ReidOnTravel

Greatest statue of all time: Tulsa’s Golden Driller. My...

Sat, 25 May 2013 18:47:49 -0400

Greatest statue of all time: Tulsa’s Golden Driller. My first author photo pic (at bottom) purposely has the man over my shoulder.

Ray Manzarek & me

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:56:00 -0400

Yesterday Ray Manzarek of the Doors died. I’m sure he’d be sad that “of the Doors” essentially became an annex to his surname, Manzarekofthedoors. He was a talented, well-spoken guy, but - let’s be honest - not the nicest in the world. At a book reading over a decade ago (shown above), he gave flip answers to questions he didn’t approve of. When one kid shyly asked about “the time Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger met… what was it like,?” Ray paused, sighed with exasperation, and said “I. Hate. That.”

My friend Matt Jackson (above left) showed up to see about getting a quote from Ray about division-three soccer ticket prices in San Francisco. Then “posed” with a photo of him in the distance.

It goes down as one of the best all-around experiences I’ve had in California.

Kevin McCartney of Caribou, Maine, works his corner of Aroostook...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:37:47 -0400

Kevin McCartney of Caribou, Maine, works his corner of Aroostook County like a Max from the film “Rushmore.” With no budget, or much permission, he drew volunteers to create a solar system on Route 1 - all built to scale on a 40-mile stretch of (mostly) farms. He’s planning to add “dwarf planets” next.

If you’re in the area in February time it with his latest project, Planet Head Day: free haircut (shaved to skin), then your scalp painted like your favorite planet. It’s to raise money for cancer. And to look like Neptune.

paulbrady: As rap videos with a sense of place go, this is not...

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:08:08 -0400

paulbrady:

As rap videos with a sense of place go, this is not exactly your standard-issue slow-speed cruise around South Central. Nah. This is Minneapolis, y’all. We keep it real with parks and schools and cameos by huggable Twins mascot TC Bear. Y.N.RichKids’ “My Bike” covers an impressive portion of the city, from the crew’s home turf on the North Side, down to Minnehaha Falls, in the far southeast corner of town, and to the Mall of America, way out in the ’burbs. By my back-of-the-envelope math, if they actually pedaled the route we see in the video, they’d cover 50 miles.

I asked Doug Mack to explain for CNTraveler.com the many Minnie locations in this new rap video.

I agree with this decision. I like the result.

I just created a panel. I asked an etiquette expert, an MIT...

Mon, 13 May 2013 12:57:53 -0400

I just created a panel. I asked an etiquette expert, an MIT legend and an anarchist about the phenomenon of table-butting, where people claim a table in a cafe before ordering, thus cheating the people in line who arrived before them.

Here is what they said.

North Pond Hermit

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:33:17 -0400

I got to speak at a Maine tourism conference focusing on the “Maine Woods,” the non-coastal parts. I started my speech with 20 things I learned from a crazy four-day roadtrip, one of which was this:

The “North Pond Hermit” has been all over Maine news lately. The guy, who lived alone in the woods for 27 years, apparently committed 1000 burglaries — stealing food out of homes.

I just learned (from this Mainer blog) it inspired this surprisingly good new song by Stan & Dan, Mainer musicians.

I would like to invite you to listen.

zacheverson: A not inconsequential part of myself just...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 07:09:58 -0400

zacheverson:

A not inconsequential part of myself just died.

I’d like a life pass for that bus

landscapelifescape: Zhivopisny bridge, Moscow,...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 07:07:51 -0400

landscapelifescape:

Zhivopisny bridge, Moscow, Russia

Picturesque Bridge by Sergey Alimov

Is St Louis OK with this?

No one knows what a guidebook is

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 11:27:10 -0400

Nearly every time when I was writing guidebooks for Lonely Planet, and I’d tell someone in the US what I did, they’d nod, listen about “guidebooks” and “travel information so people could plan their own holidays,” then they”d invariably ask:

Most Americans really don’t know what a guidebook is. I think more should. So I thought I’d explain how to use a guidebook.

