On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again
'Cause I ruined 'em the first time I was there...
This page talks about all 60 vacation trips I've been on since I was less than a year old, plus the states I went through on each trip (in order). Each new state I pick up is marked in italics. This list doesn't include one-day trips. Or prison terms.
Annoy! I mean, enjoy!
ST. LOUIS - 1974 (KY OH IN IL MO)
Mischief rating: LOW
Well, uh, I don't recall.
DETROIT - 1975 (KY OH MI ON)
Mischief rating: LOW
I vaguely remember the motel room and pool from this family vacation, and I'm told we briefly visited Windsor, ON, making me an international sensation at an early age. But dammit, I don't remember any mischief!
PHILADELPHIA - 1976 (KY OH WV PA)
Mischief rating: LOW
I thrice visited Philadelphia in my youth, because I had relatives who lived there. According to legend, I exclaimed during the '76 trip, "Make Philadelphia go away!" However, judging by the continued existence of the City of Brotherly Love, I likely did not utter this invocation. Even though I was only 2, I still remember eating Trix for breakfast on the morning we left and riding through Newport (which looked like Las Vegas back then) at the beginning of our trip. I saw the Liberty Bell on this vacation.
ATLANTA - 1977 (KY TN GA)
Mischief rating: LOW
This vacation took place around Easter, and our Easter candy melted in the car. We saw the Chattanooga Choo Choo, and the tour guide made fun of us and kept talking about TANK because we were from Northern Kentucky.
MAMMOTH CAVE - 1978 (KY)
Mischief rating: LOW
I was almost 5 but still hadn't entered the era of modern mischief. There was a guided tour through the cave that seemed to take all day. The tour guide would shut his light off to demonstrate how pitch dark caves can be, which would have been a perfect time to rip a loud fart just for the humor of it. I also remember a steep staircase inside the cave leading to the cafeteria.
WAPAKONETA, OH - 1978 (KY OH)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
The economy was booming in 1978, so we could afford to go on 2 vacation trips in one year. But why we went to Wapakoneta, I will never know, nor shall I ever ask. Neil Armstrong is from Wapakoneta, and the town is only one small step from Piatt Castle, which was one giant leap from being anything except an excuse for 5-year-olds to break stuff. I don't remember exactly what I did that was so mischievous, but I think I knocked over a suit of armor - which I would have forgotten about, except that many years later my mom said, "Tim was terrible at Piatt Castle."
PHILADELPHIA - 1979 (KY OH WV PA MD DC VA)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
I believe it was Thanksgiving. My mom threatened to toss my stuffed toy monkey onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike if I didn't stop throwing it into the front seat. Also, whenever we saw a sign at a tunnel that said "REMOVE SUNGLASSES", I reached into the front seat and grabbed my mom's sunglasses off of her face, and she got really mad. After we left Philly, we went to Washington, DC, and went atop the Washington Monument. Our new Horizon broke down in Maryland on the way back and left us stranded at a Boron station until midnight, so we kept playing with the Speak & Spell and making it say "I P N A DUNGEON". (Get it?)
NIAGARA FALLS - 1980 (KY OH PA NY ON)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
This was the year they handed out propaganda leaflets at school saying that if John Anderson was elected President he'd raise the gas tax so high we'd never be able to go on vacation again. This was bullshit, of course, but this fear warped my impressionable young mind. By the time we went to Niagara Falls the Horizon continued to crumble: The seat belts were broken, and one of the doors had become permanently jammed shut, so the only way in and out of the car was to climb through the windows like on The Dukes Of Hazzard. On this trip we visited some canal and watched the ships move through the lock, and I think we briefly went to Toronto. At Niagara Falls there was this place where you could walk through tunnels underneath the falls, but I didn't get the point of that. On the way home we kept throwing fuzzes out the car window on I-71.
This trip was the last time I left the U.S. until I went on a one-day trip in 1991 and scab Canadian customs agents in Sarnia, ON, blocked traffic for over an hour and tried to accuse me of being a drug smuggler.
