Tag: Road Trips
Why You Should Care More About Signs Than You Do
by Michael Yessis | 03.12.10 | 11:16 AM ET
Slate’s Julia Turner just concluded a terrific series about signs—Penn Station’s horrible ones, London’s plans for better ones, efforts to standardize exit signs, what GPS technology means for the future of signs and why signs are “the most useful thing you pay no attention to.”
For an example of the consequences of what happens when you don’t pay attention to signs while you’re traveling, just watch—shameless self promotion alert—America’s Worst Driver on the Travel Channel this Sunday.
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Yahoo! BuzzPhoto You Must See: Vertical Volkswagens at Germany’s Autostadt
by World Hum | 03.11.10 | 12:32 PM ET
REUTERS/Morris MacMatzen Volkswagen Golfs are stacked in one of the massive glass silos at Autostadt, the Volkswagen theme park
Boing Boing Does the Road Trip
by Eva Holland | 03.09.10 | 1:58 PM ET
Boing Boing’s Mark Frauenfelder is cruising Southern California in a Buick, making an eclectic series of roadside stops. His latest? The very quirky Museum of Jurassic Technology.
Another Casualty of the Down Economy: Rest Stops
by Michael Yessis | 03.05.10 | 4:47 PM ET
And the people of Arizona are pissed off. From the New York Times:
Arizona has the largest budget gap in the country when measured as a percentage of its overall budget, and the state Department of Transportation was $100 million in the red last fall when it decided to close 13 of the state’s 18 highway rest stops.
But the move has unleashed a torrent of telephone calls and e-mail messages to state lawmakers, newspapers and the Department of Transportation deploring the lost toilets—one of the scores of small indignities among larger hardships that residents of embattled states face as governments scramble to shore up their finances.
Other states have closed rest stops, too, including Colorado, Georgia, Vermont and Virginia.
Interview With Ted Conover: Traveling ‘The Routes of Man’
by Frank Bures | 03.02.10 | 11:39 AM ET
Frank Bures asks the author about the role of roads in the world -- from Ladakh and the Peruvian Andes to the West Bank
How I Got My Chinese Driver’s License
by Peter Hessler | 02.18.10 | 11:23 AM ET
In an excerpt from his new book, "Country Driving," Peter Hessler -- aka Ho Wei -- recalls his Beijing driving exam
Interview With Peter Hessler: Behind the Wheel in China
by Frank Bures | 02.18.10 | 10:23 AM ET
Photo by Darryl Kennedy Frank Bures asks the New Yorker writer about his new book, "Country Driving: A Journey Through China from Farm to Factory"
The Critics: ‘The Routes of Man’ by Ted Conover
by Eva Holland | 02.16.10 | 12:10 PM ET
Hard-traveling journalist Ted Conover’s latest, The Routes of Man: How Roads are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today, hit stores last week. The book sees Conover traveling six different roads, some official and some unofficial, from Peru’s mahogany export routes to China’s new superhighways, in an effort to understand the way they are “reshaping the world.”
The Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley is skeptical of the concept. He writes that “what we have here essentially are a half-dozen magazine pieces, stitched together in such a way as to resemble a real book but missing the thematic core that Conover strains to locate.” However, Yardley adds, “Conover’s six reports are variously interesting in and of themselves, and one shouldn’t expect any more from them.”
Over at NPR, Maureen Corrigan notes that the “vivid armchair travel aspect of Conover’s book is undeniably a great part of its appeal,” but wonders where the women are—the book, she writes, takes place in “a road warrior universe that is pretty much all male.” The Los Angeles Times’ Taylor Antrim is less conflicted, describing “The Routes of Man” as “refreshingly nonromantic road writing.” He goes on:
What Conover has brought back is a clear-eyed understanding that roads confine as much as they liberate, that they make the world more accessible but also infinitely more dangerous and exploitable. Perhaps the only certainty he offers is that these “paths of human endeavor” are inevitable: “They are the infrastructure upon which almost all other infrastructure depends.”
