996 and packed it to the roof with stuff reserving space for the urns containing the ashes of both my Mom and Dad. I'm currently in Barstow CA looking at low grey rain clouds with the knowledge -- checked the road conditions -- snow will be on is on the I-40 freeway in the Flagstaff area and points east. I have no desire to drive the 996 through the snow again so I will head south on I-15 (and based on the TV news probably end up driving through mud instead of snow) and catch I-10 and take the southern route. It is 819 miles or a bit over 11 hours from Barstow to El Paso Tx. That's a day's driving. Then another long day 947 miles or 13:32 hours/minutes from El Paso to Joplin MO. I'm not pushing it like I used to. In fact I got about 16 miles out of Barstow last night hoping to at least reach Needles CA before stopping for the night but decided to cut the stay short at around 8pm. Needles was another 2 hours away but I just thought I'd take it a bit easier this trip. So I turned around and spent the night in Barstow.
Oh, I could have taken the Boxster on this trip -- I certainly could have used its extra cargo space, the 996's front trunk and cabin are full -- but that suspected starter problem bothered me. The 996 got a road worthiness inspection before I left and there are no leaks, vital fluids were ok, the oil (Mobil 5w-50) has just under 1K miles on it so I think I can make it home before having the oil/filter serviced, and the tires are in good shape with nothing shiny showing in the tires.
About the only problem so far has been VISA disabling my credit card cause I guess I used it too much yesterday. Funny it let another card get used fraudulently in several different areas of southern and northern CA and even back in Chicago that would require the mobility of Flash and didn't flag the card but I use it every 3 or 4 hours or so to fill up the car's gas tank and all Hell breaks loose. Spent 30 minutes on the phone last night and got the card working again. I have other cards of course, but I wanted to use this card for this trip.