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Ever daydreamed about taking a leisurely drive across the country, soaking up the scenery from coast to coast?
Jay Bender, a journalism professor and law school instructor, prefers a faster pace. On May 12 he starts a grueling, 800-mile-a-day ride on the Southern California Motorcycle Association's Four Corners Tour that will take him around the perimeter of the lower 48 states.
With a laptop and digital camera, Bender will maintain a blog at www.whereisbender.blogspot.com, which Patty Kornegay, a staff member in the journalism and mass communications school, helped him create. There's a link on the Web site to a GPS map that shows his current location.
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| Jay Bender |
Bender's roughly 10,000-mile journey will take him from Columbia to Key West, Fla.; out west to San Ysidro, Calif.; north to Blaine, Wash.; east to Madawaska, Maine; and, finally, south to Columbia.
"Part of the trip is journalism related," said Bender, the Reid H. Montgomery Freedom of Information Chair in journalism who has taught off and on at the University since the mid 1980s. "We talk about how the Internet is changing the cost of entry into mass communications, and this is an example of it. I'll use a wireless laptop and a digital camera to document my trip on the Web. Who knows, there might be a book in there somewhere."
Bender, who used to race motorcycles, is no novice when it comes to long, hard rides in the saddle. He once rode from Key West to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and back on his BMW motorcycle. A ride across Texas in 120-degree heat convinced him that he needed a way to stay cool while crossing the Mojave Desert on his current four-corners trip.
For less than $100, he rigged a small ice cooler that circulates chilled water in flexible tubing through the lining of a motorcycle jacket. It's a technology used by NASCAR drivers, though his home-made version is much cheaper.
On the cool weather leg of the trip--from Washington to Maine--Bender is contemplating a stop-off in Ottawa to pay a visit to David Wilkins, the U.S. ambassador to Canada and former speaker of the S.C. House of Representatives.
"I probably won't have a suit packed," he said. "Maybe I'll just pull up to the gate of the embassy and honk."
5/07
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Jay Bender prepares for the Four Corners Tour.
