Travel Blog: News and Briefs
Tim Cahill: “It is Always a Scramble From Paycheck to Paycheck”
by Jim Benning | 01.14.04 | 9:12 PM ET
Memo to struggling writers everywhere: The writing business still isn’t easy for the likes of Tim Cahill, founding editor of Outside magazine, author of numerous books, and one of America’s best adventure writers. As he tells Rolf Potts in an interview recently posted on Potts’ Web site: “Finances are most problematic. I make pretty good money, but most of it comes from magazines, all of which are currently (2003) suffering an advertising drought. I am currently making 25% less than I was about four years ago. In my house, it is always a scramble from paycheck to paycheck.” I’m not sure whether to feel depressed or reassured that Cahill faces this problem. I’m afraid the answer is the former. But before throwing in the writing towel, note that Cahill has plenty to say about the upsides of his work, too: “I am living out my adolescent dream of travel and adventure.”
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzMore About “Airline”
by Michael Yessis | 01.12.04 | 9:14 PM ET
On Jim’s recommendation, I watched two repeat episodes of A&E’s documentary/reality show “Airline” Sunday afternoon. I think I’m hooked. Sure, it’s a bit of an infomercial for Southwest, the featured airline, but the storylines are engaging, often in a car crash sort of way. A new episode airs tonight, but anyone who needs an early fix can listen to a Savvy Traveler interview with series producer Chris Carey. For another point of view on the show, check out Virginia Heffernan’s pan in the New York Times.
Inside Saudi Arabia’s Okaz Newspaper
by Jim Benning | 01.08.04 | 9:18 PM ET
Welcome to Club Thailand. Your Limo is Waiting.
by Jim Benning | 01.08.04 | 9:16 PM ET
If you like visiting Thailand and have $25,000 to spare, you can be among the first owners of a “Thailand Elite” card, a wacky tourism program designed by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to attract big-money visitors. So far, about 100 tourists, many of them Chinese, have paid the one-time $25,000 membership fee, which entitles them to a five-year multiple-entry visa, free golf, airport limousine trips and a number of other perks. “Promoters of the VIP plan admit that snob value is part of the appeal when it comes to Asian travelers with a penchant for members-only clubs and public displays of wealth,” according to an article about the program in the Christian Science Monitor. “The sales brochure holds out the tantalizing prospect of rubbing shoulders with ‘celebrities from around the world’ that are being targeted as potential VIPs.”
Kemmons Wilson: An Appreciation
by Michael Yessis | 01.07.04 | 9:19 PM ET
Holiday Inn founder Kemmons Wilson “may have flattened the cultural landscape, but he also widened its horizons.” So writes “Up in the Air” author Walter Kirn in a terrific New York Times essay that chronicles the recently deceased Wilson’s role in transforming America’s highways from a “sinister place lined with greasy spoons and fleabag tourist camps and populated by felons and fornicators” to a family-friendly setting.
Southwest Airlines Stars in New TV Show
by Michael Yessis | 01.06.04 | 9:22 PM ET
U.S. cable television network A&E aired a new weekly documentary-style TV show last night called “Airline,” which features the daily dramas of Southwest Airlines flight crews and staff. The show’s Web page offers a synopsis. I watched both half-hour segments, which featured drunk passengers, frustrated travelers and not-always-cheery airport employees, and was fairly impressed: The shows captured quite a few dramatic, touching and amusing moments. “Airline” airs again next Monday night.
Government Penalizes Bush Interpreter For Trip to Cuba
by Jim Benning | 01.06.04 | 9:21 PM ET
Just how absurd is the crackdown on U.S. citizens traveling “illegally” to Cuba? The Los Angeles Times reported Sunday that one target of the Bush administration’s get-tough policy is an official interpreter to the president. Fred Burks, 45, who has worked on contract with the State Department for a decade, visited Cuba four years ago with his girlfriend, who was a fan of the “Buena Vista Social Club.” The pair said they were vacationing in Mexico when they saw cheap flights advertised to Cuba and decided to go. When they passed through U.S. immigration upon returning home and were asked where they’d been, they told the truth. Then came the $7,590 fine. Burks’ girlfriend negotiated a lower penalty and paid it. He refuses to pay anything more than $100 and has been haggling with the government ever since. “I never intended to make a big deal out of this,” he told the Times. “But I’m going to do what it takes to establish a precedent. I just don’t agree with this policy.” If only Burks and his money had stayed away from Cuba, the country today would be a free and democratic nation, right? Right.
Toasting 2004
by Jim Benning | 01.05.04 | 9:25 PM ET
We’re back from a fine holiday. Over the last two weeks, we’ve read year-end travel wrap-ups in various newspapers. Our favorite had to be Thomas Swick’s drinking-song toast to the new year, which appeared in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel Travel section. You can’t help but like a song that rhymes “axis of evil” with “Fuzzy Navel.” The song concludes: “So let’s coax olive branches from all the world’s meanies / And then air-drop the olives into a million martinis.” We’ll drink to that.
