trip

SAN FRANCISCO--I was sitting in a Costco here Wednesday night, waiting to have four new tires put on my 2001 Subaru Outback--after literally having just spent $900 on a tune-up and several other items. Paradoxically, I was thinking that Subaru makes a pretty good car.

It was this very Subaru that I spent 16 days in two summers ago on Road Trip 2006, when I drove 3,279 miles around the Pacific Northwest. That year, CNET News let me try a driving trip in search of stories, but I had to take my own car and pay all my own … Read more

OAK RIDGE, Tenn.--If you want to see someone's face light up, try talking to a scientist in a supercomputer lab about their machines.

I had that experience last week when, as the last major stop on Road Trip 2008, I visited the National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at the Oak Ridge National Lab to get a quick look at what is certainly one of the top facilities of its kind in the world.

My host was computational scientist Bronson Messer, and during a whirlwind tour of the center, he showed me several of the world's most … Read more

Updated at 8:20 p.m. PDT to correct name of the M1A1 trainer to Abrams.

FORT BENNING, Ga.--There must be a million ways the U.S. Army trains its newest infantry recruits, but when CNET News.com comes to town to do a story, the service rolls out the latest digital simulators.

Not long after I arrived at this giant military installation near Columbus, Ga., for one of my last stops on Road Trip 2008, I was escorted into a building to see VICE, the Virtual Interactive Combat Environment trainer. It's a system from Dynamic Animation Systems … Read more

FONTANA VILLAGE, N.C.--If you've got a fancy digital SLR and have been wondering how you could make money with it, I might have just the suggestion for you.

Head on out to the border region between Tennessee and North Carolina, just on the edge of Great Smoky Mountain National Park. There, you'll find a never-ending supply of people riding their motorcycles and driving their cars along one of the most famous and beloved stretches of road in the South.

Known as "The Dragon," the road is a longtime favorite, especially among motorcyclists, and hundreds, … Read more

PENSACOLA, Fla.--If you've ever watched a Blue Angels show, you may not have known that when the F-18 pilots are screaming across the sky, less than 2 feet apart, they're probably not looking straight ahead.

Rather, they're most likely looking sideways at the fighter just off their side, ensuring that they know exactly where it is as they rocket forward at several hundred miles per hour.

That seems like a smart thing, even though it is kind of disconcerting to think the pilots aren't exactly looking where they're going, since no one wants these … Read more

NEW ORLEANS--When I wrote Wednesday that large parts of this city are still severely damaged from Hurricane Katrina and, in some cases, potentially beyond recovery, I didn't want to leave the impression that nothing is being done to protect against the next big hurricane.

In fact, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is putting large sums of money and significant effort into helping to reduce the risk that a future storm of Katrina's magnitude will inundate New Orleans.

All told, the Corps of Engineers here are working to fix and/or replace 220 miles of levees and … Read more

NEW ORLEANS--Don't let anyone ever tell you that New Orleans is doing just fine three years after Hurricane Katrina.

Sure, it's true that some areas of the city, like the French Quarter or the Garden District, seem back to normal, with swarms of tourists, drinks flowing, and the leisurely pace and laid-back attitude the city is famous for on full display. And it's also true that there are parts of town where you'd never know anything bad happened.

But in the Lower Ninth Ward, the poverty-stricken part of New Orleans that took the biggest hit from … Read more

GEORGIANA, Ala.--After hitting both 1,000 miles and 2,000 miles on the dot at nondescript spots on Interstate highways, I finally had a chance to reach a milestone at somewhere meaningful.

As the odometer on the Subaru Outback 2.5 XT that I'm driving around in on Road Trip 2008 approached 3,000 miles, I saw a sign for the Hank Williams Sr. Boyhood Home and Museum.

Of course, I was tooling along on Interstate 65, heading toward Montgomery, Ala., on my way to Columbus, Ga., when I saw the sign.

Thinking that this was a chance … Read more

CLARKSDALE, Miss.--When in Rome, as they say.

As part of Road Trip 2008, my journey through the South in search of several weeks' worth of stories, I had accepted an invitation to come to this tiny town in northwest Mississippi for the opportunity to visit one of the most important Blues clubs in the country.

It turns out that the club, the Ground Zero Blues Club, is co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman and the father of a friend of mine. Lured by the opportunity to talk with the two of them about airplanes--since I'd heard that Freeman and … Read more