How I Spent My Summer Vacation...

...or, "Round numbers make Rob wax nostalgic once again!"



Ten years ago, in the summer of 1996, my friends Pete (foogie) and Derek (no LJ, though he was the first person I ever knew with a weblog) and I drove across the USA and back. Actually, that makes the trip sound more linear than it was. Really, we drove around the country, in a big rambling loop. We avoided the interstates whenever possible, taking two-lane highways and seeking out all the roadside Americana we could find: Graceland and Las Vegas, sure, but also things like Carhenge, Roswell's UFO Research Center, and the World's Largest Talking Cow. We covered ten thousand miles and visited twenty-five states. It was one of the most excellent things I've ever done in my life.

After we returned, I wrote the whole trip up and published it as a zine. Because that was what one did in the days before weblogs. Ten years later, to commemorate the anniversary of that trip, to recycle a bunch of my old crap share the love with a new generation, and to imagine a time where I could seriously contemplate spending four freaking weeks tooling across the continent with my underemployed buddies, I'm going to blog the zine, entry by entry, on this snazzy new blog. (I'm also using this as a way to try out WordPress, since I'm thinking of switching Old is the New New over to that at some point.)

Roadside Americana! In-jokes! Ten-year-old comedy! WHO ARE YOU TO RESIST?

Come, get your kicks on Route 96.

Eat Your Automobile

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

The Trip came about, basically, because for the first time in my life, I acquired a car that didn’t have to be home by midnight.

In the face of our planet’s global ecological crisis, more and more people are coming to realize that our society’s love affair with the automobile is an unaffordable luxury. Let’s face it: nearly all the everyday uses of our cars could be served just as well, if not better, by bicycles, superstitious native porters, and El Caminos. If I were Supreme Ruler of the World (and those of you that don’t think having gills would be cool can thank your lucky stars that I’m not), automobiles would be used for three purposes only:

1. High-speed chases.
2. Teen makeout sessions.
3. Monster cross-country road trips.

Fun as they are, #1 or #2 would make for a very short zine–so road trippin’ it was!

( Read the rest of this entry » )

New York: The “I’m Gonna Bust a Cap in Yo Ass” State

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

We set off early on a Friday morning, Brown Jenkin (the car) stuffed to its gills with camping equipment, funky mix tapes, Derek’s guitar, Yes & Know trivia books, decomposing cheese curds that we would not discover and exorcise until Oklahoma, and homemade wine.

It seemed fitting to enter the U.S. at Niagara Falls, a mecca of tourist kitsch in its own right. But there were no side trips to Frankenstein’s Haunted Newlywed Motel for us this time: like Fievel the Mouse, we were hell bent for Amereeka. We got through Customs and Immigration without too much hassle, although Checkpoint Charlie had a way of making driving around the country aimlessly drinking homemade wine sound like a bad thing.

We Got The Jack

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

About an hour into New York, Jenkin sounded an ominous yawp as one of its back tires ceased to be. It didn’t burst so much as decay, flaking off and crumbling into dust like it was aging at terrible speed. With that auspicious event, our journey had truly begun.

[2006 Edit: Yes, yes, thrilling, isn’t it? A flat tire between Buffalo and Cleveland, the stuff road movies are made of. Have patience. It all gets funnier once we get further South.]

Pennsylvania: The “Thanks For Coming Out” State

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

Hello… and gooooooodbye!

00262 km

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

Patience, I say, grasshopper. Patience.

O.J., Original Jenkin

Originally published at Route 96. You can comment here or there.

Of all the bizarre monstrosities in Gilman’s dreams, nothing filled him with greater panic and nausea than this blasphemous and diminutive hybrid–quaintly called by the townspeople ‘Brown Jenkin.’
–H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dreams in the Witch House”

Brown What? The final member of the Fab Foursome was Brown Jenkin, our (t)rusty vehicular steed. A 1988 Buick Skyhawk (and that’s Skyhawk, not Skylark, thank you very much) the dusty non-color of a crumpled lunch bag, Jenkin proved to be sluggish, yet virtually indestructible. For a while, I was trying to get people to call it “the car from The Rockford Files,” in homage to Rockford and other 70s detective shows where low speed car chases make up 70% of the so-called action. But after spending just a little time on the road, all three of us realized that only a name describing the Skyhawk’s essential, well, brownnessT would stick. Inspiration came in the end from the evil and loathsome rat-creature in H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dreams in the Witch House, which carries messages between an old witch and the Devil, and in the end burrows a tunnel through the chest of the protagonist to eat out his heart. Go you Jenkin, go!

BROWN JENKIN, Scuttling Mocker
STR 3, DEX 18*, CON 5, EDU 3, SIZ 3, SAN 0, INT 14, Move 9, POW 12, HP 4
*has four tiny hands in place of paws
Damage Bonus: -1D6
Weapon: Bite 80%, damage 1D2
Skills: Gnaw 65%, Hide 85%, Listen 70%, Scuttle 75%
Sanity Loss: It costs 0/1D4 Sanity Points to see Brown Jenkin.

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