Things I just learned about pants

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:03:49 -0400

The first known pants-wearers were Persian soldiers in the sixth century BC.
Romans thought their pants were just ridiculous
Ancient Greeks thought them beyond ridiculous
In fact, Aristophanes mocked barbarians’ pants choices in his hit poem “The Wasps.” Early on, Philocleon boasts of his anger turns mighty and rich pale and “whisper, ‘O, my God!’ and shit in their pants with fear.” (No joke.) In a later encounter, he writes: “we chased them away, digging our sharp stingers into their baggy pants”
Peter the Great, the Imperial Russian leader, was not only anti-beard — he required “his men” to shave them into moustaches — but also pro-pants. In the early 1700s, he felt pants were a way to Europeanize Russia.
By doing so, he may have been “bringing pants back home.” It’s said the first pants wearers were Upper Paleolithic groups near Lake Baikal.

I hope to learn more things about pants soon.

thisbelongsinamuseum: Once upon a time Lynyrd Skynyrd sang...

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:35:48 -0400

thisbelongsinamuseum:

Once upon a time Lynyrd Skynyrd sang about “Sweet Home Alabama”, but I bet they didn’t know about the town called Sweet Home. Yep, such a place exists in Oregon and it’s the sweet home of White’s Metal Detectors, one of the earliest manufacturers of metal detectors. Next to the factory and offices is a little museum full of things unearthed by the company’s metal detectors as well as some of their earliest models, which date back to the 1950s. The diverse assortment of treasures discovered with White’s instruments include items from a Spanish fleet that sank off the coast of Florida in the 1700s that were found by Ken White, president of the company as well as various coins, bullets, cannonballs, and bottles. Besides a personal tour of the museum (by appointment only of course), there is also a demonstration room and test garden. Personally, I’m not a fan of the device, just from my experience of flying, and once having to take every single thing out of my suitcase to be inspected because, you know, I really look like a danger to society. I actually take that back…I’m totally a danger to society in that I’m a bitch. Scan away!

(Image Source)

Sweet Home Oregon. Maybe Kid Rock could make that song for the ‘Gon?

Warning: squirrel nudity follows thisbelongsinamuseum: January...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 14:01:59 -0400

Warning: squirrel nudity follows

thisbelongsinamuseum:

January 21st is officially Squirrel Appreciation Day. In the basement of the Cress Funeral Home in Madison, Wisconsin, owner Sam Sanfillippo has a collection of taxidermy, specifically squirrel dioramas. We’ve seen this before on the blog. Dead animals arranged in ridiculous situations, like drinking at a bar or visiting a topless girlie show. I say do what makes you happy. I mean a funeral home is already full of dead things, so why not include a bit more?

There are also hundreds of other taxidermy including fish, raccoons, and at least a couple of badgers at Sam’s place. If you’d like to visit, just contact Cress Funeral home at 608-238-8406 to make an appointment (as long as there isn’t a funeral going on, Sam loves visitors).

(Image Sources)

"Deal" experiment: NYC to Cancun

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:53:00 -0400

I get worn out of deals coverage in travel. I think people often compromise their holidays by letting “deals” dictate where they go — often tired resorts with cynical staff and lesser beach spots.

So I just did a 10-minute experiment.

First Cancun deal advertised on TravelZoo: ends up being $619 per person from New York, for three days/four nights on a north-facing (less desirable) spot on the (less desirable) hotel zone beaches. Prices include flight, meals, drinks, room. I picked sample days of Sun May 12 to Thur May 16. That’s $1238 total, not including airport transfers, or much fun.

Can you beat it?

Well, JetBlue offers direct service to Cancun from JFK on those dates for $332 each, and gets you into Cancun at 10:17am. Direct bus from airport to Playa del Carmen in one hour for $10 (Playa’s busy, not Mexico’s greatest spot, but a more tasteful and ped-oriented beach scene).

