Post-trip
How you handle your gear after a trip is key to making future trips easy. When I get home from a trip, everything wet gets pulled out of the car and put onto the outdoor clothesline where I can rinse it off with fresh water from the hose nearby. Depending on the weather, it either gets left on the line or put on a clothesline in the garage to dry. Your gear will last longer if you don't leave it in direct sunlight. Rinse the inside of your dry suit occasionally. One of my friends made a rack of plastic pipes for holding booties, hoods and gloves to drain and dry.

Part of my routine the morning following a trip is to gather up the dry gear and put it back into its places in the car - or off-season, onto shelves in the garage. I post a whiteboard or pad of paper and a pen next to my gear storage so I can keep a running list of gear that needs replacement, new gear I need, or repairs that need to be done before the next trip. Part of your post-trip routine can be checking battery levels to see if they have enough charge left for the next trip. If not, now is the time to recharge them.

It's true that you often have to take as much gear for a weekend trip as you take for a month-long trip. One of the secrets of getting out often is paring down the amount of gear you take to an absolute minimum to achieve your safety and comfort needs. This is where a list comes in handy for taking just what you need, but not too much. Even though your basic gear list may be simple, one of the luxuries of short trips is being able to take along treats that wouldn't be possible on long trips. I take a stove on day trips, especially when the weather is cold, and treat myself to hot drinks and maybe even warmed leftovers from last night's supper. During the summer, I may take a soft-sided cooler. A pound of dry ice from the supermarket will keep some special summer treats, even ice cubes and ice cream, frozen for hours. (Make sure your bulkheads are vented to bleed off the CO2 the dry ice gives off.) Since you have room to spare on short trips, you can afford to make the trip memorable by its indulgences.

Keep your preparation and driving time to paddling time ratio weighted toward paddling time. It's fine to spend months planning an expedition and days driving to get there. You'll get out more often if the shorter outings you take require little preparation and driving.