Destination: United States
RVing on the Cheap
by Eva Holland | 02.20.09 | 9:51 AM ET
Over at Gadling, Anna Brones Alison Brick has dug up a way to go RVing for just $24 a day. The catch? You have to be headed either to or from Mesa, Arizona, where Cruise America’s headquarters are located. Check out the “Rolling into Arizona” and “Rolling out of Arizona” sections on the company’s Hot Deals page to see where the discounted vehicles are currently available; you’ll need to apply three days in advance, and all rentals are first-come, first-served.
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Yahoo! BuzzMorning Links: 50 Great Travel Tweeters, Shark Attacks and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.20.09 | 8:33 AM ET
- Seaside vacations are down, and, therefore, so are shark attacks.
- Transitions Abroad reveals how to, well, transition abroad after getting laid off or fired from a job.
- Ryanair plans to allow mobile phone use on all its flights.
- Much of John Wray’s latest novel Lowboy takes place in the New York Subway system. In fact, Wray wrote the novel on the subway.
- Here are 71 photos of “interesting and bizarre peoples” on subways. (via Coudal)
- TSA tests full-body scanners in Tulsa.
- Among the 16 things Esquire says Canada is good at: Music that always stops just short of making you want to kill yourself.
- Larry Portzline lists 10 ways to tap into Bookstore Tourism.
- The Telegraph lists 50 great travel tweeters, including one “from the editors of the best global travel blog.” Thanks, Telegraph! Thanks and congrats, too, to World Hum’s lead tweeter, Valerie Conners!
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The Doughnut Curse
by David Farley | 02.19.09 | 5:29 PM ET
Everyone’s talking about how hamburgers have become the default economic depression meal for Americans. It’s possible we’re eating more burgers these days, but the resurgence in hamburger eating hit the American taste bud a few years before the DOW started going south.
Let me make the case for the doughnut as the Official Food of the 2009 Economic Crisis. Like dumplings and Regis Philbin, there’s a version of the doughnut in just about every culture around the world. But there’s something particularly American about those hunks of sometimes-fruit-filled fried dough. It could be the venue in which we consume doughnuts, the nostalgic, ‘50s-era quality of doughnut shops, which has quietly disappeared from our strip malls. Or maybe it’s because doughnuts have been consumed on this continent for thousands of years—archeologists recently unearthed a prehistoric doughnut.
Nebraska! Whodathunkit?
by Sophia Dembling | 02.19.09 | 3:36 PM ET
I don’t know what became of my Nebraska sweatshirt. It vanished many years ago and I still mourn the loss.
I bought the bright red (go Huskers!), short-sleeved sweatshirt in a thrift shop and wore it for years after my first (and so far only) visit to Nebraska in the late 1970s.
Promo Videos Gone Wrong: ‘Nebraska: Who Knew?’
by Eva Holland | 02.19.09 | 12:21 PM ET
Next up in our ongoing series on unintentionally humorous tourism promo videos? An offering from Nebraska Tourism, with a slogan—“Who knew?”—that probably hits the nail a little too firmly on the head. Self-deprecation is a tricky thing for any tourist board to pull off, and I’m not sure a promo spot is the right place to remind your viewers that nobody thinks there’s anything worth seeing in your state. (Though for what it’s worth, I’ve always wanted to see Carhenge, myself.)
The clip—which, to be fair, includes some pretty impressive Great Plains scenery—is after the jump.
Leave Home Without It
by Tom Swick | 02.19.09 | 10:07 AM ET
Contemplating and celebrating the world of travel
Time Travel to Honolulu
by Pam Mandel | 02.18.09 | 5:44 PM ET
It’s politically incorrect, not entirely accurate historically, and oddly, the producers chose to intersperse “Aloha Oe” with “The Skater’s Waltz” in the sound track. But the boards are huge, the leis are fluffy and plentiful, and the footage of Waikiki Beach? Wow, it looks nothing like what I saw last year:
Your Friendly Neighborhood Airport Bookstore?
by Eva Holland | 02.18.09 | 2:41 PM ET
I spent a good portion of my Friday night at Newark International this weekend, waiting on a friend’s delayed flight from Canada. As a result, I had plenty of time to conduct an in-depth study of the titles on offer at the airport’s Relay store.
The project started out innocently enough. I’ve never paid much attention to airport bookstores—long layovers generally find me sound asleep on the floor at a quiet gate, or roaming the halls in search of an unsecured wireless signal. But this time I decided to browse the magazine selection, and then (while I struggled to reconcile my love for both “Cosmopolitan” and “The Atlantic”) a section heading in the books section caught my eye: Travel and Pictorial. The heading seemed odd, because—I could see from 10 feet away—half the books in the section had been written by Candace Bushnell. Had I somehow missed Bushnell’s transition to narrative travelogue author? Curious, I moved closer. And found that the Travel and Pictorial section was filled top to bottom with Manhattan-based chick lit. Multiple copies of “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Confessions of a Shopaholic” and “Shopaholic Takes Manhattan,” and no less than four Bushnell titles (“Sex and the City” chief among them, of course) covered the shelves in a blur of chirpy, bright, pink-heavy covers.
Filmed Here: ‘Gossip Girl’
by Eva Holland | 02.18.09 | 12:27 PM ET
So here’s the dilemma: New York’s Restaurant Week has been extended, you’ve got a friend visiting from Canada, and you’d like to take advantage of the deal as a special treat. But how to choose just one of the 150 participating restaurants before making your reservation? Well, if you’re a sucker for teen television dramas (guilty), then naturally you book at the restaurant recently featured on “Gossip Girl.” Which is how I found myself at Butter for an unfashionably early dinner on Sunday night.
