How I Spent My Summer Vacation...

[robotnik2004]

...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.

Comments

[head58.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Can someone with one of them there paid accounts set up an LJ feed to the site?

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't be necessary. Wordpress has a "post directly to LJ" plugin (like the one calamityjon uses) which I'll be employing. You'll get all the content here, like it or not.

[bluegargantua]

You went to Carhenge!

You survived Nebraska!

cool
Tom

[superdaintykate.livejournal.com]

Freakin' sweet.

[editswlonghair.livejournal.com]

Awesome. Looking forward to reading all about your exploits in our fair nation back in those halcyon days when we were still a land of hope and opportunity, can do optimism, and of course cheese.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

We don't have roadtrips, you know. You can drive from one end of our country to the other in a day, and that's if you go North-South.

No roadtrips == sadness.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

That IS sad. I guess driving a similar distance would have you going from like Syria to Iraq to Saudi Arabia to Yemen or something? Which you might not be wanting to do anytime this summer.

I had an elderly British prof in grad school who reminisced once about the time (in the 1950s?) he and a chum saved money on a research trip by buying a car in Oxford or Cambrige or wherever, taking a ferry across the Channel, then DRIVING ALL THE WAY TO INDIA, through Europe, Turkey, Iran, hey ho, Pax Brittanica, wot wot? And finally selling the car in Bombay/Mumbai for more than they paid in England. It sort of blows my mind that you could do that.

[shiffer.livejournal.com]

It is amazing how many countries don't want me road-tripping on their turf. Goddamn amazing, I tell you.

The Foreign Ministry basically published a notice saying "stay home. Really, neither you nor we need this shit right now".