Epic Road Trip

Habermas

Hey, Front Row Crew gang,

It's been a while since I visited the forums, but this morning I come to y'all looking for inspiration.

I'm coming to the end of my college career and my buddy and I are planning on going on a road trip to end all road trips in one year's time. My buddy has become known for his chemistry set of doom and my room has become a mad scientist's workshop. We've been through the cannon of adventurous backyard science projects. Thermite, dry ice bombs, flamethrowers, and homemade rockets were all fun, but we're ready to move on to bigger and better projects.

I'm working on building a pulse jet engine that I'm attaching to my mountain bike, he's building a "flying machine," and assuming we don't burn down our house in the process, we are going to build a three stage rocket with a camera in the nose cone that will be able to observe the curvature of the earth.

We have a list of crazy sciency stunts we'd like to pull on this road trip, but we're in need of more inspiration. We'll be hitting up the Bonneville Salt flats, chasing storms in midwest, and if all goes well, we're going to track down Henry Earl for kicks. So, here's where y'all come in. What kind of crazy stuff do you think we should add to our road trip list? Let it be sciency, nerdy, dangerous, or just plain stupid, I'm in need of inspiration.

So, what do y'all think?

-Habermas

Rym

What kind of crazy stuff do you think we should add to our road trip list? Let it be sciency, nerdy, dangerous, or just plain stupid, I'm in need of inspiration.

Urban Exploration / Infiltration. A minor hobby of mine that's fallen by the wayside since I moved to New York.

dsf

I hope you are recording this stuff and putting it on youtube

Matt

Be sure to hit up roadsideamerica.com to make sure you don't inadvertently pass within a few miles of some wacky shit and not realize to stop.

Andrew

I thought the whole point of a roadtrip is that the wacky shit just happens randomly. You don't plan for it.

Habermas

@Rym - What do you mean by urban exploration / infiltration? Are we talking breaking in to old decrepit buildings/jumping rope barricades or blending in with locals?

@Bruce - Oh hell yeah we will.

@Andrew - Unforeseen wacky shit is inevitable. I'm looking for bucket list worthy activities that are best executed on foreign soil and will make my future children wonder how I survived past thirty. After all, isn't that the kind of ground unforeseen wacky shit is built on?

Cremlian

Urban Exploration / Infiltration. A minor hobby of mine that's fallen by the wayside since I moved to New York.

What you don't want to be assaulted by bums?

Rym

What you don't want to be assaulted by bums?

I don't want to be sent to Gitmo as a terrorist if I'm caught poking around subway tracks or old infrastructure.

Cremlian

I don't want to be sent to Gitmo as a terrorist if I'm caught poking around subway tracks or old infrastructure.

Don't you want to be jailed for something you believe in so you can fight it :-p

Apreche

I don't want to be sent to Gitmo as a terrorist if I'm caught poking around subway tracks or old infrastructure.

Don't you want to be jailed for something you believe in so you can fight it :-p

Being jailed for civil disobedience is cool, but it's something you can really only do once. If you're gonna do it, you gotta make it count. Bradley Manning made it count. Rosa Parks made it count. Rym going in a subway isn't going to count for shit.

Matt

I thought the whole point of a roadtrip is that the wacky shit just happens randomly. You don't plan for it.

I'm not advocating that you look up the largest ball of wax six weeks in advance and stick to a rigid plan to make sure you visit it. I'm saying that you've got a few key spots you are going to hit, don't know what routes you'll wind up taking to get there, and you can do a quick search as you're driving through some of these middle-of-nowhere towns to see if there's something offbeat worth stopping to see.

dsf

What you don't want to be assaulted by bums?

I don't want to be sent to Gitmo as a terrorist if I'm caught poking around subway tracks or old infrastructure.

Neo-Bum Fights

Kate Monster

I don't want to be sent to Gitmo as a terrorist if I'm caught poking around subway tracks or old infrastructure.

Don't you want to be jailed for something you believe in so you can fight it :-p

Being jailed for civil disobedience is cool, but it's something you can really only do once. If you're gonna do it, you gotta make it count. Bradley Manning made it count. Rosa Parks made it count. Rym going in a subway isn't going to count for shit.

Um... many civil rights activists were imprisoned multiple times for civil disobedience.

Apreche

Um... many civil rights activists were imprisoned multiple times for civil disobedience.

There's no guarantee you will get out, so you have to go in with that risk in mind.

Cremlian

There's no guarantee you will get out, so you have to go in with that risk in mind.

Most likely on a trust passing charge as a first offender, you'll get out.

open_sketchbook

Yeah, that was before being a terror suspect would have you declared a non-person and held forever without trial.

Kate Monster

Um... many civil rights activists were imprisoned multiple times for civil disobedience.

There's no guarantee you will get out, so you have to go in with that risk in mind.

Well, not really. Depending on what you do and where you do it there are usually maximum sentences (in first and even second world nations).

Apreche

Well, not really. Depending on what you do and where you do it there are usually maximum sentences (in first and even second world nations).

You're assuming they'll be followed. Also, if the consequence of the law has such a light sentence, it's probably not the most important law to be using your civil disobedience to fight against.