Random Thoughts on a Soggy Saturday

A soggy day; a day that I wished I didn't have to deal with all of my wet leaves. Then I go out and put together my cleverly designed, yet maddeningly frail outdoor tent. It had flown over in a fierce September gust of wind, now the thing is broken and the gay 10 x 10 tent's legs bow like an old cowboy's. Going to have to replace it for the New York Times and Boston Globe Travel shows where we are exhibiting in February. Drat!

Kate has invited 24, yes 24 tiny tots over to have a Halloween Party. Is it only me that feels very, very already sick of this holiday and wants no part in wearing a costume or greeting kids at the door? Go away!

The cafe always provides a refuge...and isn't it too cool to be able to order a tuna bacon lettuce and tomato and sit in my favorite window and try out another cup of Dave's Blend, the coffee we've just added to the menu. It's from our friend who owns Positronic Design, and holds the best parties Holyoke has ever been treated to. Thanks Dave!

Mama Cat Appreciation Day

I read a book about hobos that said they liked to keep puppies because they warm up their sleeping bags so well. Though my cat doesn't warm up the bottom of my bed, she does provide a valuable snuggle. Having her soft fur at hand level is a treat.

Having a cat in your bed is a luxury, it's better than a pillow or even a down comforter. This faithful pal stays the whole night too.

Strange Maps: A Free-form Cartographic Journey

I love maps. I spend a lot of time looking at them, and always enjoy taking a spin around the globe we keep at the cafe, seeing where places are and checking out their relative size.

I was sent a book the other day that is a map-lover's fantasy. Frank Jacobs has compiled a huge collection of what he calls Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic curiosities.

Among the maps I've enjoyed poring over is a map that goes way back to my childhood: L. Frank Baum's map of the Marvelous Land of Oz. I used to work out on Martha's Vineyard and I often thought of that place as much like Oz...there is the land of the Winkies, to the west, and Quadling Country to the South. In the very center is the Emerald City, and all around the square shaped mythical land are the great sands, impassable and deadly deserts.

This is a fun book to flip through, Jacobs has found so many old maps from so many points of view. Another page shows how Antarctica is divided up into 47 different slices, even little Togo gets a tiny slice and the USA gets the biggest (why is that?)

Jacobs has found other wonderful maps in this volume, like the 'island of California,' which goes back to a romantic novel written in 1510 that showed the Baja Peninsula attached to an island of California. Another page has an illustration of fifty different shapes drawn from memory by teenagers, who tried to replicate that unique shape of the United States. They somehow remind me of cows.

The Waitress Stiffened When the Tourist Spat Out the Meat

Sarah Wang recently spent four days in North Korea. Her account, published on Slate, is depressing, thinking that people have to live with little food, no internet, no cellphones, and a government that spends millions on propaganda and enforcing the cult of personality.

"While the guards ate their meals or watched the children's shows that were staged for us foreigners, I twice managed to wander into the streets and was able to explore for about 10 minutes each time. Once I walked into a grocery store on the ground floor of a residential building. The store was empty except for three 10-foot-tall heaps on the ground—one of cabbage, one of tomatoes, and one of turnips.

There were no price tags and no customers. A middle-aged woman in a black uniform stood behind the counter, which held small piles of peanuts and pine seeds that looked as though they had been there for a long time.

Our guides repeatedly reassured us that the people had enough food and that each Pyongyang resident receives a ration of vegetables and rice every day. They didn't mention meat or fruit. When a member of the tour group spat out the tasteless meat that was a rare treat at one of our meals, the waitress standing behind him visibly stiffened.

On one occasion, I drew a banana on a piece of paper and showed it to a waitress; she had never seen one. She knew about apples, but she had never eaten one. I brought 150 Kit-Kat bars into the country, and I always took several out of my bag when I was alone with a North Korean. They would hesitate for a few seconds, look around to make sure that no one else was watching, and then stuff the Kit-Kats into their pockets.

Yahoo to GeoCities: Drop Dead!

The web continues to mystify and amaze me. Just today I read that Yahoo is shutting down Geocities, even though the network of websites attracts more than ten million visitors a month. And the company paid billions in stock to buy the site in early 1999. On today's WebProNews, the story was told with incredulity.

Chris Crum speculated as to what the reaction would be if, say Facebook or Twitter were acquired and then suddenly shut down. "Sure these things seem unlikely now because these services are still fresh. Well GeoCities was once the "it" thing too."

