Planning a trip is half the fun. I am not an overly zealous planner, but I do enjoy knowing where I am staying and how I am getting somewhere. I am currently in the process of preparing to travel throughout the world next fall and I am running into some difficulties that I have not experienced before.

Visas: Americans are lucky in terms of visas. We can go virtually anywhere in the world and wave the flag as we walk through customs while the poor citizens of everywhere else stand in line to be strip searched and interrogated. There are a few countries I am heading to next fall that require a visa: India, China, and Brazil. The price for a two week visa in those countries, nearly 500 dollars.

Baggage: What do I do with all the stuff I buy? I am going on a four month long trip and the airlines are all switching to a 1 checked bad limit on domestic flights. I have, for now, solved this problem by deciding to take two empty bags with me and only enough clothes to get by until I can make it to China (three weeks after the Olympics). If everything goes as planned I will be dressed from head to toe in Beijing 2008 gear for the better part of 2008. I assume I will get a good deal but who knows.

Vaccinations: I truly do not want to die. With this in mind, I have decided to get vaccinated against nearly every disease possible. In the last week I have had Yellow fever, malaria, Hepatitis A, Polio, whooping cough, tetanus, typhoid fever and what ever else the doctor decided to inject me with while I was not looking. My arm hurts.

There are lots of difficulties that come along with travel. If it were easy everyone would do it. The truth of it is, going anywhere that you are not accustomed with is hard and maybe not even fun. Seeing new people and culture is why you go, not to have fun. In retrospect every trip was a good time, yet, in the situation feelings of being an outsider and confusion are the only things you feel. The planning is difficult, and I am sure the trip will take me outside my comfort zone, yet, it is just that experience I am seeking.

Going somewhere is kind of like mowing the yard when you are a kid. You don’t always want to do it, but you do. You can never get the mower started and it seems like half of the time is spent getting ready to mow. Mowing is hard, hot, and there are bugs. When its all over though there is a glass of lemonade at the end and a nap to be taken.

Truckers are an interesting bread of people. There is no set persona for being a truckers but in my experience you can usually pick out a few characteristics that define them all. After I graduated from high school I had the opportunity to ride with my friend Justin and his cousin (the truck driver) to Maine and back. I had nothing going on so I accepted the invitation and we were on the road.

First of all it is worth mentioning that a semi is built for two people to ride; having three means someone is constantly laying in the bed behind the cab. I discovered that was going to be my post on the trip. Not many people can truthfully say they slept on a drive from Wisconsin to Maine, I’m sadly one of the few who can.

While I did sleep a good amount of the trip, I was able to inundate myself within the trucker community for some pieces of the trip. I remember getting home and my mom asking me what truckers were really like, I specifically remember responding “Not as messed up as Joyride or Road House and not as fun as Convoy or Smokey and the Bandit”. To this day that is as good as I can come up with.

I remember on one specific instance running into a group of truckers who were debating inside a truck stop café in Ohio. The topic was politics and I was pleased, being a politically savvy person myself. We sat down at the counter and ordered coffee when I began to listen in to what was being said. Expecting the discussion to be focused on a recent topic, I was surprised to here them debating the Presidential election…in 2000. One gentleman commented that “Gore would have just let the faggots run wild,” where another man defended the former Vice President of the United States when he remarked that “Bush is letting them go at it anyway”. A strong defense on Gore’s behalf. When the discussion turned to war one man began to comment that the United States had been attacked by “commie Muslims” a faction of the Islamic religion I did not know existed. Another spoke up and said “whether you believe in the War or not, Iraq had to pay for what they’d done”.

I don’t believe all truckers are dumb. The one driving my truck seemed to have gotten us from point A to point B with little difficulty. What scares me about the whole situation is that at the end of the trip I came to the conclusion that I trusted this faction of the population to deliver my bananas and auto parts….I just don’t want them to vote.

Every time I am abroad I end up explaining the difference between America and Americans to some anti-American drunk at a pub. I enjoy doing so, yet, before this trip I really had no clue what I was talking about.

