Man in SkivviesAs we prep, pack and panic to head out for three weeks on the road in the ZRV, it’s important to remember the essentials.

10. My Office Depot Christopher Lowell Collection Home Office Lean-To and Herman Miller Aeron “Around the Campfire” office chair.

9. The back-line to Tim, your Filipino buddy in the IT help desk overseas. Always there with some advice.

8. Raid, Off, citronella, flyswatters. I know how bad bugs can be in the Florida suburban summer. I can only imagine what they’ll be like in the actual outdoors — especially with the glow of the monitor to attract them like moths to the flame.

7. S’mores. Always gotta have s’mores on the road. Nothing like G and H keys all sticky with marshmallow.

6. The laptop, flash drive, memory card reader, USB light (for those late-night sessions), phone, iPod, portable printer, camera, and power cords, cables, transformers and adapters for the laptop, phone, iPod, portable printer, camera (and a pair of Mobile Workmates to carry them all).

5. Five hundred feet of extension cord so I can work on my laptop deep in the woods like my hero Henry David Thoreau and not have to walk all the way back when I realize my kids killed my battery surfing the ‘net with the laptop unplugged as we tooled down the highway — with a full-on outlet two feet away!

4. The Harmonica (Jerry Portnoy instructional CDs optional). 3,000 miles to drive gives dad ample opportunity to be a nuisance to the entire family.

3. Passwords to my kids’ savings account. Or their birth certificates to offer them in trade for fuel. Gonna have to gas up this big boy somehow…

2. GPS. Wait, I’m a guy. I don’t need no stinkin’ GPS! Besides, my wireless phone has Nav 4 turn-by-turn directions.

1. Oh yeah, wife and kids. Almost forgot about them…