Summer Travel Apps

By Spencer Dobson
Contributing Writer

Summer is upon us, which means it’s time for road trips. In the old days you were harshly flung out in the cold cruel world like a newborn; blindly grasping at its environment trying to give it shape and form without the benefit of information or interpretation. Then smartphones were invented. You no longer have to stumble around the planet like a drunk, confused, disoriented frat boy screaming for jagger bombs on the yard of a nice senior citizen community. Now you can go out in to the world armed with a whole universe of information you gleaned from … apps. There are apps that help you find restaurants, gas prices, movie theaters and so much more. I have taken it upon myself to come up with some new apps that will make travel funner, safer and easier. If you are an app designer, call me.

The Stab-o-meter: Open up the The Stab-o-meter on your iPhone or Android, punch in your coordinates and find out how likely it is that you will get a pretty shiny knife plugged into your fat, bloated belly. This comes in handy in small out of the way towns where the it’s hard to tell if “Clutches Cove” is a great place to get a cold one and some buffalo wings, or a place where looking at the guy at the end of the bars lazy eye gets you a trip to the emergency room and a stomach full of cut up. With the Stab-o-meter, you’ll never mistake quaint for “you ain’t from around here are you boy” again. 

Which brings us to our next app: The You ain’t from around here are you boy? This app works nicely in concert with the Stab-o-meter. Let’s say you need to pull over to get gas, and the locals look a little rough, maybe they get a Stab-o-meter rating of “You eye-balling me? You best not be eye-balling me!”  But unless you can fill your gas tank with fear of hillbillies, you have to buy gas. The “You ain’t from around here” app will help you mimic the locals’ mannerisms long enough to get a bag of chili-cheese Fritos and a tank of gas without ending up in the emergency room with a stomach full of cut up.

The app gives you useful, local friendly phrases like “I really enjoy meth” or “Jesus guides my bingo dauber.” Let’s not pretend the backwoods is the only scary place in the world. The app also works in strange cities with phrases like “ I am in charge of many prostitutes” and “Let’s not get jobs and instead smoke drugs and play guitar on the street like a bunch of dirty hobos.” Look at you, talking just like a native and filling up the tank without incident!

Once you learn to blend in and not get stabbed, you’re bound to be hungry. Let’s face it, one of the great pleasures of travel is eating at strange and exotic roadside dinners that serve things like “Down home habanero gristle cakes” and “deep fried chitterling tarts.”  Since greasy, fatty, fried food doesn’t always agree with one’s constitution and most of us don’t have toilets in our car, the Hurts Coming Out app solves the problem of “Where am I going to ditch tatter tot bacon bazookas that I inhaled in Ely.” Plug in what you ate, where you are and what direction you are heading into the Hurts Coming Out and it will tell you where it’s going to come out and how close the nearest, cleanest restroom is to that location. For example: You may have 80 miles to go before business time, provided you’re not drinking coffee, however the only restroom at the 80 mile point looks like a murder scene and smells like a rancid meat garden. (Meat Garden? I don’t know where you would find a lot of rancid meat just out on purpose, like a rancid meat museum? Who would do that? Suspend disbelief, this is a joke about a poop estimating app) So maybe stop at the Texaco at the 65 mile mark and just hang out for 15 minutes.

Happy travels, blend in, don’t get stabbed and put some toilet paper down before you sit there. 

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