Growing up in Wisconsin is an interesting experience. Often children emerge from their upbringing with a strong work ethic, a sense of honesty, pride, and if lucky, an unaccented voice. Another byproduct of a typical Wisconsin upbringing seems to be family vacations. Unlike the vacations of others in the country, it appears as if nearly every Wisconsin family embarks on two pilgrimages: Disney World and the Black Hills.
The two places couldn’t be farther apart in location or substance; yet, like the millions of Muslims who embark on hajj to Mecca every year, the Wisconsin family loads up the car annually to visit a staple of their culture while rolling down the interstate in the tire marks of our forefathers.
Growing up it seemed that everyone I knew had embarked on one of these journeys, if not both. I knew my time would come but at the age of 12 I was beginning to wonder if my Illinois heritage would take over the Wisconsin urge to travel to the most worthless of places. My fears were unfounded and in the summer between my 6th and 7th grade years my family decided to visit the Black Hills of the Dakotas. People often ask what is in the Black Hills and the answer is simply…nothing. Nothing at all. This coming from a person who is in love with nature and serenity; the rocks, water, and sand often provide more joy to me in travel then do the people I meet or the commercialized places I visit. Still, there is nothing. In case you haven’t made the excursion yourself a typical trip would go something like this:

Day 1: Leave
Day 2 and 3: Drive through Minnesota (stop at Mall of America if lucky)
Day 4 and 5: Visit Mount Rushmore and Wall Drug
Day 6 and 7: End up lost in Montana
Day 7- on: Try to get home

There is no lesson to be learned or messaged to be gained from this post, there is simply nothing to do. I remember vividly sitting in the car for hours on end listening to the radio (until reception ran out in South Dakota). Mount Rushmore looks exactly as you might imagine it and unless you have a resounding urge to buy an overpriced t-shirt or shot glass with the landmark on it, there is really no reason to go.

After our two weeks of fun and excitement in the West, my family never did go to Disney World. Of course I was depressed but other stuff came along and I went other places. Finally last year, at the age of 20, I had the chance to visit my lost childhood dream of castles and fairy tales. I went down to Florida with some friends and we decided to go to Disney for a day. Not really interested anymore in the place, I spent an hour or so walking around the parking lot and what I saw didn’t surprise me at all. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Indiana: all Midwest plates and every car was full of luggage and coolers. Nothing had changed.

Maybe the families of the Midwest feel a need to educate their children on the many people and cultures of our country. Or possibly people actually want to visit Disney World and the Hills of the west. I don’t know. Yet, I believe that a long time ago in Wisconsin a man stood up and said (probably sometime in December) “I’m cold, were going to Florida as soon as the snow melts”. A man on the other side of the street probably said something similar but decided to visit the west instead. Keeping up with the Jones, the next year everyone went to one of the two locations until someone went to both, then of course everyone had to. I believe the rest is history.

Let us make it the call of our generation to change vacation destinations. To where? Who knows. Anywhere but the Hills or Disney will do.

I love meeting new people. Sure, there are lots of people around the world who are mean, unfriendly, or the worst, stupid; but I love new people. Humans, in general, have a unique ability to gauge each other for likable and unlikeable characteristics within minutes of meeting, and it is that ability that has made me some great friends and kept me out of some bad situations. I was in Maine two years ago camping with four of my friends who were more interested in drinking. I, of course, was not opposed to the occasional drink so we stopped into a bar on the first night we were there and sat down for a beer. I, being 19 at the time, was slightly worried but my hesitance was unfounded and we were served promptly. I started talking to this kid who looked, acted, and talked similar to me, another trait of human behavior. I was telling him why we were there and what our plans were when he suggested that he come along with us because he knew the country well. At this point, I could find nothing wrong with this person: he seemed smart, educated, and fun. I was fine with it and so was everyone else, so we were off.

We were planning to be out for around 8 days but had no definite plans. We packed the food, sleeping bags and any other items we could fit in our packs and we were off. My new friend, Jake, packed very light. I saw this as a sign that he knew what he was doing and knew just exactly what to take, I was wrong. On a camping trip that I had been preparing for nearly a year, I, at the last minute decided to bring along someone who was supposed to be knowledgeable of the area. This is a list of things that Jake “forgot” to bring:

Clothes
Water Bottle
Food
Bug Spray
Socks
Extra Shoes
Sunscreen
Toilet Paper

In fact, Jake saw himself to be such a great woodsman that he was going to forage for food. I knew it was a dumb idea, but I stopped caring and let him go. Jake returned to camp a few hours later with hundreds of red berries that he called “strawberries”. I, not being stupid, knew that these were not strawberries but again, I didn’t care, and let him eat them.

The 7 mile hike back to the car would have been fine if it were not 3 AM. The drive to the hospital took only 2 hours, mostly, because Jake didn’t know exactly where it was. Sparing a great deal of detail, Jake had eaten some sort of poisonous berry and had developed 5 ulcers (burned holes) in his stomach.

Meeting new people is a great experience but don’t always trust them. Someone may act like you, look like you, and nearly be you, but that could still be a poisonous berry eating, ill prepared survivalist, crazy nut.