If you were still a loyal GeoCities user, how would you feel to know that you've got to move, or you'll disappear from the web? Yahoo pitched them on their own cheap web-hosting, but there are other mysteries here. For example, about a third of the referrals that bring people to GeoCities comes from Yahoo's arch rival, Google.

"Yahoo seems to be turning its back on a large amount of traffic. Moreover, it's turning down free traffic from its biggest competitor." I've never thought the people at Yahoo were very smart. Especially when they couldn't agree to take $33 a share from Microsoft and then sank down to about $12, and now are barely breaking $17.

"It was perhaps the first mainstream example of an open, participatory and personal Internet," writes Mark Milian with the LA Times. In early 1999, Yahoo purchased Geocities for about $3.57 billion in stock. Now a decade later, Geocities is no more.

Venice Adventures Are Fine Without Me

As I often do, last night in the dark I reached for my iPhone and flicked the screen to bring up my Facebook newsfeed. With friends in all time zones, I always find some news popping up and as I lay in bed I read Richard Frisbie's reports from Venice. I was scheduled to be on that trip but I found a friend to fill in, and I couldn't be happier.

That's a funny sort of quandry that frequent travelers go through. Getting out of a free trip to Venice? Hell yeah, I needed to get off the traveling roller coaster. Travel is all about the adventure, and the feeling that it's time to fly. Sometimes, after you've just returned from a big trip, or feel the need to be close to home, it's just not that time. I will never forget that feeling while I was trying to get to sleep in that tent in the desert of Chile....I had to get off the coaster.

So now I'll read Cathie Arquilla's blog about the trip to Venice, and read Frisbie's FB updates and there won't be a bone in my body that would make me wish I was there. But in the middle of November Cindy and I will take off on our own adventure to New Zealand's South Island. By that time I'll be ready to fly, with relish.

When Yóu're a Web Publisher, You've Gotta Bonk

In our business, we call it bonking. We repetitively copy and paste pieces of text, photos and links from one page to template pages to fix our code and update the GoNOMAD website. Cultivating this vast field of travel articles takes a lot of work, a lot of bonking, over and over again. You've got to go back, then go back, and do it and redo it, and the work is endless...there are so many pages to fix.

It is this spade work, this time-consuming movement of text and the rest to create new pages, is our lifeblood. The unglamorous work that if you gave it to someone else to do, it would cost too much and you wouldn't be able to finish it. But that's why we teach people to do this and do so much of it ourselves.

So today, we both hit the keys and bonked our hearts out.

In Sad Atlantic City, Hope Is a Losing Bet

I remember when my parents took my little sister and me to Atlantic City in 1970. That was eight years before the city's first casino, Resorts, opened and singer Steve Lawrence lost the first $10 to the house. Back then the hotel of choice was the oceanfront Chalfont-Hadden Hall, and we stayed in and ordered room service. The waiter complained to my dad that his tip wasn't big enough, and outside a cold February rain made the next day a drizzly bummer.

I read in today's NY Times about the 'death spiral' that one casino executive calls the city in 2009. The only tiny bright spot is that the Borgata, which opened in 2003 was only 5% down this year. The other casinos saw declines in revenue of between 13 and 24%. In Vegas, it's bad too, but Atlantic City presents an even more depressing picture of empty weekday hotel rooms and endless rows of empty slot machines.

The state relies heavily on the gambling tax, but another sad fact is that this money, while dwindling, goes to fund many other projects in wealthier parts of the state. The city itself is a dangerous place, once when I was there I was advised, strongly, not to ever leave the boardwalk. A community theater in Morristown got gambling tax funds that many in AC believe should have been spent to tear down empty tenements.

Everyone in the story is hoping for a happy ending, but with the expansion of gambling now to metro New York, and even possibly to Palmer Massachusetts, it seems to me that this pie is getting sliced too thin. The Revel Casino, the one project still under construction in AC is short a mere billion dollars....if they can get this, they might be able to actually open it up.

If Your Kid Needs Medicine, You Find the Dough

I just finished a movie that makes me scratch my head and say...what the heck? I do love digging into the deep, deep long tail that Netflix has to offer, but sometimes I pull up a dud..as Cindy often loves to remind me.

