A couple of weeks ago, several hard-core adventurers set out to become the first individuals ever to circle the earth in a balloon. Apparently, in a time when the human species has already landed on the moon, gone faster than the speed of sound on land, and sent a radio controlled car to the surface of Mars, we realized that in all the commotion someone forgot to get their name in the books for flying a balloon around the world.

To tell you the truth, I don't even know if any of them made it yet. The last I heard, one guy was flying over Libya, and a couple of the others dropped out of the race. But if you really want to know my opinion, I don't even think it's that big of a deal.

You see, I have always been a fan of roadtrips. Last spring and summer, I traveled over 2000 miles across the mid-west with the Solar Phantom team. And after that was over, I traveled an additional 20,000 miles all over the country in my spare time and mini-vacations taken off from work while I was on co-op during the Summer and fall.

In fact, I recently got a valid passport because I thought it was necessary in order to drive into Canada. I was later informed that it is not needed in order to cross that border. So I now have a passport that I don't know what to do with combined with a seemingly unquenchable thirst for long distance driving.

That was when an incredible vision of the Ultimate College Roadtrip hit me. Would it be possible to drive a 1989 Chevy Cavalier from Indiana to England without crossing any oceans? I have analyzed the situation, and I believe it is possible. Reflecting back, I can recall at least two sources of inspiration.

There was the guy I met two years ago who converted a semi milk trailer into an amphibious car and drove all over the world with his wife, illegally landing on the beaches of foreign countries. He managed to accomplish this several times without getting shot at or imprisoned.

Then there was Ben, my roommate from last year, who had a car with almost a quarter million miles on the odometer or roughly the distance from here to the moon. Of course, being the bad driver that he is, he ended up pre-maturely wrecking the car before it could reach its full potential.

My own plan is actually relatively simple on paper. I figured that the westernmost tip of Alaska is reachable by road from Indiana. So with little difficulty I would be able to drive up to the Bering Strait, a narrow 55 mile wide strip of water that is the only thing separating the United States from Russia.

Tens of thousands of years ago, during the last Ice Ages, people walked across what was then a land bridge from Asia to North America, and thereby inhabiting our continent. Of course, the land bridge no longer exists, but I have heard that in recent times a person actually swam that distance.

So there must be a car-carrying ferry, or at least some method of transporting cars across that body of water. Once I get my car across the Bering Strait, I will have accomplished the hardest part of my roadtrip.

However, before leaving Alaska, I would buy about two weeks worth of gasoline and food to tote along in a rented U-Haul trailer in order to avoid the reliance of purchasing anything in Russia. I would also probably have to bring along someone who spoke Russian for nothing else to read the road signs.

After driving for a couple of weeks through Russia, Poland, and Germany, I would reach France, where I plan to take a snapshot of my car in front of the Eiffel Tower. Then I would use the newly constructed Channel Tunnel to get my car to England.

The goal is to get all the way to England without removing the Texas license plates from my car. To accomplish this, I would have to keep the license plates dirty enough so that nobody would be able to read them but not quite dirty enough to warrant getting pulled over by the authorities.

Once in England, I would be just another sightseeing tourist until someone noticed that I had Texas plates and finally impounded my car. But by the end of this trip, my '89 Chevy would have a book value of about $50, so I would ditch it in England and take a plane back to America.

I would really like to see these wanna-be record breakers try and top THAT in their fancy balloons.

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