When I "broke my shit" I was three hours away from home (Quaker City Raceway). I drove the car home.
Then, to get the car to Akron (another two hours, you know, one of those LONG drives you don't like) I also DROVE it.
That's a total of five hours with broken parts - no trip to Cali, but I think you can see my point.
On top of that, the only reason it broke was due to whoever put the tranny/converter in. It was a non lock converter with a lock-up valve in the tranny, converter ballooned and cracked. That - and it was around three years old with more passes than I even want to attempt to count on it...
I'm in no way saying the car won't break, shit happens.
Odds are against me? Cool - I'll be driving eight hours one way in a few weeks, racing for two days and driving back. I'll put you as the first to call when I need a tow.
I'm sure one of these days it will bite me in the ass and I'll either have to fix the car there, or find some way of getting it home, which is why I'm looking into buying a truck to drag it around with.