This film is called "Explicit Ills," and was written and directed by Mark Webber. It follows five separate stories all in the South Philadelphia ghetto. We have a young guy on a bike who sells weed; we have a health nut black guy who wants to convince a rich white woman to get his colonics and lend him money to open a store; we've got the sad little 9-year old who is beaten up by a bad older boy at school and charms him by handing him a new pair of Nikes in his size.

But then we have the wife of the health nut, who rolls up a giant spliff into a cigar wrapper and tokes deeply before teaching a yoga class. She explains to her youngster that to her, the weed is like a religion, and it helps her to get into the mood to deeply enjoy yoga. But he shouldn't smoke it, no way. He said he doesn't want to anyway.

Another scene involving weed has a dainty white girl slamming down a bong hit and then realizing she has to go to work at a law firm, and 'is really stoned.' She stumbles out of the ghetto and into the financial district buzz in tow.

But at the end, I found the film's message frustrating. A woman whose son has an asthma attack is hospitalized (for free) and then she is told at the pharmacy that the drugs cost $52, unless she has insurance. She curses the CVS clerk, and leaves the store empty handed. The poor kid dies the next morning...but Jesus, I mean who wouldn't go out and get that $52 to just pay for the medicine? Instead she blames 'the system' and we're all supposed to cheer on the marchers who later declare they all want health care. Now.

Hey I want health care too, but I pay for it and the least she could have done was to fork over the dough and save her beloved son's life.

A Rainy Saturday: A Perfect Day for the Dump

Don't rainy Saturdays make you feel productive? That's what they do to me. I'm up and full of ideas on what good things I can accomplish that I've been meaning to get done for months. For the first time in recent memory, both my daughter and my son-in-law are home on this good Saturday, and the house is undergoing various stages of long-overdue cleaning.

Later today I'll drive down to the bachelor farmer at the end of our street and pick up a few cords of wood to stash in our woodshed for the cold that's coming.

Last night we watched a movie that was about a woman who gets sent away to prison for stealing and doing drugs, called "Sherry Baby." The child she left as an infant has grown up and her good hearted brother and his wife have taken her in. A sad scene was when they tell the little one to call her Sherry, not mom, since it's all so confusing. It was another rare experience, watching one of dad's weird Netflix choices, on a rare weekend night in Deerfield.

Hidden Tech Party Brings the Geeks to the Cafe

It's not a major birthday year but hey, it does only come around once. Today I'm fifty-one. Wow, it was just last year that we had the major party that every red-blooded American man deserves....but this year no big plans, just a bunch of computer geeks who are coming to the cafe tonight for the Hidden Tech Sip and Schmooze.

This group is comprised of people who make their livings at home. They don't have an office to go to, they're known as our 'hidden tech' community. I began having these parties to bring these folks out of their home offices and into the social limelight a few years ago. Since most of the meetings of the group involve aspects of work, I've emphasized that this is just for fun. The turnout is usually decent.

The cafe looks great with candles lit, dimmed lights, white tablecloths, and the gentle clink of wine glasses mixed with the tingle of jazz on the hifi. I just got the call that I get every year from the parents, wondering about what my plans are for the special day. It's always nice to be connected.

South Deerfield Village Center

Writing's Done, for Today Anyway

Random notes on the life of an editor, blogger and cafe owner.

Phew! I got my homework assignment done. That's a little what it felt like as I finished off my report from the National Parking Association meeting I attended in Washington last week. I provide lots of quotes, lots of details, and still, I always think it's not good enough, or that I should rewrite it. But a lot of writing, I find, is better than you think it will be... and sometimes it just comes out perfectly the first run through.

I had to reel in one of our most prolific writers, bring him back to home turf for a moment to catch his breath. And write a bunch of stories! I think he'll be glad when he's caught up.

Today in the office we have Esha, who is monetizing our entire books section and pushing us further along into other affiliate programs to make additional revenues from our pages.

In Nigeria, Companies Are Thinking Before they Flare

You might know the term to flare off from when you drove the New Jersey Turnpike as a kid and asked a grown-up what those fires on top of the tall smokestacks were. You were told it was natural gas burning off from an oil well.