I looked up a couple highly rated TripAdvisor B&Bs, and found one a few blocks from water, run by a young Italian couple, with three rooms for $40 to $50 per night. There’s a kitchen you can make breakfasts in, or pack lunches for the beach. By day, ferry to Cozumel for North America’s best snorkeling, or bus to Chichen Itza ruins (the resort charges $109 per person for that tour — it’s about a quarter that by bus).

You spend about the same, get a better experience, and an extra day away.

With another 10 minutes research, you can beat it be even more.

First airplane casualty

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:11:27 -0400

Lt Thomas Selfridge sits as Orville Wright cranks the propeller for the Wright Flyer demo on September 17, 1908. It crashed about 50 yards from the gate of the Arlington National Cemetery, where Selfridge would be buried a couple days later. Here’s some fascinating photos of the scene.

thisbelongsinamuseum: Because I’m a poor asshole, I usually...

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:27:49 -0400

thisbelongsinamuseum:

Because I’m a poor asshole, I usually cannot afford to go to a hair salon. I end up badly cutting my hair into uneven bangs or have my mom (a beauty school dropout) give me a trim. But if I lived in Le Havre, France and was a man I would totally go to Le Salon des Navigateurs where 76 year old barbershop owner, Daniel LeCompte, dresses as a sailor and curates a mini-museum dedicated to hairdressing techniques. The Sailors’ Salon, opened in 1960 in the Saint-François neighborhood of city, has a collection of objects related to sailing history (of course) and a hair-raising accumulation of barbershop objects and mementoes from LeCompte’s father, who also happened to be a hairdresser. Customers don’t seem to mind getting a haircut while sitting next to a mannequin, so props to them! And don’t worry…you don’t need to be a man with a desperate need for a shave or cut, LeCompte and his wife welcome all visitors and will show you around their museum for FREE!!! This is a perfect time for an awful hairdressers’ pun - “going to this museum is like a hairway to heaven.”

(Image Source 1, 2, 3)

I’d go even if I left with uneven bangs

Safer than the USA

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 14:43:06 -0400

Scared to leave the USA? Here’s a list of the 56 countries with a better “safety and security” rating than the US, according to this recent World Economic Forum report.

This was determined based on four factors: traffic accident rates; how terrorism, crime or violence affects business; and reliability of police.

Note how most of the former once-war-torn Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka (which just ended its long-going civil war) are ahead of the US.

Finland
Switzerland
Hong Kong
Iceland
Singapore
Netherlands
Austria
Sweden
New Zealand
Norway
Luxembourg
Ireland
Australia
Germany
Malta
Belgium
Taiwan
Canada
Portugal
Japan
Qatar
United Kingdom
Spain
Brunei
Estonia
Slovenia
Cyprus
Denmark
Bosnia & Herzegovina
Oman
Chile
Barbados
France
Uruguay
Sri Lanka
Mauritius
Armenia
Croatia
South Korea
Czech Republic
Hungary
Saudi Arabia
Macedonia
Italy
Montenegro
Israel
Kuwait
Poland
Bahrain
United Arab Emirates
Georgia
Azerbaijan
Latvia
Slovak Republic
Serbia
Lithuania
USA

"Besides selling banner displays and short ads that play before its videos, Vice offers its..."

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:15:20 -0400

“Besides selling banner displays and short ads that play before its videos, Vice offers its advertisers the option of funding an entire project in exchange for being listed as co-creator and having editorial input. Advertisers can pay for a single video, or, for a higher price—one to five million dollars for twelve episodes, according to Vice—they can pay for an entire series, on a topic that dovetails with the company’s image. (The North Face, the outdoors company, recently sponsored a series called “Far Out,” in which Vice staffers visit people living in “the most remote places on Earth.”)”

