to know the car wouldn't be delayed by a ground shipper en route, I decided to make the road trip and wished I'd done a few more of them earlier.
Leaving on New Year's Eve after finishing with the movers and wrapping up a few last details in my office in the Empire State building, I headed for the NJ Turnpike, down to Washington, DC., through Virginia, stopping to visit friends in Durham, then across I-40 picking up old Route 66 in OK City, up to my mom's place in Vegas from Flagstaff, then to my sister's in LA for a few days. I gave myself three weeks from New York to my flight from LAX, dropped off the car at the dock in Long Beach and took a cab to the airport.
It was great to be able to set my own schedule and visit the locations I wanted to when the light was good. I processed film in a Nikor daylight sheet-film tank in motel bathrooms along the way. Our household goods didn't arrive for another three months after I got to Honolulu, so the darkroom is finally set up, and I'm working through a backlog of film processing since arriving earlier this year and proofing the negs from that trip and beyond.
I highly recommend processing film on the road, even if it means simplifying your process somewhat (I did that by processing everything in Acufine instead of ABC Pyro). It gives you immediate feedback to be sure you're equipment is working properly and that you aren't making some repeated error, while you can still revisit the last location, and besides, what else are you going to do on your own in the middle of nowhere at night? (Don't answer that!)
I documented the trip a bit at: http://www.apug.org/forums/forum37/1...ng-i-40-a.html
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