Category Archives: traveling

The Danger of Using Stereotypes

I spent Thanksgiving with my wife’s family in Indiana. Some of these fine Midwestern folk enjoy slipping in a joke or two about my Tennessee roots. Apparently, Southerners are racist, drink moonshine, and have crucial gaps in their education. In both the historic and more contemporary meanings of the word, Southerners aren’t “classy.” I’ve run […]

Travel Hacking

Yesterday morning, I went down to the basement and brought up four photo albums containing all the pictures that I took during a semester abroad in autumn of 2002. After writing my last post about a miserable ride at Die Prater in Vienna, I couldn’t remember if I had captured the culprit, Extasy, on film. […]

Extasy at Die Prater

In the fall of 2002, I was living and studying in Vienna, Austria. Like good American tourists in a European city, my classmates and I sought out the sites and attractions that the Wieners—think “people living in Vienna,” not “hotdogs”—rarely visited. Think of a museum or park in your hometown. How many times have you […]

Dollywood – A Day in Pictures

This past Sunday, I went to Dollywood with my wife Megan, my parents, and my older sister and her family. Megan’s dad runs a non-profit production company, and he has performed a one-man show called “The Whittlin’ Man” for the past seven summers. Ash’s show is the best thing going at Dollywood, unless of course […]

Ordering Fondue in Antigua, Guatemala

Back in early summer of 2006, my friends Ryan and Lisa were getting married in Antigua, Guatemala. We traveled through and around Guatemala City, San Lucas, Panajachel, Lago de Atitlan, and Antigua on a school bus, and we had enough adventurous, brash, and impertinent people in our group to ensure all kinds of hilarity. After […]

Scoring my first soccer goal

Few of my athletic achievements are worth mentioning, which I’ve mentioned several times over the past few weeks. My room wasn’t cluttered with trophies, ribbons, and medals. My favorite trophy was one that my dad took home after catching a 210-pound Warsaw grouper during a fishing derby in Florida. I did have a small, unimpressive […]

Wild Joy and Deep Peace

This morning, I read a blog post by Chris Guillebeau about moments while traveling when he felt perfectly content. I know what he means, and you probably do too. Traveling gives me that feeling of being suspended within myself and yet also being very much in the moment. I finally breach that territory on the […]

Picture of a Non-Expert Traveler

The more we study these creatures, the better we will understand them. The better we understand, the greater the likelihood that we can beat them to the security check line.

Turks and Caicos Honeymoon: Luxury Adventure (Part 3)

I dug a spare trash bag out of the can in the kitchen, put ice in it, and dug some Advil out of Megan’s purse. We had arrived in paradise.

Turks and Caicos Honeymoon: Luxury Adventure (Part 2)

Was sharing this particular detail really a good idea? The customer service manual must not explain the difference between honesty and candor and their effects on hearers. The good news is that we didn’t die.