So I was naked, standing at the top of the tallest mountain in Colorado, when a middle aged man and his wife walk up from behind me.

There are those situations in life that come about and you say to yourself, “wow, this will be a great story,” this was one of those times. Great stories come about not because of great situations or feats, but irreplaceable moments. This you cannot, nor will I try to replicate.

We had been climbing for 25 day straight when we decided that we would hit one last resupply and attempt climbing Mount Elbert . Myself, Tyler, Nate, and Rebecca, my climbing partners at the time, had been pushed before, but this attempt would kill our bodies. We were in the Holy Cross range in the San Isabel national forest in Southwest Colorado, some 38 miles from the base of Elbert, not taking into account the 14,500 feet to the top. Our packs were heavy with food, clothing and gear, but mostly food. In the mountains hunger is death. Of course you can live a week or so without food, but you sure as hell cannot carry a 80 pound pack that week. Without a constant stock of food to your body, your pace slows and your energy plummets (a word not used lightly in the climbing community). The good thing about this, however, is as the days go by, your load gets lighter. The classic response come meal time in the mountains when someone asks what’s for dinner…”whatever’s in my bag”.

We moved quickly for two days, clearing nearly 35 miles of ground. We awoke the next morning at 3:30 AM, on three hours sleep, to make the final push up Elbert. Moving quickly to the base of the peak Tyler and myself decided to ditch our packs on the trail, planning to retrieve them on the way down. The other two in our group, for some reason, did not trust the area (in their minds, I’m sure full of thieves and bandits) and decided to carry the packs up. Less then two hours in to the accent Rebecca ditched her pack in a much more elusive area, one that I was not sure we could find again. Nate did the same within an hour. After, six hours, of climbing, and my first assent up a waterfall, we reached the peak in the afternoon sun. Seeing no storms around we decided to lay down and eat lunch. Somewhere in the middle of our Raman Nate had the great idea that we should all get naked and take our picture at the top of the peak with a sign saying “Mount Elbert” hiding certain areas. I agreed with the proposed plan and we did what we had to do. So there I was standing at the top of the tallest mountain in the Rockies with two other naked guy and a naked girl when a man and woman summated from the other side and saw us. Not wanting to go back down they walked slowly in our direction and we scrambled for our clothing. When they said hello I apologized and said we were just having “a little bit of fun”….most likely the worst thing I could have said. The man was on his cell phone within minutes and, while I did not know for sure, I assume the person on the other side of that line wore some sort of badge and carried some sort of gun. Needless to say, we booked it down that mountain, found our bags and camped in the aspen forest with no fire…hiding at the end of the day cold, wet and alone in a forest is usually an indication that you most likely could have chosen better words on that particular day.

We have all been stuck at airports. It seems to be a common occurrence more recently, but airport delays have been happening since the Wright brothers first took off in the fields of North Carolina. I, personally, have developed some interesting methods to keep yourself sane while waiting for your flight to be called. If you are alone, just buy a book (that’s all I got); yet if you are lucky enough to be accompanied by a friend, there is so much to do inside of an airport, you may never want to leave.
Game 1- Go to the baggage carousel and bet (money, MM’s, dignity) on what bag is going to remain unclaimed the longest. This is a riveting experience that, if played perfectly, could last for hours. To mix it up a little bit, have each person move a bag to a different carousel and bet on who will find theirs first.
Game 2- Have everyone in your party talk to the people at customer service separately and complain about getting sick on the food. Usually by the fourth or fifth person, vouchers for free meals will be given out and I’m sure some sort of food security procedure will go into action.
Game 3- My personal favorite, form a line across the moving sidewalk and don’t move. Sure people will yell and be angry, but maybe next time they won’t cut it so close and leave for the airport a little sooner. Anyway, a moving sidewalk is designed so you do not have to degrade yourself to the lowest form of human activity, walking. Stand there and enjoy the ride.
Delays are going to happen. Either you can be angry and grumpy all day, or you can kick back and have the time of your life. Happy travels.

