I remember sitting in a college class ( Nonviolent Defense and Conflict Resolution) listening to a guest speaker talk about life as a submarine commander. This was a few years ago, but here is what I remember from his lecture, “You can travel the world and see amazing things, or you […]
If I could sum up Canadians in one word it would not be polite, it would be sneaky. That’s right, I wrote it: sneaky. I don’t mean sneaky like China trying to sell toys painted with a combination of poison and lead, but sneaky like having a toll […]
Every four years the world gathers representatives from their countries to kick a little round ball around a big field. This international tournament is called The World Cup because it really does include almost every country in the world (it isn’t like the World Championships we hold […]
The Summer of Jon lasted 28 days and now that I am back home it seems like it happened a long time ago, or in a dream. It was a trip of a lifetime, but I hope to do a few more trips of a lifetime before I […]
Before most bike tours start there is a tiny tutorial about how to use the bikes, the bike rules in the city, and how to avoid getting killed on the bike tour, but not with Walter (pronounced Valter for those of you who speak English properly.) Walter simply […]
Twenty minutes before the train was scheduled to arrive from Hamburg I knew there was going to be a problem. Piles and piles of young backpackers with Eurail Passes were already crowding the platform. This was not good. I did not have a reserved seat and there were […]
When you are in Berlin during the summer you will get a whiff of something unpleasant, something that smells like a sewer and that is because it is the sewer. I don’t know why the sewer smells like it does, but it is one of those distinctive aspects […]
In my humble and important opinion, bike tours are one of the best ways to see most European cities, and my favorite bike tour company (Fat Tire Bike Tours) always manages to do all the things that make a bike tour great. I have taken three tours based […]
If I were to run away from America, I would run away to Copenhagen. Copenhagen is the city for hippies and hippy wannabes. Copenhagen is Portland on hippy steroids and, I think, the future for most cities if the human race is going to survive beyond the year […]
I can remember flying from Auckland, New Zealand, to Los Angeles in the smoking section of the airplane. Yes, Virginia, people used to smoke on airplanes. At that time, the entire world was filled with Don Drapers, lighting up wherever and whenever they wanted. If you didn’t smoke […]