CHICAGO - 1981 (KY IN IL WI)
Mischief rating: LOW
I'm disappointed at the lack of mischief on our trip to Milwaukee and Chicago - for our motel in Milwaukee deserved to lose a TV set or two because the pool was closed the entire time we were there. Besides that, Reagan had just been elected, which should have been cause for general mayhem. After a few days in Milwaukee we spent the rest of the vacation in Chicago, where the Horizon stalled one morning on the median of a busy highway. A group of people had to come along and push the car out of the way. We went atop the Sears Tower too. The ride home was spent making fun of an Arby's commercial and the Popeye theme.
MYRTLE BEACH - June 1982 (KY TN NC SC)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
We had to rent a car because there was no way what the Horizon would make it that far. This was the first trip where we had an FM radio in the car. My entire family hated the motel. Our room was full of flies and small objects resembling flattened pieces of poo-poo. We were delighted by the fact that a tropical storm that raged through town one night knocked all the umbrellas into the hotel swimming pool. We made a whole bunch of noise in the motel room late at night. We ate at Shoney's one evening and saw a tomato lying on the floor in front of the salad bar - which quickly got squashed. I buyed a little hand puppet in Myrtle Beach, so on the way back, the puppet kept protruding into the front seat to express displeasure at the horrible radio stations my parents listened to.
CHILLICOTHE, OH - May 1984 (KY OH WV)
Mischief rating: LOW
There was no vacation in 1983, because Reagan's recession made summertime fun too costly for working families to afford. But we went to Chillicothe the following year. Again, I'm disappointed at not being able to remember any mischief on this outing. Chillicothe has a very distinct odor because of the paper factories. There was some festival going on while we were there, and we also got to see the Bob Evans farm near Gallipolis.
GATLINBURG - Nov. 1984 (KY TN NC)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
We stopped at the Pizza Hut in Williamsburg, KY, on the way to Gatlinburg, and the waitress spilled an entire pitcher of Pepsi right in my lap. The highlight of the trip was throwing candy wrappers from atop the Space Needle and finding the exact same wrappers on the ground later.
COLUMBUS - Oct. 1985 (KY OH)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
We visited the Center of Science and Industry and spent hours at the computers sending nasty e-mail to people in Republican-leaning states. Our motel was in Zanesville because all the affordable hotels in Columbus were filled to the brim because of some obscure sporting event. Zanesville is quite a long way from Columbus, so it would have made just as much sense to find a motel in Highland Heights. The inn had a nice indoor pool, which we hardly got to use because we ate dinner at Elby's Big Boy, where it took an hour and a half to get our mediocre food - making it too late to swim by the time we got back to the hotel. On the way back from Columbus the sun shined right in my eyes the entire time.
PHILADELPHIA - June 1986 (KY OH WV PA NJ DE MD DC VA)
Mischief rating: HIGH
This trip to Philadelphia and Washington, DC, is known as the Farting Vacation, because "passing gas" didn't mean driving past an Exxon station. I counted 20 audible trouser sneezes on this trip, including a loud and proud one in the Smithsonian Museum. Also at the Smithsonian, a silent but deadly bunker blast wafted so strongly that my mom exclaimed, "It smells like somebody has a load in their pants!" In the Smithsonian, of all places!
On the way up from home to Philadelphia, we ate an early lunch at the Wendy's in New Stanton, PA. I remember this because my parents kept acting like New Stanton was a major urban center like New York and extolled constantly the importance of stopping in New Stanton for hours prior to our arrival there. In Philadelphia, we saw the Library Bell again, and we crossed the Delaware River (like George Washington) into Camden, NJ, where a monstrous bee flew inside the car and menaced us all.
We spent several days in Washington, DC, this time. Every morn, we took the subway from Virginia into DC because the roads were so clogged, and we saw some folks get harassed by the police for bringing a pet snake aboard. The subway station also had a stand full of Plain Truth magazines to burn. We stood in the rain for hours (it rained practically the entire vacation, of course) to get tickets to tour the White House. (We didn't see the President.)
We took the back roads home from Wash. At the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Grafton, WV, somebody clogged the toilet by trying to flush a whole roll of toilet paper. There were no rest areas whatsoever in Ohio, so we stopped at OH 32 & Tater Ridge Road so I could pee in the weeds. Because of the name of the road, I have termed the act of urinating alongside a highway a "tater."