In Nigeria, flares have much more than a scientific interest...and stopping oil companies from doing it is becoming an increasingly loud call. A story by Benoit Faucon in today's WSJ surmised that besides the environmental benefits, there are more tangible domestic benefits. For instance, in some communities oil companies have piped the excess natural gas to other plants to generate electricity for the towns surrounding the oil fields. By proving electricity in a power-starved nation, one that's prone to violence against oil companies, this is just a good business move.

Again and again, pipelines, oil wells and other infrastructure is vandalized and workers are hassled by rebels who protest against the companies. Helping local towns to benefit from being near the oil fields has made Bonny Island a model, unlike in most parts of the country they provide power for 95% of the day or night. Other projects aim to do the same as in Bonny, to pipe off that natural gas that would normally be burned for nothing, into running turbines that would help power Nigerian households.

Stopping flaring and using the gas is a topic that's come up before in Nigeria. But the violence of more recent years is pushing hard and the solution appears to be stop wasting gas and build plants to burn it to electify the angry neighbors.

Be Very Glad Your House Isn't Built with Chinese Drywall

How would you like to be Alfonso Sanchez? He's the unlucky owner of a $1.7 million home in Davie Florida that he can neither rent nor sell. And the last thing he wants to do is live there. Why? Chinese drywall. Sanchez is just one of the more than 1500 American homeowners who are unfortunate enough to live in houses where the builders saved money by using cheaper drywall imported from China...that turns out to emit sulfide fumes suspected of making people sick.

How does this happen? The story in yesterday's WSJ didn't make this clear. What they do know is that in 2006-2007, after the hurricanes in the US, there wasn't enough domestically produced drywall to go around. So companies in China filled in the gap.

Consumer safety officials are trying to get the Chinese to help pay for the damage, which is estimated to be between $15 and 25 billion. Good luck with that. You may remember how much luck we had getting Chinese repayment for people injured by toxic toys. The best they can hope for is that they can stop the imports at the border.

A Towncar Whisked Me Back Home

Last night a towncar whisked me away from the Ritz Carlton at Battery Park, one of New York's finest hotels, right on the tip of Manhattan. Before the car came I went out on the terrace and drank in the million dollar view, a sweep that including a dark Statue of Liberty and the buildings of Hoboken, with speedy ferries zipping between the New Jersey coast and the port at the end of the city.

I was there at the top floor of the hotel to join Travel Ad Network's staff after finishing a day-long publisher's conference with the agency. Over the years I've spent as a web publisher, one thing has become the clearest: face time means a lot and relationships are still the glue that holds things all together.

Many websites only offer a sterile comment box if you want to reach them. They hide behind their html and act like they're not run by people but by robots who can only answer you if you dutifully type messages into a box. Not us. We feature phones, photos of our building and answer you like real people. The Travel Ad people too, are humans who I can call up and speak to, they're not like Google ad sense where the only way to reach them is by email.

As the towncar took us up to Westchester and we sank into the soft leather seats, closing our eyes after a night of schmoozing, I felt content, and happy that I made this trip down to New York, and happy too, to be returning to my New England village.

Manhattan in the Rain Yields a Story About Google

I went down to lower Manhattan in the rain. I joined fellow members of the internet travel advertising world at a meeting....one of the speakers was a shy Indian named Gokul Rajaram, the CEO of Chai Labs. They are developing a new platform from which readers can shop for hotels in thousands of places around the world.

He said that when he worked at Google helping them develop their ad sense program, in the companies younger days, an offer was made to the two founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

Someone offered them $15 million if they'd put their logo beside the Google logo on their home page for one day. That was a sizeable sum back in those days, but it wasn't even considered. His message from this was to remember your users. Their satisfaction is what really matters.

He also pointed to how Googlers are encouraged to set their own goals each week, rather than having the boss set it. If you predict the score, you're much more likely to carry it through to the goal.

It's Family TV Time, Watching All Together

When I was a young lad, one of my fondest memories was watching television with my whole family on Sunday nights. We had an old family friend, a bachelor named Fairfield Day, who used to visit us sometimes and join us on those cozy Sundays when we watched "Gentle Ben" and other shows while gathered together by the fire.

Today everybody has their own TVs in their rooms, and rare is the night when a family gathers together in this sort of communal way. Well, there is the Superbowl, but that central hearth, that communal viewing, is rare and that's a shame. Being together like this makes TV more fun.

