One of the most important factors in a roadtrip is assembling the proper coterie for the trip!  Nine+ hours in a car heading in one direction...You need the right peeps for the job!  You need people capable of inane roadtrip banter.  You need that one guy that reads all the billboads out loud!  You need that girl that keeps drinking water and then has to stop, only to then buy more water!  And you need people to share bags and bags of gas-station-purchased beef jerky!

Mostly, though, you need people that understand the dynamics of sharing a small space with other people on the road for many, many hours without freaking out and bailing from a car doing 85mph.  The idea was a tough sell not only from that standpoint alone, but the final destination was one that didn't appeal to everyone.  Maybe I was the one guy hanging out at Blockbuster back in the day when other people were busy going to parties.  Dunno.  But few folks in my peer set shared my sentimental attachment to Blockbuster Video, which is why I mostly positioned  the trip from a "It's all about the Journey - Not the Destination!" angle.  Ralph Waldo Emerson would have been proud, if he had ever actually spoke those words.

Getting the Blockbuster Font was pretty easy, and once I had that, it was just a matter of whipping up a cool logo for the event based on Blockbuster's iconic broken ticket treatment and then making a promo poster to send out to some select folks in an effort to really jazz them up!  Before long, I had the "perfect six", the route, and an amazing three-story AirB&B to house us during our two-night stay in Edinburg, Texas!  It was going to be epic!

The Fake DVD Leave-Behind was a cool idea that never materialized due to time constraints, but I wish I had pulled this off.  The idea behind this was to basically create a fake DVD case promoting the road trip as a "movie", and, while inside Blockbuster, surreptitiously slip the DVD case into a slot amongst other films in one of the aisles (documentary section? Historical?) The purpose being not as much mischievous, but rather as a way to pay respect and serve as a symbolic gesture that a piece of me remains in Blockbuster just as Blockbuster will always have a place in my heart!  Cool right?  Anyways, we didn't do it.

In January of 2018, just months after our trip, the Last Blockbuster did its final curtain call, and closed its doors forever.  To be fair, this was the last remaining store in Texas, leaving Alaska as ground-zero for the only remaining handful of locations for the one-time king of the home-video viewing industry.

It was the perfect ending to what was a large part of my childhood, and while I'm sad to see it go, I feel I got the closure I needed, and will always have terrific memories of Blockbuster Video.

Long ago, I had regretted not doing the same roadtrip-type approach to tracking own the last remaining Circuit City, but, apparently, they're coming back??  Hey, maybe that means that Blockbuster can, too!!

Fingers crossed.