Some of you, like us, may be wondering about our car’s condition for a 15-20,000 mile road trip… Shown here is the “car emergency” kit, as distinguished from the “passenger emergency” kit. (I’ll have more about the latter later.) It seemed important to put this together… even with our premium-level Triple A service, we can’t count on their reaching us if we’re stranded in, say, Death Valley. (Gulp.)

In this plastic bin, if you look hard enough and in the right places, you’ll see these things:

• Various instruction booklets/pamphlets for everything else. Especially important since we’ve actually used none of them yet!
• A little doo-dad — the technical term is “dongle” — providing some spare USB data and charging ports. The car already has two of these, both in the front seat. This dongle thing plugs into the old-style cigarette-lighter outlet, adding up to five additional USB ports. Especially important since we’ve got two phones, two tablet-type devices (The Missus’s iPad, my Google Chromebook), and several other things we may need to (re)charge along the way.
• A car-tire compressor, to inflate all four tires, if we need it.
• A car-tire repair kit for patching flats, slow leaks, and so on. Especially important if the previously bulleted item comes into play (haha (ha?)).
• A car jump-starter power pack, including jumper cables.

I was most impressed with just the existence of the latter. All the jump-starter thingums I’ve ever dealt with, in the absence of another car battery of course, have been fairly bulky things which require being plugged into an AC outlet. But these new devices are 100% portable, powered by lithium-ion batteries which can — yes! — restart a freaking car. It can be recharged from the car’s cigarette-lighter port, once you get the car restarted (duh), and also has a couple USB ports of its own for powering phones etc. while en route, as well as a gonzo flashlight.

P.S. I should add, on this general subject: the car is spending the day at our regularly reliable mechanic today — doing the complete 50,000-mile checkup (with repairs/replacement as needed), and also getting four new all-weather tires. So you (we) can all stop sweating over this stuff… due diligence done!