We Don't Drive for Jones

Our trip is about more than corporate sponsorship damnit, we are doing this for the love of the road! Well actually no, the reason we aren't going to get involved with the Jones Soda Road Trip promotion is nothing as magnanimous as that, it is because 'the prizes' are pathetic. We've never drank the hip trendy top-shelf Jones soda before, I'm sure it's good stuff. I doubt it is any better than Hansen's however which is another sugar water (not corn-syrup water) at half the price.

Jones Soda are big sponsors of several World Top 16 Snooker players as a matter of fact, and I'm a big Snooker fan. Though Allie Carter, who is my favorite cueist, doesn't wear their logo on his vest. Maybe they didn't offer him another Sterling to advertise for them, it wouldn't surprise me considering what the Seattle company is offering photographers whose photos they use on their pop bottles.

So if they select your photo for their label which is distributed around the country what do you get for it? Apparently just the kudos of being associated with their hip trendy pop. They are also giving away some overpriced iPod car accessory which apparently broadcasts your ipod over your car's FM radio. Sounds a bit complicated when you can just get one of those cassette deck adapter deals on ebay for $1.75. I guess the latest cars don't have cassette decks, but what is some liberal White college kid (Jones Soda's #1 market I assume) doing with a brand new car anyway? Besides most new car stereos have one of those mini type input plugs, you can get a mini-to-mini cord at any dollar store.

I suppose having them use your photo would give you some publicity and you could put it on your resume, but personally I like cold hard cash for my work(or hot soft cash). I hear twitter is the new hot marketing tool to get your propaganda out to the younger set who aren't set in their ways. Maybe the kids get all worked up when you throw a few beads into the crowd but I suppose I'm over 30 and old now and won't bend over backwards to give somebody free advertising. The humble ads on this page will help provide a few pennies towards our gas, which is more than Jones is willing to do.

Welcome to ZAP Xebra Road Trip 2009, sponsored by . . . whoever gives us the best price.

Will 2 iPods and an iBook be enough?

Just a quick rundown on the tech we will be bringing along on the trip. 1 iPod Touch (15gb), 1 GPS, 1 dual usb iBook (600mhz), 1 3rd generation iPod (15gb), 2 cell phones, 1 Canon Powershot still/video digital camera, 1 'Power to Go' portable AC/USB power supply,

The most important item will probably be the iPod Touch. Aside from being able to store important documents, photos, video and music for the trip, we have loaded it with some trip related apps and it will allow us to connect with the web anywhere there is wifi. With a video cable we can hook it up to TVs in hotels. It has a quazi-gps but it only works in cities.

The proper portable GPS is there basically to help us get lost and go the wrong way. The old iBook is something we can use at hotels at night to hook up to wifi and upload any photos. We won't have to stress about leaving it in the car or anywhere, since you would be lucky to sell it on ebay for $100 these days. We just put in a new battery into the old iPod (non-touch) and it works perfectly fine for music. It will be jam-packed with Doctor Who audio books, Jazz, Samba, and Reggae.

With the cellphones we can send and receive twitters from anywhere. Plus last time I checked you can also make and receive phone calls on them. So the only real lag might be in the time until you get the photos, as we will only be able to upload them after they have been put on the iBook and after that has located an open Wifi. The tradeoff is that they will be good proper pictures, not low-resolution cellphone camera shots and will hopefully be worth waiting for.

With all that, it doesn't look like we will have any space to pack socks and underwear, but you have to set your priorities don't you?

Gas Prices and Canceling Road Trips

Something to file under "Same stupid local news story you see again and again" is the one where they interview a bunch of folks at a gas station who say they are canceling their summer vacation this year because of the price of gas. A few examples here and here, but you know what I'm talking about.

If the polls are right, a full 1/3 of the country just says, "Screw the Grand Canyon!" if the price of gas jumps just a little bit. I suppose that means that a 1/3 of the country can't do math, which come to think of it actually seems like a low number to me.

To keep the math easy, lets say your road trip is 2000 miles, even if you get lousy mileage of 20mpg and even if gas prices have gone up $1 over the norm(whatever that is), the total extra cost of your fun family road trip which is now causing you to cancel it is a mere $100! Just skip buying those cheesy t-shirts at the Alamo and stay in a Motel 6 one night and you've broke even.

So that's the worst case scenario. Do the math yourself for your vehicle and your distance and then hopefully you will reconsider postponing your life because of a few bucks. Hope to see you out on the road!

Pop versus Soda

One of the road rules posted earlier is that we won't be drinking anything with corn syrup on the trip. That is not because of some woo-woo belief that it is inherently worse for you than cane sugar, it is just because we think it tastes like garbage. Back in the day POP tasted pretty good, with corn syrup now it just tastes industrial. It is hard to get away from, it is in all the iced tea, even juice now.

I do refer to soft drinks as Pop and that is actually my main focus of the post. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people in this country who speak English, yet don't call soft drinks by their proper nickname, "Pop." We currently live in a backwards state when it comes to using English, you might be shocked to hear the preferred term in California is "Soda." Well it's certainly not the only thing this state has gotten wrong recently.

As you can see from the map, by the end of the first day of our trip when we plan to be in New Mexico, we will already be in a Coke state! Who knew this, that a whole hunk of the country, which coincidentally (or not) is red in this map, would call a Pepsi a Coke? So they would call a Sprite a Coke? A root beer a Coke? It truly sounds insane I know.

So we might have to suspend the 'no corn syrup rule' for the sake of science once or twice just to see how this works. I currently can't even fathom this. So I'm trying to imagine the conversation with the waitress in the Texas diner.

Me, "I'll Have a Coke."
Waitress, "What kind of Coke would you like hon?"
Me, "I'll take a Hire's Root Beer."

Actually I have no intention of adapting to their odd ways and I will refuse to call soft drinks anything but Pop when I'm on this trip. If these foreigners don't know what I'm talking about then I'm afraid they will just lose a sale. More on the topic at popvssoda.com.

Name our Mascot contest

So we have ordered an overpriced plush Adipose doll to be our trip's mascot. S/he will accompany us and pose for pictures around the country. Of course the Adipose were featured in the Doctor Who episode Partners in Crime.

We don't have a name for the Adipose yet, so here is your chance to get involved. Send suggestions for our little traveling buddy in the comments below. I can tell you right now we aren't going to call him/her "Addie the Adipose" which is the best we could come up with, so creativity is welcome.

We need a mascot

We are looking for a mascot to bring along with us on the trip who can pose in the various locations around the country. Sort of like our version of the gnome. We were thinking of this guy named Plunko pictured here. Do you have any better ideas? Or maybe the whole cute plush at the famous landmark routine has just become too cliche now.

We're driving a ZAP Xebra to NYC and back

They all think we're crazy to do it but we're driving the all-electric ZAP Xebra around the country. With a top speed of 33mph, a 15-mile range, no A/C or a working radio it might pose us a few problems but we love a challenge!

The fact that our "car" can't legally be driven in Maine, Massachusetts and Ohio shouldn't cause us any trouble we will just skip those states. Us Californians know how to do things better than anybody of course! As a matter of fact that's the theme of our trip. We have a bumper sticker that reads, "If you're $26,000 in debt then that's your problem . . . if you're $26 Billion in debt then it's the countries problem!"

Today we are going out to shop for an extra long extension chord in case we run out of juice in the desert.

Only a Fortnight to go!

Our road trip to the East Coast begins on August 8th. This will be the spot for photos and updates. More to come! We bought the domain name roadtrip2009.info for only $.89 and we are going to make the most of it!