DAVENPORT, IA - Aug. 1987 (KY OH IN IL IA WI)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
This would have been the best family vacation of that era except it only ranks in the middle of the mischief scale. Anyway, we took a couple of side trips, including one to Maquoketa Caverns and Dubuque. Back in the Quad Cities, there was some museum where visitors weren't allowed to take flash photos, so we disobeyed this Allowed Cloud. On the way home, we saw a wrecked camper burning relentlessly along the highway, and mere minutes before arriving home, a habitual drunkard driving a camper unexpectedly pulled out in front of us on I-471 and nearly killed us.
NASHVILLE - May 28-30, 1988 (KY TN)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
Around this time, I was a student at Bishop Brossart High School, possibly the worst school in the world. I got sick repeatedly because of the stress and filth at school, so my family trip to Nashville around Memorial Day almost had to be canceled. But my fear of becoming sick went unrealized. Our motel was in Clarksville, 40 miles from Nashville, and the toilet in our room overflowed repeatedly. We tried to burst a Ronald McDonald beach ball some fools left in the motel pool. The area around Clarksville has numerous wineries, and my mom made us visit each and every one. I fail to see how anybody can be so enchanted by wineries yet view the Coca-Cola Museum (see my August 1995 entry) with utter disdain.
ST. LOUIS - June 1989 (KY IN IL MO OH)
Mischief rating: HIGH
This vacation trip got off to a treacherous start when I accidentally slammed my dad's hand in the car door at a rest area. We went through Louisville on the way to St. Lou and through Indianapolis on the way back. But all the attractions on this trip were in the St. Louis area itself. We went up in the Gateway Arch, and we enjoyed the downtrodden burg of East St. Louis, IL. The charm of East St. Louis was rivaled by very few other American cities, and how I wished I lived there! I stuck a cardboard Toucan Sam record from a Froot Loops box inside the Gideon Bible in our motel room for the next guest to find and wrote "PLACED BY THE GIDEONS" on it.
CHARLESTON, WV - Apr. 7-8, 1990 (KY OH WV)
Mischief rating: LOW
Charleston was the home of the world's worst McDonald's. Old Stopsignface behind the counter refused to make any milkshakes.
MEMPHIS - Aug. 7-10, 1990 (KY TN AR MS LA)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
You know what? The elder Bush wasn't a dictator. Yes, 17-year-olds in some parts of the country (namely, Campbell County, KY) got put in behavior modification "schools" for disagreeing with him. But he wasn't a dictator. Brit Hume says so, and we all know Brit Hume is never wrong (snicker).
In 1990, I fought authority at Brossart and ended up getting expelled because I "conspired" with a teacher to investigate vandalism of my art sketchbook. The result of this was that the asshats who ran this "values-oriented" high school had me confined to a behavior modification facility that summer. I should have escaped, but I kept getting lied to about when I'd be released.
Nonetheless, I fought the facility to receive an 84-hour pass. I went on a family vacation to Memphis. We took the Western Kentucky Parkway and US 51 through Union City, TN, where I used the restroom. I declared, "I'm gonna tell those Union City guys, 'I'm gonna pee!'" I also noticed that a can of soda from a machine cost only 15 cents in Memphis while it cost 65 cents back home. One day we drove all the way to the Louisiana state line. I know a toilet at a fast food restaurant got vandalized to protest my confinement.
PITTSBURGH - Apr. 27-28, 1991 (KY OH WV PA)
Mischief rating: LOW
I call this the Coke Can Trip, because in the middle of the night somebody kept loudly crumpling a Coke can. And farting really loud too. I remember riding through downtown Pittsburgh and noticing a man and a woman arguing with each other in the middle of the street.
GULF COAST - May 25-27, 1991 (KY TN AL FL MS LA GA)
Mischief rating: LOW
I was almost 18 and I could do whatever I damn well pleased. This trip was one of a series of trips my brother and I went on, often for the sake of visiting new counties. Usually these were one-day trips but this was one of several that was overnight for one or more nights. Alabama was not a new state for me, because 3 months earlier, we drove to Birmingham and back in one day.
It rained nonstop during our Memorial Day trip. We revisited Birmingham and went on to Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi, and (briefly) New Orleans. On the morning we went to New Orleans we took the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway - the longest bridge in the world, at 28 miles - to Metairie and LA 23 along the Mighty Mississip almost to the mouth of the river. Previously known for its corrupt government, this was the most remote locale I had ever visited at the time (besides in-school suspension at Brossart). We took LA 39 up the other side of the river and saw an armadillo carcass lying in the roadway. I-10 in New Orleans was flooded by the rain. We went through Birmingham again and stayed at the Super 8 Motel in Villa Rica, GA, where the foul aroma of the hotel room caused me considerable olfactory discomfort. We continued to Atlanta and hurried home.