I drove down to our friends Cathy and Tom's house in Westchester and tonight I joined their family to watch a TV show called "Modern Family." It's a clever and sarcastic send up of a truly modern family --with a gay son, a dad with a bodacious young wife, a crazy jealous former wife, and a younger generation brimming with hormones. We watched the show and laughed together, and it reminded me of those times as a youngster when I did the same. Except this time, I was Fairfield Day, the visiting bachelor joining the family around the tube.

The King of Parking in China Offers Us Cake

Lui Ju is a parking magnate from Beijing. He is known to his American friends as 'Tom," and speaks through an interpreter. He addressed the lunchtime audience at the National Parking Association yesterday in Mandarin with an invitation: 'reap the bounty of China's 'money machine.'

"Someone who had been to America told me that a parking lot is like a money machine. China has experienced economic growth averaging 9.8 percent every year since 1978, and today is the world's third largest market. We have two trillion in foreign currency reserves. So far 300 of the world's top 500 companies have invested in China."

But their parking industry is like a child wearing an infant's clothes, Ju told us. There is obsolete parking management, insufficient parking spaces, and only about 60% of the parking that is needed for the growing number of cars, which reached 9.4 million this year.

"It's a very big cake," he told the parking executives, a huge opportunity. His company, Kingdy Parking, owns 150 lots, including handling parking for Beijing Airport. They're even expanding into Southern California starting next year. He said that by 2012 there will be 110 million cars looking for parking all over China, at $1.50 a day each, which adds up to a $60 billion windfall.

There's a new machine of money in China--and it's Kingdy Parking.

Pickens Talks About Converting Trucks to Natural Gas

"The best time to plant a tree is 2o years ago," said T. Boone Pickens today, as he sat on stage and talked about his ambitious plans to radically change the energy policy of the US as soon as he can. "You've gotta have a plan...and so far we don't have one."

His plan starts in a logical place, and it's incorporated into House Bill No. 1622. "This would require all 18-wheeler trucks to run on natural gas. This would cut out 2.5 million barrels of oil a day, and we get about 5 million from Saudi Arabia. So it's a pretty good start." Not to mention the effect on emissions, if nearly all of the country's 6 million big trucks ran on clean natural gas, it could clear the air in many cities. "In Los Angeles, they did it with their garbage trucks," Pickens told me. "They switched the trucks one by one, as they needed to be replaced, to run on natural gas, and it's done a lot to improve LA's air quality."

I asked Pickens what he thought the trucking lobby would say about his idea for them to spend all of this money on replacing existing technology. "I sat with JB Hunt, Swift and the Wal-Mart people," he answered. "The president of JB Hunt said he hated our foreign oil habit as much as I do. They don't want to support our dependence on it either."

Pickens is also the developer of the world's largest wind energy facility, although it's been pushed back til 2011. His order for more than 650 GE wind turbines is the biggest in the company's history, but he can't locate them where he originally wanted to, in the Texas panhandle, because the transmission lines are not yet in place. "What will you do with them when you get them?" I asked, remembering his famous quote in the Wall St. Journal that he'd 'put them in the garage.'

"We'll put them up somewhere, in the mid-west or another area," he said. And I fully believe that both his natural gas and his wind program are going to change the energy landscape. You don't become a billionaire without a lot of smarts...Pickens is the real deal.

A Classic Fall Day...And a Busy Travel Week Ahead

What a lovely Fall day in New England. Outside, the air is crisp, about 59 degrees, and leaves are blowing around the yard, beautiful patches of orange, red and yellow. I'm cozy wearing a new 'shirt jacket' that my parents gave me for my birthday, and Cindy is by my side happily playing Scrabble on her iphone with her California sister.

Last night we broke out the firepit....that roaring fire again brought out conversation and intimacy. But this time since it was a month later into Fall, our backs were a bit colder and we didn't stay out there as long, despite the towering flames I coaxed out of that metal box.

On Monday I'll fly down to Washington DC, actually to a conference center in Maryland just across the Potomac called Gaylord Center. There I will spend two days schmoozing with members of the National Parking Association. Hey it's my consulting gig and they want me to be there. Then I'll return and go down to New York on Weds night to meet with Travel Ad Network honchos who are having their annual publisher's conference.

Last year I didn't attend and felt a bit of their wrath. I think it's good to get as much face time as we can with people who make money for us...and I'm sure I'll meet some interesting travel publishers with their own clever stories to tell.

Joseph F. Shea, Come On Down!

