Dave Barry - Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need

New Jersey—nicknamed “The New Jersey Turnpike State”—boasts the nation’s densest population and convenient access to a number of important bridges and tunnels. It’s also a dynamic summer playground, drawing millions of visitors each year to attractions such as Atlantic City, one of the few seaside resorts that would actually be improved by the arrival of an oil slick. Among New Jersey’s many historic sites is Giants Memorial Stadium, erected to mark the burial location of Jimmy Hoffa, visitors are welcome to come place a wreath on his memorial goalposts. The Revolutionary War also occurred in New Jersey, where on Christmas night, 1776, George Washington crossed the Delaware River near Trenton and, in one of the great surprise maneuvers in the history of warfare, found a decent restaurant. New Jersey’s Official State Disease is gout.

New Mexico offers many fascinating and dynamic attractions that you will want to see before you run out of water and die. For example, you should definitely check out the Native American heritage. If you see some Native Americans, you just say, “Hey! Would you Native Americans mind posing for some pictures here? I got it! How about if you pretend that you’re trying to scalp Louise! Ha ha!” This will make you very popular. You might even get invited to go behind a building for a Special Ceremony.

Also be sure to visit Carlsbad Caverns, an awesome geological formation in which visitors may witness the grandeur of more than 250 million bats. Do not startle them. The first atomic bomb was also built in New Mexico and is very slowly being restored to its original condition by workers with tweezers and extremely good eyesight.

“The Empire State” is of course dominated by New York City, the “Big Apple,” filled with the bustle and excitement of millions of energetic, sophisticated, urbane people experiencing numerous only-in-New-York thrills such as making it all the way to work without getting peed on. As Frank Sinatra put it in his immortal and dynamic rendering of New York’s Official Horrendously Overexposed Hit Show Tune, “New York, New York”:

If I can make it there, I can afford to move to Stanford, Connecticut.

Here are some tips for getting maximum enjoyment from your trip to New York:

1. Cancel it immediately.

Ha ha! We are just kidding, of course. New York is in fact a major tourist destination, drawing millions of visitors each year, the majority of whom are never robbed and stabbed and left on the sidewalk to bleed to death while being stepped over by enough people to Populate the entire state of Montana. Their secret? They follow certain common-sense New York City safety rules, such as:

Always walk at least 30 miles per hour. Always keep your money and other valuables in a safe place, such as Switzerland. Avoid unsafe areas, such as your hotel bathroom. Never make eye contact. This is asking to be mugged. In the New York court system, a mugger is automatically declared not guilty if the defense can prove that the victim has a history of making eye contact.

Getting around New York is easy, thanks to the convenient and simple subway system. The major lines are the IRT, the BMT, the SAT, the LSD, and QED, which operate crosstown, midtown, downtown, thrutown, and camptown—trains that are local and quasi-express only with alternating stations northbound between 59th Street and the corner of Twelfth Avenue and Grant’s Tomb only on Wednesdays except during lobster season or for those passengers holding odd-numbered transfers and claiming more than 8.5 percent of their gross net deductible pretax noninterest income as medical expenses. If you have any questions about this, helpful attendants inside bullet-proof bomb-proof flame-proof machete-proof token-dispensing bunkers will be more than happy to continue reading the New York Post (Headline: NAB PORN MOM IN TOT SLASH) no matter how loud you yell. Or for equal convenience you can take a taxi, which you get by simply raising your hand and then bringing it down sharply on the heads of the various New Yorkers who will try to leap into the taxi ahead of you. Be sure to speak very clearly to the driver, as he probably just arrived from a Third World nation where the major form of transportation is vines. The standard tip for everything in New York City is a smile and a bright, shiny quarter.

New York State is completely different.

These two dynamic states are usually grouped together because they both begin with “North.” The major products of North Carolina are tobacco and enormous amounts of phlegm. North Carolina also contains the famous “Lost Colony”, ask anyone for directions. North Dakota offers a fascinating array of wheat; the least-crowded time to visit is February.

Ohio proudly calls itself “The Buckeye State,” after the buckeye, a dynamic, hairless carnivorous nocturnal rodent that traps its prey by pretending to offer really good discounts on jewelry. The largest city in Ohio is Cleveland, which, after years of being the butt of many jokes, has risen to assume its rightful role among major American urban areas as the Future Home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We personally visited this attraction, which consisted of an office containing numerous press releases and a model of what the Hall of Fame would look like if it ever got built. The model is about the size of a harmonica. We think it would be a shrewd move on Cleveland’s part to keep it on this scale, rather than building a full-size Hall of Fame, which would probably attract a lot of rowdy people going “WHOOO!” and throwing up on each other. Also, unlike a large building, the model can easily be placed in a briefcase and carried around the country for special events, parties, etc. (“Hey! Somebody sat on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!”).

Other major Ohio cities include Akron (“The Rubber Capital of the World”) and nearby Canton (“The Spermicidal Lubricant Capital of the World”). Ohio’s Official State Literary Device is the metaphor.

The frontier spirit of this dynamic state is best summed up by the Official State Song, from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma, which begins:

Oooo-klahoma If I can MAKE it there, I’ll make it Any where!

This feeling dates back to the famous Oklahoma land rush of the 1880’s, when the government opened Oklahoma for settlement and many would-be settlers came in “sooner” than they were supposed to, thereby earning Oklahoma its proud nickname, “The Nutmeg State.” Modern Oklahoma boasts both plant and animal life as well as the National Softball Hall of Fame, where every day from nine A.M. until six P.M. visitors may get into bitter, sometimes violent arguments over basically nothing. Oklahoma’s Official State Mystery Food

Additive is Sodium Erythorbate.

Oregon is called “The Beaver State,” although the University of Oregon team nickname is the “Ducks,” which led to the following actual headline in the Seattle Times when an Oregon women’s team lost to a team from the University of Washington (the “Huskies”):

HUSKY WOMEN SUBDUE DUCKS

The major industry in Oregon is trying to locate a tree that does not have an ecologist wrapped around it and then cutting it down and selling it to Japan to be converted into price stickers and pasted onto car windows for sale in the United States. interesting Oregon sights include salmon, which every year return from the Pacific Ocean tO swim up rivers, battling fierce currents, waterfalls, and hungry predators, until finally the survivors reach their spawning area, where, driven by an eons-old instinct, they realize that they forgot to bring the eggs.