If you don’t have a car or cash for bus fare, hitchhiking may be your best bet for getting around, although if you’re a gutter punk you may find it harder to grab a ride than if you are a bit less crusty. Anyway, a decent list of websites, newsgroups, and the like related to hitchhiking is found at http://www.suite101.com/links/page.cfm/92 . You’ll find a lot of advice on traveling for free in this assorted collection of web sites, so it should be your first stop.

One of the things I love about the web is the free flow of information, even when that information can be used to get you killed. With that in mind, I present the Train Hoppers Space (http://www.catalog.com/hop/) which is a collection of links for those interested in hopping freight trains. There are so many dangers involved with hopping trains, you’d have to be a bit crazy to do it, but if you’re gonna, you should probably do it right, and that means you should probably visit this site.

A good companion to the Train Hoppers Space is the Freight Train Hopping Dangers page at http://www.amplifiedintelligence.com/TrainHoppingDanger.html . This site will tell you how to avoid getting your neck broken by accident while sleeping, how to keep from falling beneath the train and getting cut in half, etc. A word of warning: While this page contains no graphics, the links from this page contain a LOT of images of severed and mutilated bodies, all of whom died in train hopping accidents. It’s enough to scare the saner among us from ever considering riding the rails. You’ve been warned.

The web has a ton of websites devoted to camping, and you can often find listings of campgrounds where you can stay for free (especially if you don’t have a car) or very cheap. The Wrolin Camping ‘Round the World site at http://www.wrolin.com/campindx.htm has an index of campsites listed by state and country. This is by no means a complete campsite list, but it is a good start.

Another good camping resource page are the Great Outdoor Recreation Pages (http://www.gorp.com/). While this contains all kind of information about huntin’, fishin’ and the like, it also has a lot of good info on finding campsites and sleeping in the outdoors. Very useful, and hey, now you’ll know how to clean your gun.

If camping isn’t your style, then how about sleeping in airports? Figure it this way. There are a lot of travelers who miss flights and are forced to hang around the airport overnight. In most cities, security guards won’t bug you if you look like you are waiting for a plane, and if you can get use to periodic announcements over the loud speakers, you’ve got it made. And guess what, there’s a web site that rates the best airports to sleep in, and allows you to submit your airport sleeping experiences. You’ll find out all about it at The Budget Traveller’s Guide to sleeping in Airports at http://www3.sympatico.ca/donna.mcsherry/airports.htm .

Finally, for those of you with a little more cash in your pocket, you might try staying at a hostel. Some hostels are better than others, and some have certain membership requirements or age limits, but you should be able to find out almost all you need to know from The Internet Guide to Hostelling at http://www.hostels.com/ . This guide lists hostels from all over the world, so you can use it to plan your low cost overseas vacation as well.

Now it’s time for a handful of punk rock sites. In a column a few months ago I told you about a bunch of cool punk radio sites. I got e-mail the other day from Scott Bass, who’s doing a new show called Gift Wrapped Crap on the Antenna Radio site (http://www.antennaradio.com). Right now as I’m writing this I’m listening to his show (right now it’s the Diodes, and coming up are Avengers, Subhumans, Eater and more). Cool stuff.

Though he doesn’t exactly have web site design yet (hell, this guy doesn’t even have a connection to the net, he does this from a library), the LiveYoghurt page at http://members.xoom.com/LiveYoghurt/ is an interesting little collection of rants and silliness from this Brit. At least worth a few minutes of your time.

I got another e-mail from Jos of the band Seein Red (from the Netherlands) asking me to check out their page. Quite a bit about the band here, a few pictures, lyrics, but, unfortunately no lyrics. By the time you read this, you’ll probably have missed their US Tour, so you’ll just have to deal. The Seein Red homepage is at http://www.xs4all.nl/~gniffel2/ .

Okay, so that’s gonna have to do it. I’m leaving on a road trip tomorrow and have to pack. I’ve also got to print out that list of airports. You can e-mail me at hanford@cruzio.com or write to me at PO Box 8059; Santa Cruz, CA 95061. Finally, check out these columns online at http://netpunk.base.org See ya’ next month.