NORTHEAST - Aug. 31-Sep. 2, 1991 (KY OH WV PA NJ NY CT RI MA NH ME)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
This Labor Day trip was sort of like our Memorial Day trip. Our first meal was lunch at Bob's Big Boy in Middlesex, PA. Bob's was approximately one million times better than Frisch's Big Boy back home, even though my hamburger did have a slight urinary flavor. We crossed New Jersey and met the Getty Grouch - a grumpy employee of a Getty gas station who became enraged when I asked where the restroom was. I was quite upset myself at the $5 toll to cross into New York City. (It had long since been agreed that I foot the bill for all tolls on all trips.) We drove to Hempstead on Long Island and ate din-din at a terrible restaurant and found an even more despicable motel. The phone in our hotel room was broken, and my radio that I had brung along became stuck on one station. So I heaved the radio through the wall of the room. What a sight to see! It was destructed.
The following day, we took I-95 all the way to Kennebunkport, ME. By coincidence, a group of activists was in town to protest in front of embattled dictator Bush's house. On the way back, we stopped at a McDonald's in New Britain, CT, where a group of about 5 teenage girls was thrown out of the store for climbing on the Ronald McDonald statue. We stayed at a motel in Moosic, PA, and our room had faulty wiring that gave off electric shocks whenever we turned on the bathroom light. The next day we burst out laughing because a customer at a restaurant looked exactly like C. Everett Koop.
SPRINGFIELD, IL - Apr. 1992 (KY IN IL OH)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
All 3 of my brief vacation trips in 1992 were ruined by nonstop rain. In April, I went to Springfield, IL, with my mom. We stopped at a covered bridge in Indiana that was covered with right-wing hate graffiti. The highlight of Springfield was a tinkletorium at a local park that bore the words "RESTROOMS CLOSED AT 9:30 P.M. DUE TO VANDALISM." I place the mischief level at medium because I was still so furious at the way I was treated at Brossart that there just had to have been some protest. Springfield is also where I got the idea for The Last Word - which well suits the fact that Abe Lincoln once lived there.
DAKOTAS - May 23-25, 1992 (KY OH IN IL IA NE SD ND MN WI)
Mischief rating: LOW
I went to the Dakotas to celebrate my graduation from high school (which would have been the previous year if not for a tyrannical nun at Brossart who scoffed at my academic capabilities). When we stopped for lunch at a Hardee's in Cedar Rapids, IA, I noticed the walls were adorned with paper cutouts of Sesame Street Muppets. Big Bird, Oscar, and Cookie Monster leered at me as I devoured my burger. Cedar Rapids smells nice because of the oat factories. We got to North Dakota on Sunday morn and some friendly North Dakotans at a welcome center gave us a snack. We also saw the world's tallest TV tower, between Fargo and Grand Forks. We arrived in Minneapolis that night and in the morning we traversed Wisconsin, where I was dogged by a booger that was so crusty that I had to stop at a rest area to remove it. Following this ghastly event, I call a piece of mucus whose level of crustiness causes it to be painful a "wisconsin."
CLEVELAND - Aug. 1992 (KY OH)
Mischief rating: LOW
I was really slacking in the mischief department. My mom had always wanted to see Sea World, so to Cleveland we went. Our time at Sea World was spoiled by the rain, but other parts of the trip ruled. I heard someone use the f-word on the radio, and we took a side trip to Youngstown. On the way to Youngstown, my mom insisted on taking the Ohio Turnpike instead of OH 14 through Ravenna, claiming OH 14 was a "winding mountain road" (even though this is suburban Cleveland we're talking about).
