Elepent

So by now, I’m sure everyone has heard about the Austin, TX sign hi-jacking that warned “CAUTION! ZOMBIES! AHEAD!!!” If you haven’t, here’s a link for your amusement.

What’s hilarious is that this is actually one of our favorite road trip games. In our case, the idea was originally taken from Fuck This Book by Bodhi Oser. One of the best coffee table books ever and a testament to how truly great filthy, low brow humor can be. If that’s your kind of thing, very highly recommended.

Now, how do you play our game? You take any viable word in a sign or billboard and replace it with “ZOMBIE” or “ZOMBIES” and read it aloud to your traveling companion. It is that simple and it’s enless hours of fun.

I shot these billboards and signs earlier this month and did a super quick hack PS job on them to illustrate. I was hoping to shoot a few more before posting but I figure I should get these up and out there, for fear they seem like “old news” after too much longer.

And there you have it. This game can obviously be played off-road and with any sort of noun/plural noun as well so pick one that moves you and have fun!

Apologies if the photos don’t show up properly; we’re having some technical difficulties. But we won’t let that stop us, will we?

Some surprisingly busy days landed on us after we got back from Michigan, and we’ve been driveway-surfing in Alabama for a couple of weeks, in Birmingham and then Montgomery. We tried to do another photo shoot at the Sloss Furnaces, but were stymied by a faulty camera battery and didn’t get a chance to rectify it before we rolled off to Montgomery (actually, Titus) for a few days.

Adventures always seem to happen when visiting my Uncle Roosevelt and Aunt Barbara. This time, we drove out to see the edges of the meteor crater in Wetumpka, Alabama. Though the city wants to make it a landmark, rapid housing development is making it hard to see the edges of the long-ago meteor strike. The foot of the Appalachian mountain range is also in Wetumpka; in case you wondered, the Appalachians end at a little used car lot that also sells golf carts. After that, we took our cousin and her four year-old daughter to feed carrots to some local horses. This is probably run-of-the-mill stuff for many people, but for city slickers like us, it qualifies as an Adventure.

The AEV was enlisted to fetch a deer for Roosevelt, too. It was determined that it was easier to wrestle the big, recently-taken buck onto the cargo rack than to try and get it into Roosevelt’s Explorer, and thus our Jeep became a fresh-venison transport. While driving out to pick up the deer, we nearly ran into a small herd–five of them, rushing across the road and young enough that they weren’t entirely sure how to deal with the danger. Thankfully, the only deer we collected was the one that had already been field-dressed. We got some deersteaks for our freezer, as well.

Speaking of food, culinary delight is also an integral part of visiting Titus. We had breakfasts of fresh catfish, grits and wonderful eggs’n’sausage courtesy of cousin Beverly. Dinner was more catfish, as well as ribs, homemade macaroni and cheese, and greens. There were also snacks of chicken gizzards from KFC (only available in Alabama, as far as I’ve seen) in there as well. No, Lexie didn’t have any.

For some reason, Alabama proved to be a good place to find used books; the thrift stores in Birmingham actually had a decent selection (most thrift stores will have several copies of Lee Iacocca’s biography, a smattering of John Grisham, Tom Clancy and Danielle Steel, and that’s about it. We also found a cool independent bookstore with a good collection of sci-fi, and traded some of our discards in there. The Incorrigible’s got a small bookshelf, remember.

As we headed out of Montgomery at the end of the week, following 80 toward Selma (following the path of the Selma-Montgomery civil rights marches of 1965 all the way back to the Edmund Pettus Bridge), I reflected on our situation, which probably looks much more exciting than it is. Living aboard the Incorrigible costs us about as much as living in an apartment, and it was sheer luck that we decided upon this course of action before financial circumstances forced us into an apartment. So, in spite of the adventures, we’re still on a shoestring (or thinner) budget, and counting our pennies carefully at every turn. Our original plan, to move every month, will probably be tweaked a bit so that we can make a longer stop in Austin to find part-time jobs, and rebuild some of the damage that 2008 did to our financial base!

Money woes aside, though, we’re making it work. Next stop: Vicksburg, MS.

It’s that time of the year again; the North American International Auto Show in Detroit is on, and I haven’t missed one in more than twenty years.  The trip is also a chance to experience some real winter weather, which will help to keep my internal clock properly set.  What can I say?  I grew up in Michigan, and so my body expects it to be nasty and cold this time of year.  If it’s not, I don’t feel right for the next four months.

