You know, you really should get all this down on paper. It's too strange."

Or so a family friend said as I told her about the roadtrips I've managed to go on lately. She's right. The only problem is that if my parents ever find out about some of these, or, more accurately, one of these, I'm dead meat. But what the hell? You only live once.

A sportster's got to do what a sportster's got to do. If the story is in Lincoln, Neb. the weekend before finals, then to Lincoln we go. And we went. Just please, I beg you, don't ever let my parents know. They think I was in North Carolina.

Anyway, back to my original thought. Roadtripping. It's one of the major "must-do's" of the typical college student, especially at Penn State. You haven't lived until you've roadtripped to some sporting event or anywhere else just for the hell of it. The Collegian sports and photo staffs get more practice at this than most people. Sure, we generally have to work, but we also manage to have fun wherever we go.

As a sports reporter, I have been, among other places, to Boston with the football team. There a co-worker and I were deserted in the Boston College press box where a small group of reporters and photogrpahers managed to run up a bill of more than $200 at a Fanuiel Hall seafood restaurant. On the way up and back, one of the photographers kept playing a tape with such classics as "Bela Lugosi's Dead." It started to grow on me after a while.

Recently I took a day trip to Piscataway, N.J. with the women's basketball team and an intrepid hoops reporter named Kent Petersen. Getting there was half the fun. The cutoff sign for Route 287 was covered by snow. We missed it. We found ourselves nearly inside the Lincoln Tunnel.

Once we managed to correct our course, we took a voluntary detour. Kent saw a sign for the USGA golf museum in Far Hills. Being a rabid golf fan, he had to stop. On the winding road to the museum we passed a firehouse that looked like a country club and a jogger who I could have sworn was Don Ameche. The scary part is that with all this, we made it to the field house on time. The only black spot on the trip was that the team lost.

The best roadtrips that I have taken, however, are associated with the women's volleyball team. There have been two of these in the past few months. The first was to Philadelphia for the Atlantic 10 championship. I went down with Chris No. 1, an outrageously dedicated volleyball reporter, and Chris No. 2, a kindly photographer whom we drafted to go along.

The trip had its moments, like getting slightly lost on the weird traffic patterns around Vine Street and running into one of the outside hitters accidentally singeing her hair on a candle at the pre-tourney banquet. It was the only time I have ever seen Chris No. 2 not have his camera ready when we needed it.

But the most fun by far was the one to, you guessed it, Lincoln, Na. Chris No. 1 and I talked about going for weeks. I even mentioned it to Mom and Dad, but they told me I'd hit twelve feet of snow and was therefore forbidden to go. So I forgot about it . . . until the day before we left, when Chris and I decided on a whim to go for it.

I didn't believe I was actually going until I was on the road for about an hour. Imagine, if you will, Chris and myself joined by two members of the men's volleyball team who hitched a ride with us, cruising down Route 80 in an automobile the size of a can opener at approximately 90 mph. I never knew my car could move that fast. We made it to Lincoln, a distance of 1,090 miles, in 16 hours. There was no snow.

And believe it or not, it was a lot of fun. You learn a lot about people on these trips. And I now have enough on Chris to . . . well, he knows what I'm talking about. Once there, we were greeted warmly by the Lady Lions, who were shocked as hell to see the four of us. They thought we were all nuts. They probably still do. They're right.

Of course, I can't go into everything that happened out there. There's just too much -- like me getting into a short disagreement with a certain middle blocker over the existance of the little Martian character (Commander X-2) in some Bugs Bunny cartoons. I still say I'm not on drugs, he is there. Then there was the response the women made up for those obnoxious Husker fans during the Nebraska match: "Go chuck yourselves." I have never been more proud.

And a word to those planning to travel to that region of the country soon. There are no Plus machines -- only Cirrus. I was penniless by Friday. That made it sort of tough on the worst part of the trip, the ride back. Come to think of it, I still owe Chris some gas money. Oh well, it's all a part of the roadtrip tradition. I still think they're therapeutic. Everybody should do at least one a month. But don't forget to invest in travelers' checks.