Color me gone

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

OK, everybody, here we go.

I’m on vacation. I’m writing this early, but by the time you read it, I may be on the road for Massachusetts. I’ve never operated an automobile east of the Mississippi, but I’m pretty sure the laws of physics don’t change that greatly in the compacted East. So, let’s see, cover stories are judiciously assigned, editorials, contributors’ payments, staff salaries, blah, blah, blah. Dennis, Kat, Kelley and Foto will do fine.

Oh, letters to the editor. Kelley Lang’s going to handle letters while I’m gone. That means she has to put them into succinct English. Now would be a good time to send all those letters saying how this newspaper would benefit with a change at the top or how Hook is unfair to liberals or Deidre isn’t giving Bob Beers a fair shake or Bruce should stop writing about his genitals. Be brutal, now. You want to write it with active verbs in words totaling less than 200. Don’t write about national politics we haven’t written about in the paper, write about the stuff we do that pisses you off or inspires you to reline your birdcage. C’mon, it’ll be fun. Write in good English, don’t libel anyone who doesn’t work here, and send your letters to <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> </script>. Yes, I’ll be checking my e-mail from the road—but not very often.

I’m not too worried about how things will go in my absence. This place has gotten along fine without me before. I was actually more nervous leaving Hunter in the car for 10 minutes while I ran into Lowe’s to check prices on gas grills.

What else? Even though I’m not hitting the road for a week after I’m officially off, my heart rate increases just thinking about my trip. I haven’t picked up a map yet. I mean, how hard can it be? I just head to the Pacific, do a U-turn and kind of point my bumper toward the rising sun for about 3,000 miles, right? Maybe a little bit to the north?

Well, by the next time you see my name down here, sometime after June 12, I’ll have had my big adventure. I can only hope mine works out better for me than PeeWee’s did for him.