NEW ORLEANS - May 25-June 3, 1993 (KY TN AL MS LA)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
This 10-day trip involved a large group of my schoolmates at NKU and even some university employees. We left at 3 PM and drove nonstop to New Orleans, arriving at 8 AM the next day. The motel was a dump that had 2-inch roaches crawling about the room (even on the television), a situation that almost resulted in us looking for a different inn. The phone book in our hotel room appeared as if it had been dunked in the toilet and left to dry on a clothesline. I threw a whole cake of soap away because of the unbelievable filth it picked up after being dropped on the bathroom floor. Each time we returned to the inn after sightseeing, we noticed that our souvenirs and appliances had been broken somehow. (One person said they were going to bill the motel over $100 for the losses.) The snack and soda machines were unusable because of the termites inside them.
But it was quite a vacation! I discovered Louisiana was the only U.S. state that still permitted people under 21 to drink. We crossed the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway to Mandeville one evening, but unlike the central city back then, the suburbs of New Orleans were quite dictatorial. We took a boat ride through the swamps one day, and we also went to the beach in Gulfport, MS, where my schoolmates suggested that I pee in the Gulf of Mexico ("That's what everybody else is doing") instead of hunting for a restroom. (I did find a restroom eventually.)
The highlight was the night we went down to Lake Pontchartrain and screamed profanities across the misty water.
MARIETTA, OH - June 24-25, 1993 (KY OH WV)
Mischief rating: LOW
I went to Marietta with my dad one day in June 1993. Other than seeing a Roseanne look-alike, I remember little of this Ohio River city (as my camera containing my photos of Marietta was later swiped from my home by an unknown wrongdoer).
COLUMBUS - Feb. 1994 (KY OH)
Mischief rating: HIGH
I spent a weekend in Columbus with a massive group of bickering NKU students and employees. It took 2 vans to transport us. Columbus had a record amount of snowfall that weekend. We stopped by the Center of Science and Industry, and in the cafeteria there, we got skeeped at for nearly breaking a vending machine. My favorite exhibit at the museum was one that enabled us to draw wanted posters on a computer screen. I managed to create a poster that looked exactly like my high school principal. Our group took up several rooms at the hotel, and we threw a wild, noisy party in the rooms. One of my schoolmates threw the phone across one of the rooms and smashed it to smithereens.
GATLINBURG - May 1994 (KY TN NC VA)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
Another NKU trip. The event got off on the wrong foot when I realized I didn't have my jacket with me. There was also a dangerously large number of gigantic bees swarming around Gatlinburg. We got to go for a ride in a helicopter. Since it was an NKU trip, it had to be at least a medium. I now remember why: It was because we tore pages out of the phone book in the hotel room to stoke the fireplace.
TOPEKA, KS - July 29-30, 1995 (KY IN IL MO KS OH)
Mischief rating: LOW
Turning Topeka into a one-night road trip is pushing the limits of the possible. But it is feasible when you travel at outlaw speeds and don't stop at any attractions. I was furious at Phil Gramm, so I kept thinking of venomous political attack ads I'd make if I was running a campaign against him.
HOPKINSVILLE, KY - Aug. 18-20, 1995 (KY TN)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
My mom likes small towns and usually detests driving to cities with more than 20,000 peeps. She believed Hopkinsville was a rural village until we got there, when she grew extremely disappointed at the fact that it is actually one of the largest cities in Kentucky. The mischief rating for this trip barely makes it up to medium, and it gets that high only because my mom tried to take a picture of the hotel room and I "ruined" the picture by making a funny face. On the way down, we stopped at the Coca-Cola Museum in Elizabethtown. My mom despised the museum with a passion and she spent more time in the gift shop than in the museum itself. Land Between The Lakes is a nifty recreation area near Hopkinsville - it even features a herd of bison across the Tennessee state line - but my mom was mad because I wore long sleeves and heavy jeans there even though it was 100 degrees. This was the last road trip ever for decent radio, as the fascist telcom law passed in 1996.
CHICAGO - Apr. 16-18, 1996 (KY OH IN IL)
Mischief rating: LOW
Damn, what's with the lack of mischief in the mid-'90s? The politics of the time would have justified much protest, but all too often I came up empty. I never appreciated what a great city Chicago was until I spent a weekend there in 1996. I got to go to Wrigley Field to watch the Reds lose to the Cubs, and I went to the top of the Sears Tower again. I saw some run-down housing projects and met some beggars too, but nonetheless, I sure wished I lived in Chicago!
