Every road trip I ever took from the age of 18 to, oh, 30 or so I guess has involved this right of passage where I would sit down and pick which CDs I was going to take on the trip. CDs take up space and I have well over 1,000 now, so I would pull out one of those 200 CD holders and pick and choose until I got the exact mixture of CDs just right.
Several years ago I began travelling with a laptop in the front seat. I'd copy mp3s to the laptop, and then play them through my car stereo, either with a cheesy audio-to-cassette adapter, or an equally cheese FM transmitter. There's an art to running Winamp on a laptop while doing 80mph down the highway, trust me. This worked well though, mostly because I didn't have to pick and choose before the trip. I could just copy all my mp3s over to my laptop, and pick and choose while driving. Eventually the size of my mp3 collection exceeded the size of my laptop's hard drive, but even then, an external hard drive saved the day. Seriously, the front of my car could catch fire at any moment with all the power inverters, cables, and adapters I have running at any given point during a road trip.
On the last two or three road trips, all I've taken with me is my iPod. It's only 32 gig ("only") and it won't hold a 10th of my music collection, but that's not a problem as I really only listen to about a 5th of my music collection. I don't need every 70s and 80s dance collection, every Cure album, and every movie soundtrack on the road with me. I have my typical "road trip" albums, and I have more than enough space for all of them.
Road Trip
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