To stop or to drive past, this is the question that has plagued me since I first received my drivers’ license five years ago. Like many drivers, I have encountered my share of stranded motorists on the road and the question as to what to do becomes both an ethical issue and personal safety dilemma. A few years ago I encountered this very situation while driving through the back roads of Kansas while on a misguided trip to Frisco. It was winter and the snow was thick, yet manageable. I was driving down a county highway when I saw up ahead a pickup truck in the ditch. The nose end was sticking straight into the ditch while the back end was still on the road. The truck was an old Ford F-150, which I knew from personal, yet unfortunate, experiences was a rear wheal drive. The front end of the truck was pointed downward into the ditch-line as to pick the back two drive tires off of the ground. The old man driving was stomping on the gas pedal while not even realizing his rear tires were barely touching the road. Using my moderate amount of car knowledge and a freshman physics class at Whitewater I knew that if I jumped in the bed of the man’s truck his tires would grip the road and he would be good to go. I pulled over, nodded at the man with a smile, and jumped into the bed. I hopped out as he switched gears from reverse to first and he drove off, to cold to roll the window down, giving me the standard small town two finger salute. I never spoke a word to the man, and I would bet all the food packed into my trunk that the old man I just helped thought I was just a boy from town until he saw my license plate in his rear view mirror. This last winter while driving back to Wisconsin from Chicago a similar situation occurred. While driving on the interstate through the suburbs I saw a small Ford Fiesta stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire. I had no where to go and, growing up around cars, was well prepared to change a tire, especially on a car I could most likely pick up with a few buddies. No one else was on the road and it appeared as if no one had cared to stop…I didn’t either.
This has happened countless times throughout my life. Sometimes I stop, sometimes I don’t. I don’t know if I am scared or big city people or just more comfortable around small town folks, but that seems to be the trend. Or maybe in this age of cell phones and GPS I subliminally believe all people from a city to be instantly connected to AAA while people from the country would have to write a letter home to get some gas. I luckily have yet to need assistance on the side of the road, but if I do, I hope my Mercury Sable station wagon looks enough both big city and small town to sway some helpful motorist to stop.

Modern travel has undoubtedly been shaped by commercial air flight. People fly as if it is a common matter and think rarely of the dynamics of flight. Two years ago in Costa Rica I was given a rude awakening to the science and danger of taking to the sky in a man made box of steel. I was on a vacation with some friends (just the normal tourist, beach thing, nothing too fun) when our flight got delayed because of heavy rain. I usually do not mind flight delays; it gives you time to read or get to know the people around you. This time, however, I was not the most excited person in South America. There was not another flight back to Chicago for four days, so I knew my options were either going to be sitting in the airport attempting to learn Spanish for a good part of the week or attempt to get back using a series of transfers. The problem with traveling internationally, at least for me, is that you always want direct flights; transfers in foreign countries are confusing and usually mean hours of lines and rude people. However, in this case, I knew it was unavoidable. We arranged a flight from Costa Rica to Panama then to Hawaii then home. Luckily, I was traveling with some people who, to say the least, get taken care of by the Airline industry. Frequent flyers are treated better no matter what anyone says. All was good and we headed out to Panama. Hooray for canals and what ever else they got (in fact I didn’t care, as long as there was an airport). This flight was good and we landed at 3pm. Our flight to Hawaii was scheduled to leave in an hour, but for some reason we couldn’t find it listed on any of the arrival/departure signs. My frequently flying friends inquired and were told the flight was still scheduled but only 8 people were on board so it was not listed. Excited that were had half of the plane to ourselves we quickly sought out the bar, which we couldn’t find. So we waited. When it was time to board, a man who looked like a pilot (which he was) came and got us personally. We just thought the airline was being especially nice to it’s best customers and followed along. We walked out on the tarmac and saw our death trap of a plane. This plane looked like it had been in the second World War: I was looking for bullet holes the whole time. Just before we got on the pilot whipped a scale out of his bag and motioned for everyone to step on it before boarding. After stepping on it the pilot would whisper to the co-pilot where to seat us in the plane. Apparently this plane was so old, the weight actually had to be balanced in order to fly. So long story short, I spent multiple hours shaking as I road the oldest plane I have ever seen though a storm sitting next to a seven year old kid. The moral of this story is, just wait. Four days is a long time to wait to see your family, but imaging how long they would have to wait to pull your scorched corpse out of the Pacific Ocean.

I have had some interesting jobs and internships since entering college. I have been a lifeguard, a climbing instructor, a campaign assistant, and even a debt collector, yet, last summer I decided no job was necessary. I made the decision early last spring to spend the summer climbing in Colorado. I had never climbed in that state before, yet, climbing has but one purpose…go up. So I felt confident I could figure things out quickly. I had a basic itinerary when I flew out to Denver in June. I knew I wouldn’t follow it, but I had it. My first night in Denver was spent in a hostel where I met a group of people my age from California. These four people, who later became great friends of mine, had similar goals for the summer. So with a combined 600 dollars in food and what ever gear we could get in our packs we hopped a shuttle bus to Leadville and began.