Lexie does not share this sentiment.

Still, with chilly temps promised, we secreted the Incorrigible at a safe location with a caretaker for Mushroom (the roadship’s cat) and took the Liberty north.

Winter weather’s what I wanted, and winter weather’s what I got.  Michigan obliged us happily, with a six-inch snowdump the day after we arrived, followed by a week of temperatures in the teens and dustings of snow.  The Liberty handled it all with barely a hiccup, and on more than one morning we sped to the show in the unplowed left lane of I-94 (which should have been temporarily labeled the “Jeep Lane”).

Being away from the RV and staying with friends has its benefits as well–like the opportunity to take a real, hot shower or to soak in the bathtub.  Well, okay, that’s probably the main benefit, actually.  But it’s one that I cannot pass up.

The auto show itself (my full, fender-by-fender writeup can be found here) was enjoyable, though not without reservations.  It’s not just the economy going sideways; I have a lot to think about, and unfortunately it’s not just about cars.  There’s a culture clash in the journalism industry, between the internet and print media.  Since I write for both, I’m torn.  Traditionally the auto show is the place to get the latest and funnel it quickly out, but with the various web leaks and suchforth, a lot of the stories that I once was able to “break” by being at the show floor are being published while I’m sleeping the night before, ironically getting ready for the show.  Most of the news we’re sitting through the press conferences for is already on the internet.  So what’s the rush?

What seems to be frequently overlooked is that there’s room for both print and internet outlets in this industry.  The internet serves an immediate need, to get the latest news and to get it five minutes ago.  But when it comes to leisurely, in-depth reading, that’s print media’s specialty.  When it comes to automobiles and items that have a longer life cycle (obviously a 2009 Ford Focus isn’t likely to change as suddenly or drastically as the news from Afghanistan) a lot of people would rather check it out in a more leisurely fashion.  You put a magazine in your briefcase or car, to check out when you’re stuck in traffic or waiting for the dentist.  Or in the bathroom.

And so, when I’m at the show, I need to remember that the slower news is my purpose. I don’t need to rush to break any stories–they’re already long broken.  What I need to do is to sit back and determine what it all means, once it’s translated from marketing-speak into plain English.  Because regardless of the state of the economy or the industry, and regardless of the absence of some major manufacturers, there’s a lot going on here.  If I get all wound up and caught up in the rat race, I don’t have any fun and it doesn’t improve my work at all anyway.

General Motors opened the show with aggressive optimism.  Ford’s follow-up was confident as well, while Chrysler’s more defensive stance was a bit harder to take seriously.  The relative strength of each brand’s product lineup probably has much to do with this.

Chrysler took it on the chin in a big way; on top of its recent PR and financial troubles, the obviously stripped-down display was a glaring contrast to the extravagant setups of years past and created a gaping, unadorned hole in the middle of the display floor.  The absence of flash was exacerbated by the attempt to fill Nissan and Suzuki’s vacated spaces with much smaller and cheaper displays that are normally relegated to the basement.  So, not only did Chrysler’s display look like crap compared to previous years (the Jeep waterfall and raised Dodge performance-car display that have been staples of the display for several years?  Gone.), but it was bordered by several obviously low-rent displays as well. And to its credit, this was probably a good move on Chrysler’s part.  “Flashy” is not a good idea when everyone knows you’re on the dole, so it stuck with a simple statement of its intent to be on the cutting edge of electric vehicle technology, brought some examples to show that it’s actually giving the matter serious consideration, and left it at that.

After the press conferences were over, we roamed the show floor checking out the new cars (my favorites of the show, if you want/need to know, are the Volvo S60 Concept, Lincoln C Concept and Kia Soul, all of which are detailed elsewhere), and Volkswagen provided us with a delicious dinner at the Guardian Building.

We decided to stay the rest of the week, to visit friends, tie up some necessary Michigan loose ends, and then go to our “home” club (about which there will be a separate post).  Michigan obliged my desire for wintry weather by plunging temperatures into negative single digits.  At these temps, the snow squeaks when you walk on it (it’s the sound of ice crystals rubbing together), the moisture in your nose freezes, and you must be careful not to leave your iPod, GPS or cell phone in the car because the LCD displays will sometimes freeze and crack.

This weather is the reason that we left the Incorrigible behind for a few days.  That decision feels very justified now.