For the next few weeks Axes & Alleys will do something a bit different. Well, actually, we’ll be doing something many magazines have done before. For the month of Caliguli A&A is going on a road trip!

Well, almost all of us are not going anywhere. No, we’ll be here at the offices. Some of us may even partake of furtive, barely-satisfying liaisons in the break room. No, A&A is sending that cute little button Katie Stalin out across America to see what she can see. Several times each week she’ll bring you her observations from the road. We’ve not given any assignments, but we do have one request of her: find at least one person who walks about all day carrying two lobsters. We enjoy crustaceans. They’re cool.

Ms. Stalin has been many things (most recently single), including investigative reporter, master of disguise, travel industry analyst and enthusiast, cloudberry expert, herbicological hobbyist, and ghost writer for Umberto Eco’s How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays. Katie has been invaluable to us. For six months she lived as young Asian woman for an upcoming story on the plight of peat moss.

With the exception of Delores P. Grunion, we all wish Katie a safe, enjoyable working holiday across this great confederatorialist nation. Here’s hoping she finds more excitement and erotically satisfying interludes than us back at the ranch. If there’s one person through whom to live vicariously, it’s that apple-cheeked bumpkin, Katie Stalin.