Recommended Reading in Planes, Trains and Automobiles
by Michael Yessis | 02.12.10 | 10:52 AM ET
The Millions asks its contributors to recommend reading material suited to different modes of transportation. Sample recommendation for travel by train: “I like the Russians for train travel. When you’re watching the natural landscape—the largely uninhabited regions—of a country fly by in flashes, it just feels right to be reading stories that take place over the great land mass of Mother Russia.”
The Elusiveness of the Northern Lights
by Dario DiBattista | 02.08.10 | 10:20 AM ET
Photo by Dario DiBattista After returning from the war in Iraq, Dario DiBattista road-tripped from Alaska to Maryland in search of peace -- and a way back into the civilian world
Jamaica: Playing Chicken with the Jerks
by Roger Rapoport | 02.05.10 | 11:53 AM ET
iStockPhoto Roger Rapoport loves Jamaica. But driving on the island's roads? Not so much.
My Sexy Vintage Travel Trailer
by Allison Otto | 02.03.10 | 10:23 AM ET
Photo by Allison Otto Formica countertops. Pinstripes. Aluminum. Is it any wonder Allison Otto fell hard for a 1958 Airstream?
See the full audio slideshow: »
Cosette and Me: A Dog and Traveler Love Story
by Allison Otto | 01.15.10 | 10:03 AM ET
Photo by Allison Otto Allison Otto longed for the perfect travel companion. She just never thought hers would be so hairy.
See the full audio slideshow: »
William Least Heat-Moon: ‘Speed Corrupts Travel far More Than Bad Chinese Food’
by Michael Yessis | 11.24.09 | 2:46 PM ET
CNN talks to the author of the classic travel book “Blue Highways” as part of its American Road Trips package. The Blue Highways experience, he says, is still out there:
There are still miles and miles of two-lane roads to take a traveler into recesses of America, where delights and amazements await.
The problem with an interstate is not the interstate itself but the speed at which one can move on an interstate.
(via Jaunted)
Photo You Must See: The Thin Yellow Line in Chongqing
by World Hum | 11.19.09 | 4:29 PM ET
REUTERS/Stringer Shanghai Yellow cabs line a viaduct in Chongqing, China, while waiting to get their tanks filled during a shortage.
On the ‘Easy Rider’ Trail, 40 Years Later
by Eva Holland | 11.17.09 | 9:36 AM ET
Keith Phipps followed Wyatt and Billy’s path from Southern California to the Gulf Coast, and the first part of his resulting multiday series for Slate ran yesterday. It looks to be a good one. Here’s a sample:
More an elegy for a generation that never got where it wanted to go than a celebration of that generation’s superiority, it pits hopefulness against resignation and sets the battle on a lovingly photographed stretch of the United States. Easy Rider hit theaters with a memorable tag line: “A man who went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere.” Star, producer, and co-writer Peter Fonda hated that line, and rightly so. It’s really the story of two men—Wyatt and Billy, played by Fonda and co-writer and director Dennis Hopper—who went looking for America and found it everywhere. They just didn’t find a place for themselves.
We paid tribute to the movie on its 40th anniversary this past summer.
Travel Song of the Day: ‘I Drove All Night’ by Roy Orbison
by Eva Holland | 11.12.09 | 5:16 PM ET
Photos: 10 All-American Must Sees for All Americans
by Sophia Dembling | 11.06.09 | 11:07 AM ET
Photo by Sophia Dembling Flyover America's Sophia Dembling shares the sights that will make you swoon
Mapped: The U.S. Interstates, in the Style of the London Underground Map
by Michael Yessis | 11.03.09 | 10:21 AM ET
See it in Senex Prime’s Flickr stream. (Via Coudal)
Chevy Volt Takes its First Road Trip
by Eva Holland | 10.16.09 | 11:03 AM ET
An eight-car convoy of Chevrolet Volts is on a three-day road trip from Michigan to West Virginia and back, Wired reports. The trip is part of final pre-production testing for the long-awaited electric car.
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