WOW! Life throws you some amazing curveballs! Just a few minutes ago, a grey haired man wearing a bowtie knocked on my office door. "Come in, come in," I said, not sure who exactly it was there. He greeted me that familiar conspiratorial smile, and came up to me, he being still taller and beefier than I. Wow it was a guy I hadn't seen for decades.

"Joe Shea! Wow, it's great to see you," was all I could stammer. Joe and I spent my senior year of prep school as solid buddies, despite the large number of people around us, we choose to hang together. I thought he was the smartest guy I ever knew. I still do.

We all have those people who over the decades are lost. We have those people who we have searched for, have vague memories of seeing maybe once after high school, but for the most part they are out of your life and you no longer try to find out where they've gone. Joe was not very social when he was in school. We used to drive around in an old truck he somehow was able to keep for our use while we were at NMH. He eventually was spotted. He was a great friend and he was a highlight of my senior year at NMH.

Joe went to Pitzer and then to Pittsburgh for a PhD in philosophy. Then he decided he wanted to be a lawyer so he went to Harvard law. Now he's a partner at Nutter McClennen & Fish, where he's won accolades as a Super Lawyer. He was always eccentric and I envied him for all the great books that he had read. He read everything that I wish I had read.

I am so glad that he decided to come to say hello, and glad to be back in touch with an old friend, and if his son attends NMH like my daughter did, well we might be seeing more of each other next year.

Why Make the Player When You Can Be It?

I found a story from Wired magazine in my FB feed that impressed me. Reed Hastings is the CEO of Netflix, and back in 2007, the company was excited about launching a new consumer product. The company isn't in the hardware business, they were going to bring out a paperback-book-sized player that people could buy and hook up to their TVs or PCs to stream movies.

But just as the company reviewed ad campaigns and held focus groups, and were about to launch it, Hastings abruptly convened a meeting in Netflix Los Gatos conference room and declared the player dead. No, they would not sell it. Instead, Hastings idea was that they would build software that would allow other more widely sold devices to play Netflix movies.

By giving up their own player at the eleventh hour, Hastings assured the even quicker eventual death of cable, the article asserts. Because now two years later, you can find Netflix-enabled Sony TVs, some set-top boxes and every Microsoft Xbox 360 machine. Oh, and you can still buy the machine that would have been branded the Netflix Player. It's sold by a company called Roku, that was spun off as a separate company.

The story explains that the literal name of the company is their real objective, delivering movies to more and more people on line...as opposed to 'dvdsbymail' which is what they're making money doing now.

Summer's Gone

The Internet Biz, Explained

The rough and tumble of internet business marketing 2.0 is that it's fluid....it varies...and in most cases, you have to live on dimes and nickels instead of $10s and $20s. Today, for example, I have to decide on a few new options for our affiliate links, review proposals for creating our iphone application, send out the newsletter to our 14,000 member list, and fix code errors that are cropping up on GoNOMAD.

This business can be managed from anywhere, but the sales piece comes from other devices. Today I fed stories into a form on a company website. Offering him his space on these articles about destinations, like Italy or Denver Colorado or Cape Cod Massachusetts. These travel articles, which we've created each tells a story about a place. These pages are where we can plant our garden of ads.

So here is where our rubber meets the road.

I am going to a trade show outside of Washington DC next week, so I'll post my thoughts about the people I meet there and update you to the topic then. But after that I'm not scheduled to leave until November 23.

Sharks Fight Over College Course Notes Company

Tonight's Shark Tank show didn't disappoint. The interesting thing tonight was how many ideas they just fought over like, well, the sharks that they are. We got to see a lot of fighting over who will invest in the first idea. That would be a website where college kids and buy and sell notes for their courses. The two fresh-faced collegians had sold this like crazy at Arizona State and Kansas University, so they walked out with $150K and a real estate mogul to help fund them.

The grumpy bald guy Kevin O'Leary, who nobody really likes, lost out to mothery Barbara, who founded Corcoran Real Estate in Manhattan. She won the next one too, a deal to fund a company that makes plush animals with hidden storage spaces inside them.

I tried to get their attention to get funding for GoNOMAD by going on this show. I got a form letter email but nothing more. Now up? Manufacturers of designer belt buckles, for high-end boutiques and celebrities. This guy valued his nascent company at two million bucks, he would regret that at the end of the night.

