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(DAILY_WILDCAT)

{picture of 
Bryan Hance}

 - I had originally planned a nice political topic for today's column but that idea died a quick death.
 - Now that the ASUA elections are over, I was hoping to write something on how the candidates used the Web in their campaigns. I imagined that a few of them might have forgotton they even had a web page, campaign related or otherwise -- we could have checked out a few sites with some of the candidate's third-grade school photos or something along those lines, you know.
 - Primed for a cool article, I took a list of all the candidates running for our ASUA positions and cross-referenced it with their email addresses to get a listing of potential web pages.
 - Out of 27 names, though, I came up with four very lame webpages and one slightly broken one.
 - Oh well.
 - And then I realized something. Nobody would have really cared, would they? At this point, the last thing on anybody's mind is the ASUA elections, or anything even remotely school related. Everyone, professors and faculty included, have been fried for the last two weeks and if you take a good look around you, you'll see I'm not exaggerating. We want OUT and that's all there is to it.
 - This whole campus is burnt, dead, wasted, toast. In fact, by the time you read this I'll be curled in a fetal position in the back of my closet, sleeping off the week and hiding from the rest of the world. The campus could probably care less about the ASUA elections at this point, (excluding the fact that KAMP student radio finally got some funding leverage) so maybe I'm better off not chasing down that original article.
 - So what to write about? What does anyone want to hear about?

Spring Break.

 - Come on, it's the only thing on our minds anyway as we do everything we can to stay sane until next Friday rolls around. Whether you plan on taking an old-school approach and just hitting the road or if you're jumping the bandwagon and heading north to Lake Havasu City or south to Rocky Point, you wouldn't necessarily be better off if I cranked out an article on ASUA, would you?
 - So here it is - the "cover spring break because that's all we're thinking about" article.
 - If you're going south, you'll need a little help with those border details. After all, this is boom time, and all of Mazatlan is poised for the coming masses. This includes the police, and while you'd like to spend a week in Mexico, you don't want to end up in jail over something silly like bringing an uncooked potato across the border, so you'll want to do a little research.
 - The Wildcat, of course, has quite a few back issues articles that can help you out with travel to Mexico.
 - U.S. Customs can provide some information on out-of-country travel in general, but if you're looking for information specific to the Arizona/Mexico border and customs, you're in luck too. This page gets pretty specific, too. Did you know you can't bring an avocado back into the states unless it's been de-seeded? Read about it.
 - Of course some of the big 'Net names are in on the Mexico vacation gig too, such as HotWired's clickable Mexico map, and their Tijuana Tales, stories submitted by readers regarding experiences in Mexico. If you haven't been to the HotWired site before, you'll have to go through a short subscription process, but it's free.
 - If you're going North to the other big hotspot, Lake Havasu City, you have my sympathy because freaks like this have made the words "Lake Havasu" synonymous with the words "trashed frat boys on a houseboat." These sites are worse than some of the ads you see around campus, and I'm talking about the really stupid ones, the ads with cheesy "The best vacation you've ever had, if only you could remember" slogans. Someone please take this page out back and beat it with it's own schtick, please.
 - Of course, these aren't the only two places you can escape to over break, even if you still haven't made any plans yet. You could always pull off a road trip, and the Web is chock full of neat little gadgets to churn out maps or to calculate driving distance between two cities. You could even go all out and pull off a youth hostel trip for a few days and still have some cash left when it's all over. Maybe.
 - And if you really have no clue as to what to do for spring break, sites like Pathfinder's could save you from frantic last minute trip planning, as it can do everything you need to get a vacation underway short of driving you to the airport. Microsoft's Expedia is feature-laden as well, and sports a secure server connection in case you feel like booking your tickets online, once you've gotten through the registration process.
 - Finally, if you're stuck in Tucson you can still find some peace, as I promise you this campus will be 100% barren by 7pm next Friday. Not just empty, but "I can hear a pin drop" empty. What to do? Get in some mountain biking , maybe, or at least catch up on that two months worth of sleep you've missed.
 - Whatever your Spring Break plans, I wish the entire campus luck in making it through next week alive and sane.
 - Now, aren't you glad this wasn't an ASUA article?




(Wildcat Chat)

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