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The CityBeat staff has been toying with the idea of a summer road trip story for more than a year — something about day-tripping from Cincinnati. We'd all hop in our cars and see what was out there.
First, though, we'd procrastinate.
That is, until about six weeks ago, when the astute editors realized we needed a cover story for Aug. 15. News Editor Gregory Flannery ever so diplomatically asked if I'd coordinate the effort. I agreed, and he immediately announced to everyone, "He fell for it!" He was only half-joking.
We needed a theme to tie it all together. Something to force people out of their neighborhoods but keep them from heading to Las Vegas. So it became "100 miles, $100." Each volunteer had to take at least a 100-mile round trip from CityBeat headquarters downtown to somewhere outside of the Interstate 275 beltway, but they couldn't spend more than $100 to do so. This was trippin', but at level of low- to mid-rollers.
I asked the participants to go somewhere they wanted to go but hadn't been before, to take a quest of sorts. The $100 obviously caught the eyes of some of the volunteers — this is big money at CityBeat — while others focused on the trip. Some spent time with family and made potty jokes, some educated themselves and a couple of us just got the hell out of town for a day and screwed around.
So there should be at least one story here everyone else can live through vicariously.