It's Great to be Gone, It's Better To Be Home!

I'm happy to be back to the business I love. I haven't felt this happy to be home in a long time. I think travel makes you forget how comforting it is to be sleeping in a familiar bed, next to a familiar cat, or a familiar partner. Hotel rooms, no matter how plush or how many stars, just aren't as nice as your own bed.

People in our business commiserate about this often: Travel isn't as glamourous or as much fun as people who don't travel much think it is. The fun part is the excitement of going, that rush of anticipation when you're about to board a night flight. There are exhilarating moments when as a journalist you are given the chance to do things like paraglide off a cliff, or spend a few moments in the absolute quiet of a New Zealand river after the speedboat is turned off, listening to the birds and seeing the sparkle of the water.

But the contrast is with the drudgery of travel: the dirty clothes in the suitcase, the wake-up calls that are way too early; the endless bus/ferry/plane travel that goes along with seeing a vast country in just a short week. Hey, don't get me wrong, no traveler goes looking for sympathy. It's just that after a while it's damn nice to NOT have any place to go...for a while anyway.

Sally Hartshorne Is Tributed Beautifully

I joined a group of friends and relatives and spent 90 minutes this afternoon learning many things about my aunt Sarah Hartshorne, who passed away last month. I was moved, I cried, I laughed, and like everyone in the room, I was deeply affected by the thoughts shared and the loss we all realized after she was gone.

One by one her sons spoke of her caring, her generosity, her love of books, and especially, her love of them. Younger women spoke of the bonds they had formed as couples with Bob and Sally, and the many good times they had shared. Sally brought younger people into her fold and their lives were enriched by socializing with her academic colleagues. She lived a long time, and the friendships they fostered lasted decade after decade. They built up really substantial bonds and at her funeral, we heard from many people who had loved her.

There was a beauty, a poise, and a feeling in that church today that we had all been lucky to have known Sally, and to have been a part of her life. To a person, as we listened to Paul's tearful recollection of some of her last days, and sang together, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, we came together, we all cried as one.

Sally, at age 80, with advanced dementia, was perhaps one of the people who had already met and dealt with death, and her passing away, after being in a coma, had happened several years before. This tribute brought her best qualities into shining, glorious focus, and we were enriched to learn about her life through her friends.

SATW: Good Riddance!

For years I've been on trips with travel writers who include "Active SATW" in their email signatures. This stands for the Society of American Travel Writers, a very old association of travel writers that likes to think of itself as the be all and end all in travel writing. Being a member of this group, which costs $250 a year, supposedly honors you and gives you great credibility among your peers. Many of these writers have told me I should join.

I just got my third and final rejection letter from their president, Bea Broda. The letter informed me that although at first they rejected me (and GoNOMAD) for membership based on their belief that we had less than 25,000 monthly visitors, which is 10 times too low, now comes their final decree: "we found cause to deny it based on documented past conduct not in keeping with the Society's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility." Harrumph!

Ms. Broda didn't bother to explain exactly what this offense consists of, just that they've decided I am not worthy, and my phone call to her went unanswered. From all reports, SATW's membership is mostly print journalists, many of them retired, and many of whom who rarely even write about travel any more. I've heard stories of retired Travel Editors who love to go to their meetings all over the world and then don't bother to write about the destination. They have chapter presidents whose job it is to bug the travel writers to actually contribute articles about the host destinations. Many don't care and are in it to hang with their buddies at the meetings.

I'm sorry SATW, that I won't be able to join your esteemed ranks. Sorry that we earn a living from travel, employ eight people, have made money over the past ten years and aren't in any danger of going out of business. Sorry that unlike so many print publications, we're not cutting our travel coverage, firing our staff, and cutting our budget. Sorry that we are not in danger of extinction as most of the member's own newspapers and magazines are.

No, we just publish great travel writing, send writers out on stories all over the world, are recognized by the New York Times, Arthur Frommer, The Travel Channel and nearly every one else for quality, responsibility and reputation. I'm glad I won't be contributing any dues to a ridiculously clueless bunch like SATW.

Paragliding over Iquique, September 2009

We took off with a run, my pilot behind me and me with a seat strapped to my arse, ran, ran ran until the cliff gave way to nothing...and then we floated, twirled and gently sunk down to land on the beach just below. Altazor de Volar takes you there.