WEST - June 7-16, 1996 (KY TN MO AR LA TX NM AZ SO CA NV ID UT WY CO NE KS IA IL IN OH)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
A 10-day road trip in June '96 involved 21 states, including Sonora in Mexico. It started off mischievous when we drove the wrong way on an exit ramp on I-275 because traffic was stopped. The most enthralling state on this trip was Texas. I-10 from Fort Stockton to El Paso looked like a different planet because of the terrain and distant lightning. The visit to Mexico involved walking around Nogales in the searing 100-degree heat. The highlight of this vacation was driving past Ronald Reagan's house in Los Angeles. The former President had strewn a bunch of empty Clorox cartons and Gatorade bottles along the curb for the garbage collector to take. (Read between the lines.)
For some reason, I was angry in Fresno, but Yosemite National Park was bright and cheery. My picnic there abruptly ended when some faceless bureaucrats shut the picnic site down so a tour bus full of rich people who don't pay their fair share of taxes could have it all to themselves, but other than that, I enjoyed my visit to Yosemite. Maybe it's because another tourist peed in a waterfall there, which was the height of comic genius.
Idaho ruled! But signs of authoritarian rule abounded in Utah. By that time, I was sore and tired, and my main goal was to use the restroom in a library. We drove all over Silverthorne, CO, looking for the library, but we couldn't find it, so we had to stop at a Denny's instead.
COLUMBUS - Aug. 16-19, 1996 (KY OH)
Mischief rating: HIGH
Finally, some mischief! For this family vacation, we rented a van (whose radio kept changing channels by itself), and we had gobs of food in the back of the van to devour along the way to Columbus. "There's Fritos in the back," said my mom - but the "Fritos" turned out to be candy corns. The only thing we did in Columbus itself was go to the Ohio State Fair. We spent the rest of the trip in and around Logan. We used the motel swimming pool each evening, and one day, I dipped my dirty shoe in the pool to see how other guests would react. There was also a Band-Aid floating in the pool. We also knocked a big stack of napkins onto the floor at Wendy's. We visited the canyons around Logan, where some guy spit a cigar into a creek and a turtle ate it, and we took an excruciating train ride in which bees kept flying inside the train.
CHARLOTTE, NC - Apr. 14-16, 1997 (KY TN NC VA WV)
Mischief rating: LOW
We went to the top of Clingman's Dome and Mount Mitchell on the way down to Charlotte. We also experienced our worst traffic jam ever: A wreck on I-40 blocked traffic for 3 hours before it was cleaned up.
CHICAGO - July 8-12, 1997 (KY OH IN IL)
Mischief rating: HIGH
We went to Six Flags abusement park and told bathroom jokes in front of hundreds of other visitors. We also got thrown out of Par King Riverside Fair, a miniature golf course, because Corporate America despises us so. To protest getting kicked out of the golf course we went to a Denny's restaurant and blew bubbles in our soda with our straws until the beverage rose to the top of the glass and streamed down the sides.
PENSACOLA, FL - Aug. 8-15, 1998 (KY TN AL FL GA)
Mischief rating: HIGH
We had a fishing pier that protruded hundreds of feet into Santa Rosa Sound. Wooooo! Wooooo! Hear that? That's Santa Rosa Sound! We saw Three Dog Night in concert at the Skeezewocker Festival. We also tore down a "NO SKATES" sign at the hotel (actually a vacation condo, which was well above our means). We broke the ceiling fan in our hotel room by throwing a heavy towel at it while it was spinning. We scratched up the doors on our rental car beyond all hope because we locked the keys inside and tried to break in using a sharp instrument.
OSHKOSH, WI - Nov. 23-24, 1998 (KY OH IN IL WI)
Mischief rating: LOW
This is known as the Underoos Trip, because I discovered that some genius had discarded a pair of Underoos next to a toilet in a McDonald's bathroom. (I didn't notice if the Underoos had a cartoon character on them.)
NEW ORLEANS - Dec. 30, 1999-Jan. 2, 2000 (KY TN MS LA AL OH)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
I pulled one over on the Far Right by shunning Newport's sorry excuse for a New Year's celebration and satisfying my vacation quota for 1999 at the last minute by going back to New Orleans for their New Year's bash. Much public urination (against the side of a cathedral, no less) was sighted, along with many other (ahem) displays (if you know what I mean, Vern).
