But without much to say about this week's IDs, I thought I'd answer a question that pops up occasionally in e-mail: "How do you pull off those Big Trips of yours?"

So over the next few weeks, as IDs from Boise play softly in the background, I'll offer a brief primer on how our little bunch does it. (Perhaps Garrett or Blaine can chime in with some details if I slip!)

The first step, of course, is choosing a destination. In the case of Big Trip 2007, that was easy: there were two radio club conventions a week apart in Salt Lake City and Boise, and a big chunk of America in between that we'd never seen, so the trip almost dictated itself. In previous years, destinations have been dictated by other radio conventions (Seaside, Oregon, in 2006), family events (the original Big Trip through the midwest in 2001) or even the chance to see a traveling buddy complete his visits to every county in America (International Falls, Minnesota, in 2005). In general, though, we look for areas we haven't visited much before, with consideration given to weather (Florida in August? No thanks!) and the availability of station tours. Free lodging is nice, too; in this case, we had one night with friends of Garrett's in Boise, and it's always nice to get out of hotels after a week on the road.

Once we have a destination - and that's usually determined as early as nine months before the trip - the next step is a round-robin of e-mails among the usual Big Trip participants, as we discuss which cities to include. In previous Big Trips, we've learned that it's usually a very bad idea to drive more than 5 or 6 hours in a day, especially if we're trying to do radio visits in the same day. (This is more of a concern in the widely-spaced West than in the East or Midwest!) We've also learned that in larger markets, we need to allow several days in town if we hope to visit multiple stations and properly document the whole market. It took the better part of three days to see everything we saw in Boise, for instance; Salt Lake took four, and we still didn't see quite everything. And since we're not in our twenties anymore (not even Blaine), we've learned to pace ourselves - it's nice to stick a day in the schedule without much to see, just to relax and regroup.

Then there's the Aircheck Factor: I like to tape TV newscasts, and prefer to get them on weekday evenings; I also like to roll weekday morning drive in each market I visit. So in the case of Big Trip 2007, for instance, circumstances dictated that we had to get to Boise by Thursday night so I could do Friday morning radio and Friday night TV news. (This sometimes creates longer drives than we'd prefer; in this case, we pushed all the way from Lewiston to Boise in one very long day, rather than spending a night in La Grande or Baker City, as we might otherwise have done.)

After a few weeks of back-and-forth by e-mail, as proposed schedules morph from Plan A to Plan K to Plan BB to Plan DDD, we usually end up eliminating at least one market that would be neat to visit but just too far to travel (Billings, Montana, in the case of Big Trip 2007), and we end up with a pretty good idea of where we'll be each day, how much driving is involved, and how many hotel nights.

When we continue next week, we'll explore the issues of mapping, hotel choice and aircheck planning...and in the meantime, go check out those Pendleton and La Grande stations on Tower Site of the Week, too!

Anyway, I'll give you quite a variety of IDs this week after no updates for the past couple weeks. All of the IDs will contain a JAM jingle in some form or another.

I'll start off with Augusta, where WMME is still using a couple classic cuts. Bridgeport is up next, where you'll hear a couple more from WEBE (and I promise to post more IDs from Bridgeport other than WEBE soon!). Back home here to Boston, with one of the first times WODS used their new TOH jingle, as well as one from down here on the south shore, WPLM. Next it's over the canal to Cape Cod, where you'll hear an ID no longer used by WCOD. Around to other parts of New England, with WDRC-FM Hartford's new jingle (after not using any jingles for a couple years), Manchester's old WQLL, WCTK, and a couple classic early 80s IDs I dug up from WPRO-FM in Providence, and another different one from WORC-FM Worcester. Now we'll travel into Yankees territory with IDs from WCBS-FM New York, and WLVG Long Island. As a bonus here's a classic 80s ID that I came across on the hard drive from KUSA Saint Louis.

And I'm blocked.

Because I'm a hack, I reach for the bad writer's friend — glomming on to something someone else did in hopes of making my own crap relevant. I believe I will fail, but still I soldier forth.

In keeping with that, I'd like to point out what Scott's post from Wednesday and my IDs from today have in common: misspelling. Scooter quoted a song from a band whose name nobody can spell (because of the spelling funkitude which oozes from same said name), and I am updating a market which, again, nobody spells correctly (because it's spelled nothing like it sounds).

So, while you're listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd ("Leonard Skinnard"), enjoy tonight's IDs from Worcester ("Wistah"), thanks to Garrett Wollman (who also corrected my initial, sadly Midwestern first attempt). And I'll try to do better next week.

Anyway, we've combined Lewiston and sister city Clarkston, Washington with another pair of sister cities 30 miles to the north, the college towns of Pullman, Washington and Moscow, Idaho, to create what we call the Lewiston-Moscow market, subject of this week's update here on Toppy and over at Tower Site of the Week.

(The locals sometimes call it the "Quad Cities," but we didn't see any Moline or Bettendorf there...)

To be fair, the traffic in Atlanta is no picnic, though my travels took me only to the northern part of the city so I avoided most of that madness. Even the tryout for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire that I went there for was held on the northside of town.

With that in mind, this week's update includes the AM stations that I managed to record during my trip to Atlanta, along with the rest of the Chattanooga IDs that I snagged on my trip. Next time: the FM side of Atlanta.

But every once in a while, we end up retracing our steps at least slightly. So it was on the westermost swing of Big Trip '07, where we touched routes with the easternmost part of Big Trip '06 with a return to Spokane, our second visit there in less than a year. This time around, we spent only a few hours, mostly visiting some studio and tower sites we hadn't had access to on the first go-round - and picking up some IDs we missed the first time out, too. (We'll hit one more small piece of retracing steps in next week's installment.)

Before we got to Spokane, we got to see the drive-through directional array of KWAL 620 in Wallace, Idaho, which straddles I-90. (You can see it, too, at this week's Tower Site of the Week.) We've included that ID under Spokane, just because we couldn't quite justify creating a one-station Wallace market for it.

And we have one holiday bonus for you this week - we were back in a very frequent haunt of ours, Chicago, a few days ago...just in time to have tape rolling as Citadel flipped WZZN back to its heritage calls of WLS-FM. Check out the ID montage that launched the new calls!

And, over the weekend, I passed through Chattanooga on my way to and from Atlanta (look for new IDs from that market coming next week.) Included in the mix is the brand new 103.7 signal (moved in from the 103.9 signal in McMinnville, TN) that Clear Channel shifted into the Chattanooga market, which is currently stunting with a dance format as Boogie 103.7. Think disco and early 80s dance there, not the Party dance format that Cox used to have on in Miami and Orlando. Whatever the case, Boogie 103.7 is not expected to last long, so I lucked out in landing it.

Also this week is the final part of the IDs that I recorded in Dallas earlier this month, many of which are stations that are brand new to Toppy. Enjoy, and again be sure to check back here one week from tonight for the new IDs straight out of the ATL.

You may notice in future updates that I'm a fan of JAM jingles, and I was very glad to hear WODS here in Boston start using them again. It had been a few years since their jingles had been heard on any station right in the middle of the Boston market. You may also notice in the two newest IDs from them, that they are now using the same voice over talent as their big sister, WCBS-FM in New York.

That won't keep me from my appointed rounds: today, a small pile of IDs from Manchester, NH, thanks to the generosity of one Garrett Wollman.

And with that...it's early 'round here and there's more ill-advised decisions to be made. B-Dub out.