We spent over four weeks hiking and climbing. Occasionally we would run into other groups and join them for a few days, but for the most part we were on our own. I had been on trips of this sort before, but the length of this one was a new experience for me. While the stories of the mountains and the near death experiences we endured could fill a book, the real lesson I got out of this trip was discovering the uselessness of modern news. I, by my own admission, am a news junkie. I can recite the latest Gallup poll like it is my mothers birthday, however, since this last summer I have calmed down a bit. When I left for Colorado, there were around eight candidates for President on each side, Barry Bonds was about to break the homerun record, the war in Iraq was going awful, and the media was scaring people senseless on a daily basis. When I returned to Denver and rented a hotel room in mid July, the only thing new was Barry Bonds had broken the home run record.

If I would have lived a normal life this last summer, I am sure that I would have followed the news those four weeks with excitement and utter obsession. I would have been much more well versed on the heath care proposals of Mike Gravel and Ron Paul, I would be able to tell you where Barry Bonds was born, I would have been able to recite the Iraq war death count daily…but does any of that matter? Details are not important. The modern media feeds off of petty details that keep the public tuned in. If CNN, ABC, NBC, FOX, and MSNBC would have went off of the air in mid-June and reappeared in mid-July the world would be the same. People would have the same opinions. So why tune in?

When I returned I canceled my cable TV and I have never regretted the decision. I will read a news paper or check news online occasionally, but that is all. I am still informed, educated, and able to make responsible decisions, yet, I am not scared to death that there is drugs in my tap water or a child rapist living next door. I am happy with this. Sometimes getting away from something is all you need to test its usefulness in your own life. We have been so accustomed to living on the edge of the next breaking story that it seems that all we can pay attention to is other people. To truly learn you must do more then listen and read, you must experience life.

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page. ~St. Augustine

They say a picture is worth a thousand words… I, on the other hand, believe a thousand words is much more constructive. It is with this thought in mind that I wish to share my stories of travel and exploration with everyone. I, to put it simply, love to travel. I truly believe that if two roads diverge in a yellow wood, you should bust though the middle and camp out for a few days until you either meet some cool people or get arrested for trespassing (either will result in a fun story). And it is those fun stories that I am going to share here. I have no shortage of experiences and I will share the more interesting ones here. I hope, at the least, I can encourage everyone to visit new places and see new things, yet, more so, I hope everyone can learn from my mistakes and, in some cases, outright failures.
At twelve years old I had really gone nowhere in my life. Not the figurative, grown up, “nowhere” that can be fixed by Mustangs and plastic surgery; yet, in the literal sense. My idea of travel was the Janesville Mall, or on special occasions (when someone was in the hospital) Madison. No money, no time, no reason, or simply no: the answers always had one thing in common when I asked to go somewhere, no.
Fortunately, or unfortunately I suppose, in July of 1999, my Grandmother had gotten sick to the point where all of the kids, including my dad, had decided to make the trek home to say a final goodbye. My family was not exceptionally close with my dad’s half, but there are just some things in life you just do; this was one of them. We decided to drive down to my grandmas house for a week. My parents took off work, my sister and I were already free via summer vacation, so we were on our way.
Looking back at everywhere I have gone, I can now see that every trip can be defined by two things: the destination (Kentucky) and the impediments to comfort (the only vehicle we owned was a pickup truck).
So to cut the story short, my family drove across the country in the middle of one of the hottest summers on record, in a 1985 Ford F-150 pickup. My Mom and Dad rode first class in the cab, while my sister and I enjoyed the wind in our hair by ridding in the bed. Of course we were not without some modern conveniences: we had an old queen size mattress out of a broken down RV, a cooler full of soda and candy, a boom box, and most importantly, a Will Smith CD.
In retrospect, it is hard to think of the trip without pondering the next great “you might be a redneck” joke, or trying to number the laws my parents broke in the several states between Wisconsin and Kentucky. Yet, while the trip was among the most uncomfortable experiences of my life, I did learn a great deal. I learned how to read maps (something that has paid off many times). I learned to understand a southern accent (not that important). Most notably, I learned that by going somewhere new, you are not only seeing a new area, but meeting new people and involving yourself in new cultures and customs. If you do not believe that you can learn something about a new culture by only driving 15 hours, I urge you to do so. The smallest journeys often revel more than those on the grander of grandest scales. I can attest that one often learns more suffering only a few hundred miles from home then living in luxury 1000 miles away. Prominent Jewish philosopher Martin Buber once said, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.” Remembering this can encourage you to continue even in the worst of circumstances (i.e. if you are in the back of a truck, while its 100 degrees, nearly throwing up as truckers spit at you)