VIRGINIA BEACH - June 26-July 1, 2000 (KY WV VA)
Mischief rating: HIGH
On the way to Virginia Beach, my mom insisted on going to the dog track near Charleston, WV. The rest of us got so bored that someone kept ripping loud and proud farts to amuse themselves. Virginia Beach was a police state where the cops tore us a new asshole for the capital offense of playing hackeysack outside our motel and where "gang-related" clothing was banned at the local mall. At some other shopping complex, I filled out a raffle ticket with the words "BITE MY COCK" and put it in the box for the upcoming drawing.
NEW JERSEY - July 9-13, 2000 (KY OH WV PA NJ)
Mischief rating: HIGH
The highlight of this family vacation was offending the fragile sensibilities of the Boro of Cape May by wading in "their" ocean without a permit, a High Crime that carries a fine of up to $500 and 90 days in prison. But my philosophy is: If you don't get caught, it isn't a crime. We also splattered a whole McChicken sandwich onto the parking lot at a service area on the Pennsylvania Turnpike (because it was stale), and we kept throwing spoiled food out the window of the car. When we got to the Holiday Inn in Lancaster, PA, we discovered the pool was closed, which cost them a phone book and some towels. We went to Philadelphia and belched loudly inside Independence Hall.
NEW ORLEANS - Dec. 30, 2000-Jan. 2, 2001 (KY TN AL MS LA)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
I celebrated New Year's Eve in New Orleans again, but the popo chose to r00in the festivities this time by cracking down on people breathing too loud. I destroyed a wedding that was being conducted in an alley by tripping over a loose stone in the pavement, which resulted in loud cussing during the most solemn moment of the ceremony.
SAN FRANCISCO - June 25-July 3, 2002 (KY OH IN IL MO AR OK KS TX NM AZ CO UT NV CA WY NE SD MN IA WI)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
It was an eventful vacation, in which iced tea got dumped in the Coke dispenser at Wall Drug and where I heehawed uncontrollably at a funny hotel room key in Nevada. The bathrooms at the park on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge were perhaps the most humorously dirty I've ever seen.
PITTSBURGH - July 1-3, 2003 (KY OH WV PA)
Mischief rating: LOW
I went to Pittsburgh with my dad and saw the Reds play the Pirates. Nothing unusual happened at all on this trip. Well, other than the fact that a cashier at a mall food court resembled Alice of The Brady Bunch. And that we saw a street called Ernie Street.
LOUISVILLE - Aug. 14-16, 2004 (KY IN)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
This trip went surprisingly well. Some guy threatened to fart inside Wyandotte Cave, and I signed the guestbook there as "Oscar the Grouch." The riverfront park in Jeffersonville, IN, is now known as Arthritis Park because I had horrible arthritis in my knee while walking around the bridge approaches there. I played a hilarious joke on my mom by making the alarm in her car go off.
TORONTO - Oct. 16-17, 2004 (KY OH PA NY ON MI)
Mischief rating: LOW
The purpose of this trip was to see Colin Hay of Men At Work in concert. We met him in person after the show. We spent hardly any time in Toronto itself, because we only had time to see the concert. I encountered the world's worst-smelling rest area in Ohio. I had an upset stomach and diarrhea from before I left for this trip until after I got home.
ST. LOUIS - June 28-30, 2005 (KY OH IN IL MO)
Mischief rating: LOW
I saw the Reds play the Cardinals a couple of times on this trip, and I got to see firsthand why the Reds were in last place. My mischief rating doesn't include mischief by strangers you see on the trip, so the guy at the ball game who kept throwing stuff onto spectators below him doesn't count towards that.
ORLANDO - July 24-31, 2005 (KY OH TN NC SC GA FL)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
I visited relatives in Florida with my mom and my aunt. The mischief rating barely makes it up to medium, which is disgraceful considering I had a whole week, and even then it's only because we put drinking cups with a Best Western logo on them in our Comfort Inn room on the way home. The highlight of this trip was when a group of 4 adults stormed out of a restaurant because they thought they deserved to get their food before everyone else. My shirt got dropped in a parking lot at the beach in Cocoa Beach, and we found it 3 hours later with a big tire track on it. We went to Lost Sea Cave in Tennessee on the way home, and somebody kept ripping silent but deadly bunker blasts inside the cave.