- The Vice Guide to the World

When I drove around the country for 10 weeks in 2011, it was during a road trip sponsored by Ford and Visa, almost two years before “native advertising” was printed in seemingly every other media story you were reading this week. The credit card company didn’t ask me to do a single thing during the project; Ford asked that we make a video inside an enormous production facility on the fringes of Chicago that, as reporters, we would have been prohibited from visiting. We were guided by minders to specific areas of the plant but we were never told what we were or were not allowed to shoot. Ford did not approve our final video or our final story.

A few weeks later, Ford asked us to contact a dealer in, as I recall, the Carolinas to set up another shoot. When I called the dealer and left a voicemail, he didn’t return my call. I took that as a sign that I was off the hook. I didn’t hear another word from Ford for the rest of the trip, even after I attempted to bake cookies on the engine block of their loaner vehicle while driving the Natchez Trace Parkway (failure) or after I warmed up some Pop Tarts on the engine block the morning of the final Space Shuttle launch (success). In multiple published photos, Stephen Greenwood, the videographer who was on the road with me, was standing on top of the vehicle, which is probably not in line with the stated marketing goals of the company. And yet, my phone didn’t ring.

Meanwhile, because we had the financial backing of two sponsors and, at this point, complete editorial freedom, we decided to do stories about a nascent art colony in small-town Kentucky, a community-minded T-shirt shop in New Orleans, the rebuilding of a tornado-ravaged town in Missouri, the weirdness of Marfa, Texas and a “spaceport” in the New Mexico desert. I also called South of the Border the country’s biggest tourist trap and pointed out that “lazy Mexican” is not an appropriate theme for a highway rest stop, a point with which some AOL readers took considerable umbrage.

In a post-mortem of the 10-week project, a business-side manager who helped broker the sales package recognized that we did a fantastic job hitting our deliverables, which were, both in his mind and on paper, a set amount of traffic from both viral clicks and placements on the front of AOL.com. Because of our story selection and execution, we hit the goals in five weeks, not the allotted 10, and I thought that was something worth bragging about. He disagreed: Couldn’t we get the same amount of clicks without sending people out on the road to create this kind of original content?
(via paulbrady)
I wish I could’ve tried those cookies

davidfarley: Like a Rock… (Zadar, Croatia) This is JUSTICE....

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 13:47:45 -0400

davidfarley:

Like a Rock…

(Zadar, Croatia)

This is JUSTICE. Considering Bob misspelled the Nepalese capital in a bad ’70s rock song.

This is a donkey.

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 13:11:48 -0400

This is a donkey.

10-year-old Lonely Planet wishlist

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:47:00 -0400

When an author gets approved to be a Lonely Planet writer, they submit a wishlist. I had forgotten most of what mine had, but just found it. It sort of cracks me up. Though I ended up getting much of what I asked for (the ones ~~crossed out~~ below).

USA: ~~Great Plains~~, Great Lakes, Texas, Deep South, San Fernando Valley of California, ~~New York State, New York City~~, Kentucky.
Canada: ~~Manitoba and Saskatchewan~~ especially, and also ~~Ontario, Alberta, Maritime Provinces,~~ Yukon Territory, ~~Quebec, Toronto.~~
Latin America: ~~Mexico~~ (particularly Northwest, Central North, ~~Chiapas~~ and the Highlands); ~~Central America~~, Paraguay (a dream!), Uruguay, Argentina, Bolivia, ~~Ecuador.~~
Europe: particularly anything with communist ties! Bielorussia, ~~Russia, Trans Siberian Railway, Romania~~, Moldova, Transdneister, Lithuania, Latvia, ~~Bulgaria~~, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Croatia, Albania. Also Greenland.
Asia: ~~Southeast Asia~~, Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Cambodia, Laos, China, Central Asia (particularly Kazakstan), India, Philippines, North Korea.

Hopefully I can get to Paraguay next!