Do Jet Stowaways Ever Survive?
by Michael Yessis | 01.05.04 | 9:24 PM ET
Two wheel-well stowaways turned up dead at New York’s Kennedy Airport during the holidays, which prompted Slate’s Explainer to address the question: Do jet stowaways ever survive? Yes, they do. A tad more than 20 percent of them have survived since 1947. Their stories are amazing. For instance, take Victor Alvarez Molina. Last December, the Cuban refugee made it to Montreal in the wheel well of a DC-10, enduring four hours in temperatures that dropped to minus-40 F. “His saving grace was a leak in a compartment pipe, which seeped out warm air,” writes Brendan I. Koerner. “The pipe also provided him a convenient lifeline to hold onto when the landing gear deployed ... Molina was granted refugee status and now hopes to bring his family to Canada. Presumably in more comfortable circumstances.”
Happy Birthday Flight!
by Michael Yessis | 12.17.03 | 9:26 PM ET
It’s been 100 years to the day since the Wright brothers changed the world with their 12-second flight over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their invention was, as the New York Times so carefully put it today, “the first power-driven heavier-than-air machine in which humans made free, controlled and sustained flight.” The Times offers a slew of articles marking the anniversary. The main story explores the Wrights’ accomplishment: “What did they do that had been overlooked by better-known and more experienced would-be inventors? It is one of the most arresting questions about the Wrights and the invention of flight.” For readers who aren’t up to pondering those questions but would like to make stuff, the Times offers a how-to story on making paper airplanes, including the model that holds the world record for most time aloft: 27.6 seconds. That’s one serious paper airplane! But our favorite article about the anniversary is still Pico Iyer’s eloquent essay from Via magazine, which we pointed to when it first appeared in October. “It’s hard at this point to imagine a world in which Orville and Wilbur Wright had not made their small experiment a hundred years ago,” Iyer wrote. “In a world without flight, half the people in your neighborhood might not be there. Most of the products in your stores would still be in far-off jungles or on distant continents. You’d receive no airmail, and neither your president nor your next-door neighbor would be flying off to Europe this week and then Asia over the weekend. Most of all, your very sense of possibility, of how and where you live your life, would be radically foreshortened.”
“Once Upon a Time, We Could Love an Airline”
by Jim Benning | 12.15.03 | 9:33 PM ET
The Los Angeles Times’ Susan Spano on Sunday offered a heart-warming recollection of Pacific Southwest Airlines, which was sold to US Airways in 1988 and is now the subject of a permanent display at the San Diego Aerospace Museum in Balboa Park. “The San Diego-based carrier holds a special place in the hearts of many, especially those who flew PSA in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the glory days when the airline summed up everything that was groovy and freewheeling about California,” she writes.
And Perhaps the Least Used Guide Books of 2003
by Michael Yessis | 12.08.03 | 9:36 PM ET
Ski Travel’s Uncertain Future
by Jim Benning | 12.03.03 | 9:40 PM ET
The United Nations Environment Program has issued a grim forecast for the future of winter sports around the world, blaming global warming for declining snowfall and shortening ski seasons. Among the predictions noted in the Guardian’s report: Skiing could end in Australia by 2070.
Skyhigh Airlines: The Relentless Pursuit of Adequacy
by Michael Yessis | 11.26.03 | 9:42 PM ET
Just how bad have things gotten for commercial airlines? They’re now making fun of their own industry. Alaska Airlines’ latest advertising campaign centers on the faux SkyHigh Airlines, a carrier that embodies everything wrong with modern air travel. High prices. Lost luggage. Callous employees. The idea is to contrast Alaska with the misery of this hilarious, straw man airline. According to Wall Street Journal reporter Scott McCartney, it’s a risky strategy. He writes, “Alaska must now ensure its own customers don’t have a SkyHigh Airlines experience.” (McCartney’s story is available online only to WSJ subscribers.) At the very least, anyone who flies should find the accompanying Web site good for a laugh. My favorite features: The rotating slogans—“Flying More, Caring Less” and “A Commitment to Mediocrity” among them—and the travel tips, including this one: Don’t talk to freaks. “Man, are there some nut jobs out there! And given the chance, they’ll talk a hole through your brain. Word to the wise: If you see a guy skipping toward you with rainbow stockings and a handful of spoons, act unconscious.”
“America on the Move” Opens
by Michael Yessis | 11.24.03 | 9:45 PM ET
The Smithsonian Museum’s “America on the Move” exhibit, which focuses on the various ways transportation shaped the country, opened this weekend in Washington D.C. Virtual visitors can check it out at the museum’s excellent Web site or via a behind the scenes tour with Savvy Traveler radio program host Diana Nyad.