NORTHEAST - Oct. 18-20, 2005 (KY OH WV PA NY MA VT)
Mischief rating: LOW
Another trip where we witnessed only the mischief of strangers and unknown forces. I call this the Magical Mystery Tour because a magical, mysterious booger was found adhering to a computer-generated map we brang along. The mucus threatened to slime us as it seemed to expand. A bipartisan investigation could not identify the source of the booger. In Watertown, NY, some bratty kids intentionally pushed a skateboard into the road, causing us to run it over. On the way home through Ohio, the attendant who cleared the tables at an Amish restaurant farted really loud. Now flatulence had been detected on at least 11 of my first 49 overnight road trips. Hilarious, huh?
GATLINBURG - Oct. 12-15, 2006 (KY TN NC OH)
Mischief rating: HIGH
Our thirst for mischief was finally quenched in a big way! Since there were 8 of us on this family trip, we had to get a rural cabin. That cabin sure did take the abuse! On a side trip to Cades Cove, a hat went out a car window. The mischief highlight came in the form of the removal of 2 traffic signs. (The signs were useless where they were anyway.) Also, we detected a record-setting amount of flatulence.
QUINCY, IL - Dec. 29-30, 2006 (KY OH IN IL MO IA)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
Due to the Far Right, I had bronchitis at the time and kept gasping for air. But that didn't stop the mischief! A road south of Quincy had to get publicly peed on because of the lack of rest areas. Even funnier, we mooched off of a Holiday Inn wireless Internet connection (even though we weren't guests at that hotel).
HUNTINGTON, WV - July 14-16, 2007 (KY WV OH)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
We got settled in at the hotel where we had reservations, only to discover the pool there was closed for maintenance. We work hard, and we damn sure weren't going to pay for a pool we couldn't use, so we argued with the clerk until the hotel canceled our reservations. But because the hotel's stupidity caused us to waste over an hour, that caused a little bit of garbage to fall out of our car and onto the inn's parking lot. Oopsie!
NASHVILLE - Aug. 17-18, 2007 (KY OH TN)
Mischief rating: LOW
I went to Nashville for a Scandal concert. This trip is notable for the fact that a John Belushi statue inside a Jerry's restaurant in Bowling Green, KY, appeared to be urinating, and that there were boogies wiped on a bathroom wall at a Pizza Hut.
MID-SOUTH - Oct. 3-6, 2007 (KY TN AL MS LA AR MO)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
This trip to Birmingham, New Orleans, and Memphis will be forever known for the fact that half a bottle of Mountain Dew got spilled down inside the TV set in a hotel room. Also, the drive-thru clerk at a Wendy's spilled an entire Coke onto the interior of the car.
NORTH CAROLINA - Dec. 28-30, 2008 (KY VA NC WV OH)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
Still going strong! During this fact-finding mission, I drew mustaches and beards on photos of Dr. Laura and Bill O'Reilly on the cover of a phone book in a motel room. How humorous!
GEORGIA - Feb. 28-Mar. 1, 2009 (KY OH TN NC GA SC)
Mischief rating: LOW
Hard to say what the highlight of this trip was. The main purpose of this fact-finding mission was to test a new GPS.
WARSAW, IN - June 28-29, 2009 (KY OH IN)
Mischief rating: HIGH
Nothing illegal on this trip. Just a great protest against a right-wing cult out in front of the Kosciusko County Courthouse!
INDIANAPOLIS - July 14-15, 2009 (KY OH IN)
Mischief rating: HIGH
This trip involved a protest against the right-wing Pathway Family Center cult out in front of the state capitol. (Notice how anti-cult rallies automatically earn us an improved mischief rating.)
MISSOURI - Nov. 27-28, 2009 (KY OH IN IL MO)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
On this trip, I threw an empty Mountain Dew can in a donation box for a for-profit business. If it was for charity, I wouldn't have done this. But what gives for-profit firms the right to demand donations?
MID-SOUTH - Dec. 29, 2009-Jan. 1, 2010 (KY OH TN MS LA TX AR OK MO)
Mischief rating: MEDIUM
Mischief on this trip was Bert-related, peaking when I drew a picture of the lovable Sesame Street Muppet saying, "Pooing is cool," and placing the piece of paper between the pages of a Gideon Bible in a motel room.