In an ongoing effort to satiate my narcissistic need for demonstrating value, I will briefly go over what I did to prepare for my cross-country trip.

Although a cross-country trip is inherently worthwhile, my purposes for this one were more specific. While browsing one of my favorite sailing forums (CruisersForum.com) I happened upon a classifieds post that piqued my interest.

It was for an electric motor setup off a catamaran. This means two powerful motors, a speed control, the cables, etc (over $15,000 new). In addition to this (and the most valuable part of the lot when sold secondhand) were two enormous Xantrex inverters that, even used, were easily worth over $1000 each.

The poster of this listing was only asking $800 for the lot. I inquired, and he responded with a very interesting proposition. He said that he had a van with him which needed to be returned to it’s owner, a mechanic that lives in the Inland Empire (near to Los Angeles). The deal was, if I would be willing to drive the van back (and pay for fuel), he would give me all of what he was advertising free of cost.

Sounds great! But first I need to do a cost analysis. So I made a spreadsheet that calculated theoretical fuel cost. It’s below.

Basically in order to calculate costs, one simply needs to add the total number of miles, divide that by the expected MPG (according to FuelEconomy.gov) and multiply that by the average cost of a gallon of gas nationwide (such as through AAA Gas Prices).

I usually build in a minimum 10% buffer. This can be calculated by multiplying the total you just got by 1.1, and whatever you end up with is your total predicted fuel costs.

So according to my spreadsheet, even the scenic route will cost me less than $800 in fuel. As for the rest, I’ll chock it up to enjoyment.

So I agreed, and immediately posted a “wanted” ad for a particular type of outboard engine. I desired to replace the 2-stroke that was on the Vega at the time, and as luck would have it there was one available, exactly what I was looking for, in Des Moines, Iowa. And from a fellow Albin Vega owner no less!

So at that point all systems were go. I bought my plane ticket, and away I went.

You can check out some of the trip:

• Detroit
• Chicago
• Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Memphis, Mississippi, Boston, Nashville, St Louis, Cleveland