(Butter, in case you haven’t been keeping track, is the restaurant where Jenny Humphrey—aka Little J, the “poor” girl who lives with her aging rock star dad in a fabulous DUMBO loft—and Blair—the teen queen of the Upper East Side—staged a major showdown on Jenny’s 15th birthday back in season one.)
Morning Links: JetBlue Fare Refunds, America’s Emptiest Cities and More
by Michael Yessis | 02.18.09 | 8:31 AM ET
- It happened again: Another cruise ship ran aground in Antarctica.
- Las Vegas and Detroit finished 1-2 in a Forbes list of America’s emptiest cities.
- Inside the hardened, restless lives of business-travel nomads.
- Here’s a scathing takedown of the idea of Dubai. (via Kottke)
- Here’s another dancing guy. He doesn’t go around the world, though. Just to hallways and stairwells and such.
- Teresa Watanabe looks at African Americans who are being “called back to Africa by DNA.”
- JetBlue promises fare refunds if you lose your job—with some fine print.
- “Afghan Model” is coming to Emrooz TV.
- The Yankees are building a new vacation stadium in the Hamptons, complete with on-deck gazebos and yacht parking for the players. The Onion has exclusive video.
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Going to SXSW? Put the Harry Ransom Center On Your Schedule.
by Sophia Dembling | 02.17.09 | 6:00 PM ET
Photo by Eric Beggs The South by Southwest (or SXSW) film, music and interactive festival is less than a month away. Got your plans and reservations yet? (And did you know that many Austinites flee the city as you arrive? Too much traffic and other mishigos.)
I realize that SXSW is all about the future of this, that and the other, but while you’re in town, I urge you to carve out some time to pay your respects to what many consider a dying art form, the written word, with a stop at the free galleries at the Harry Ransom Center.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation: In Cahoots?
by Eva Holland | 02.17.09 | 12:26 PM ET
If you were planning to add a major concert to your next trip itinerary, you may want to think again. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating after word of a possible merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation—the world’s largest ticket seller and the world’s largest concert promoter, respectively—raised fears of a monopoly on concert tickets. The department is “committed to vigorous enforcement of the merger antitrust laws and will conduct a thorough investigation of the proposed Ticketmaster/Live Nation transaction,” a spokeswoman told the AP.
Several politicians have already spoken out against the potential deal—and now even Bruce Springsteen (who’s already had one dust-up with the ticket giant this month) has joined in, too. Wrote the Boss on his website: “The one thing that would make the current ticket situation even worse for the fan than it is now would be Ticketmaster and Live Nation coming up with a single system, thereby returning us to a near-monopoly situation in music ticketing.”
Some Travel Writers Will Do Anything for a Buck
by Sophia Dembling | 02.17.09 | 11:35 AM ET
Every time I watch it on the Winter Olympics, I decide that luge is an utterly insane sport that you could not pay me enough to try.
“Chicago Tribune” reporter Christoper Borrelli evidently does not feel the same way. They paid, he tried (in Muskegon, Michigan). Here’s the story.
A sample: “Sue Halter, my instructor, told me that in 15 years here she had seen only one person lose teeth while luging.”
Some people will do anything for a buck.
Thoughts on Continental Connect Flight 3407
by Rob Verger | 02.17.09 | 10:49 AM ET
The tragic crash Thursday night of the regional commuter plane—a Bombardier turboprop—is shocking and sad, and many are speculating that icing played a role. (Although The New York Times reports that “a member of the National Transportation Safety Board urged ‘caution about jumping to conclusions that it might be an icing incident.’”) We won’t know the entire story until the N.T.S.B. issues its report, but here’s what some are thinking now.
At Ask the Pilot, Patrick Smith explains what could have happened: “The hunch among pilots right now is that the plane may have suffered a tailplane stall due to ice buildup on the horizontal stabilizers,” he writes. “Horizontal stabilizers are the smaller, tail-mounted wings that help control a plane’s nose-up/nose-down motion, known as ‘pitch.’ Normally, stabilizers are considerably less sensitive to icing than the main wings, but a prolonged and severe encounter could have, in theory, overwhelmed the aft de-icing boots.”
The boots that he is referring to are the de-icing system on this aircraft; they are, as The New York Times explains, “a bit like tires, on the front edges of the wings, the tail and the vertical stabilizer, that inflate and contract twice a minute to break ice accumulations.”
Christopher Lee: ‘I Can’t Recall Visiting any Countries I Hated’
by Eva Holland | 02.17.09 | 9:49 AM ET
So where does one of the most omnipresent movie villains of the past half-century (who also popped up in our list of the best travel horror movies) like to go on vacation? The veteran actor recently dished to the Independent about his ideal travel experiences—and it turns out, solitude is high on his priority list.
Lee’s favorite country is Finland, “because once you get to a certain point, you can drive for hours without seeing a single person.” His worst-ever journey was a rough ride from Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, N.C.: “It was only a 45-minute flight,” he told Sophie Lam, “but I have never known anything like it—including during the war when I was shot at in planes.” And as for New Zealand, where he spent a few months during the filming of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy? It’s “the most beautiful country I have ever been to in my life.”