In the summer of 2002, Me, Amazing Ben and Hot Andrea drove from Florida to Washington State.  Below are some highlights of our adventure, organized by state.  It was a good trip.  Andrea was going to visit her long lost cousin in Seattle, I was on my way to Friday Harbor Marine Lab and Ben was unemployed with nothing to do, so he came along.

Amazing Ben:  So I asked J. Mattfood to write me an update this week because I was really busy, and a couple of days later he emails me a bunch of pictures.  Right when I'm like, "what the hell is this?" I get a Priority Mail envelope at my office with this update written in red crayon on about a dozen crumpled up cocktail napkins.  I typed it all up, but in order to add some more content to this update I'm going to add my take to some of the adventures Matt has outlined below.

We were stuck behind this car in a traffic jam in outside of New Orleans.

Way to represent Christ's love!  You know this old bat didn't put this sticker on her car to try to win converts or stop someone from getting an abortion.  She was just trying to show off for her brainless fundie friends.  It would be hard to come up with a more offensive bumber sticker, in my opinion:  What if she was being followed by a woman whose baby had died of Leukemia or something?  Way to rub it in.

Conclusion:  We pulled up next to this car, and made a sign with an inflammatory slogan and held it to the window of her car while yelling profanities.  After a minute or two when she was frozen in terror, she pulled onto the grass next to the highway and sped away.  A partial victory, as Ben was not able to jump from the car with a magic marker and deface the offending sticker.

Amazing Ben:  I think this was actually a car full of nuns.

In Texas 3 things happened:  first, most of Texas is totally sucky and boring.  Next in Dallas, we visited the site of the Kennedy assassination.  I took a picture of Ben doing a skateboard trick on the "X" painted in the road where the bullet hit Kennedy in the head.  Lastly, We saw Cadillac Ranch, outside Amarillo.  The Cadillacs match the angles of the Great Pyramid.

Amazing Ben:  In Texas we ate at a Waffle House one night and all the inbred hicks were looking at us funny.  On the way out, I asked one of them, "what's the matter?  Never seen a normal-looking person before?"  We didn't stick around to hear the answer.

US 666 goes through Gallup, New Mexico, which is where we got towed to when my Volkswagen broke down.

Amazing Ben:  Our tow truck driver was INSANE.  He looked like the bad guy from The Matrix and he had a nitrous booster installed in his tow truck.  His favorite hobby was pointing out all the "hooter inspector" signs to Andrea.  We sat in the waiting room at the Pep Boys in Gallup for about four hours.  At first they told us that we were going to be stuck there for a couple of days while they ordered a new part, but they managed to get a replacement fuel pump just in time to prevent us from killing ourselves.

In Arizona, we saw this Flintstones themed campground.  They had pay toilets, and the gift shop was haunted by ghosts.  Also my car broke down there too.

Amazing Ben:  Matt's car broke down in pretty much every city from this point on.  We spent most of the rest of the trip driving with the heat on to keep the engine from catching on fire and listening to Atom & His Package CDs.

In Las Vegas Nevada, my car broke down again, and a part had to ordered from Germany or someplace.  We were stuck there for 4 days!!!  We went around telling everyone that we were in a band called "The AM Outlaws".  Some waitress was the most impressed by this.  We gorged ourselves sick at a buffet.  We went to the largest bowling alley in North America (Does that mean there's a bigger one on some other continent?  I find it hard to imagine some other country having a larger bowling alley than the US).  The mother-fucker at the mechanics charged me like 500$ for my car being fixed.

Amazing Ben:  I can't believe fucking Mike the Mechanic still reamed us on the replacement fuel pump filter, because Andrea was flirting with him like her life depended on it to try and drive the price down.  However, we were all glad that the car finally died in Vegas and not somewhere like Gallup, New Mexico.  There was an awesome bar next to the mechanic that gave you a huge breakfast for like three dollars.  Also, Matt and Andrea got sick riding the roller coaster at New York New York.  Las Vegas kicked ass.  Matt won a ton of money at roulette, while I hit the jackpot in video poker and then lost it all on one hand of Blackjack.

Our California experience began with a trip through Death Valley at about noon, on June 3rd, 2002.  I think it was like 120 degrees out.  My car broke down right in the middle of the valley.  Eventually, some Germans called a ranger for us.  He said that when the Sun went down, we should be able to make it out of the Valley.  He helped us get the car to a small rest area with toilets and shade, where we waited for about 5 hours.  During this time we hit golf balls, shot a pellet gun at some gas cans we found buried under a rock, carved on the picnic tables and waited to die.  A vulture tried to peck Ben's face off.

Amazing Ben:  We also stayed at a youth hostel above a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco where a bunch of Eurotrash dudes walked around in just their speedo underwear.  It was weird.

Click the picture to see a video!

I think somewhere in Northern California, we decided to try our luck as a squad of crime-fighting ninjas.

Nothing of note happened to us in Oregon.  It was nice though.

Amazing Ben:  In Portland we were at a Subway and Matt asked for "a ton" of extra pickles.  The guy was like, "dude, when you bite into this it's going to be like biting into a giant pickle log."

In Washington, Ben got in a fight with a crazy homeless man.  Ben was wearing his Florida Panthers Hockey Jersey, and this wild drunk guy in Pioneer square runs up to him screaming, "What do you know about Florida?!!??  You don't know nuthin bout Florida".  Ben looks at the guy and says nothing.  I say to the man (who was continuiong to scream and rant and flail his arms), "He's from Florida," and then continued to argue with the man about whether or not Ben had the right to wear a Florida Panthers jersey.

Hot Andrea saw trouble coming, and decided to walk away.  The man, who was still screaming, turned to follow her.  Because he was still yelling non-sensical, incoherent profanity ridden assailments against Ben's character, Andrea assumed that he was still yelling at us, and was so disgusted with the whole situation that she didn't turn around and continued to walk.  Ben jumped to action.  Literally.  Ben jumped into the air just as the man was reaching out to grab Andrea from behind.  Ben landed a solid flying kick in the middle of the guy's back, knocking him the street.  I managed to capture an image of Hot Andrea flipping the guy off.  The other 2 pics are just shots of weird things I found on my computer that I apparently took in Seattle.

Amazing Ben:  All I really remember about this guy was that when Matt said I was actually from there he just started shouting names of cities located in Florida.  Oh, and I think Andrea's actually giving me the finger in this picture for some reason unrelated to the above incident.

The end.

Stay tuned for future updates by me on weeks when Ben can't think of anything to write about.  Many more roadtrips, to Graceland, Quebec and Vancouver Island.  I am awesome.

Amazing Ben:  Matt also has an excellent slideshow of this road trip over at his website, so be sure to check that out as well.