I’m heading to Colombia soon to hangout with coffee farmers, so I’ve been searching for a guidebook. Moon, my guidebooks of choice, doesn’t have one for Colombia, and Lonely Planet’s guide was last updated in 2009, which means the info probably came from 2008 at the latest.
I really had to search Amazon before I found Colombia Handbook, 4th (Footprint – Handbooks)
, which I ultimately purchased. In the process I found a couple of guides the Secret Service agents must’ve used or written:
Men’s Guide to Colombia 2010
Bang Colombia
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Yes, that is an iPhone in my pocket, but I’m also glad to see you.
No matter where I go in the world these days, my iPhone goes with me. My iPhone is my alarm, recorder, video camera, camera, calendar, notes, currency converter, translator, texting device, map, and, yes, sometimes even my phone.
I’ve recorded audio with it that has aired on NPR and taken photos that have appeared in shiny magazines. I know it’s not the optimal tool for any one of these things, but it’s the Swiss Army knife of my storytelling/traveling gadgets.
(This is why when a friend asked me if I would buy another iPhone after the recent Foxconn revelations, I told them YES.)
But if you step off the…
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In 2001 I visited Shakespeare & Co. in Paris. Yesterday the store’s legendary owner, George Whitman, died in his apartment above the shop. When I heard the news, I couldn’t help but think of what I had written about him after my visit:
The old man was nowhere in sight. I figured that when the clock struck noon he dissolved into a billion dust particles, coating many spines and pages, the star of the Twilight Zone episode that would be named the “Keeper of the Books.”
Here’s the full, perhaps a bit cliche, story about my 2001 visit.
The twin black towers of Notre Dame rang in the eleventh hour. The great brass voice gave life to the monstrous…
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Six years ago I met a worker outside of the Delta factory in Villanueva, Honduras, that changed my life. It wasn’t so much what he said or what happened when I met him, but all of the unanswered questions I had about his life and the life of other such workers around the world.
I met him shortly after I posed for the above photo in front of the factory he worked at in 2005. I’ve been in Honduras now for a week and the questions many of you who’ve read “Where Am I Wearing?” and/or heard me speak about Amilcar and all the other workers I met is, “Have you found Amilcar?”
Sort of.
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I’m on a flight to Dallas and I hope to God know one asks me about the book I’m reading. Why? Because of all the millions of books I could be reading, I’m reading the only one I wrote. Of course, maybe if I cover up the author photo, laugh really loud now and again, and pepper in a few hmmm’s of interest, it would be good marketing.
“You’ve just gotta read this book! This dude named Kelsey goes to all of the places his clothes were made….”
But this isn’t why I’m reading my own book.
My publisher, John Wiley & Sons, has asked me to do an update and revision. When Richard my editor called…
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I hope Annie and I raise a daughter with the confidence to take on the world, but thinking about my kid – especially my daughter Harper – traveling as far and wide as I have, scares me a little. I’m not proud of thinking the “especially my daughter” thoughts. It seems wrong thinking that Harper would be any less capable of handling traveling solo than my yet-to-be born son, but I feel like there are just more challenges out there for girls. I sent a note to Rachel Friedman, author of The Good Girls Guide to Getting Lost, asking her to set me straight. She does so in this guest post.
Ladies and gentlemen, moms and dads, and girls, I present to you Rachel Friedman.
An…
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My new piece on attempting to run a half-marathon with world-class Kenyan runners at 8,000′ is hitting stations around the country this week. Listen to it now or risk never learning if I live through the experience.
I’d love for you to share your thoughts on the piece, the runners, or running in general over at the WV Report’s site….
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About 200,000 thousand Americans traveled to New Zealand last year. Total tourist arrivals to the country were more than 2.5 million.
In turn, Libya saw a grand total of 50,000 tourists. Few were from the United States because the Libyan government had a ban on American tourists until June of 2010.
Been there
My reaction to the quake in New Zealand was much greater than that of when I heard about the chaos and the violence in Libya. I know that it’s silly to compare a natural disaster with political upheaval – the acts of men vs acts of nature – so why is it that military aircraft (reportedly) gunning down civilians doesn’t leave me as concerned…
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I wrote this a while back as part of a piece on the lobster divers of Nicaragua who suffer many dive-related injuries. Legend has it that the divers’ injuries result from an encounter with a pale-skinned mermaid known as the Liwa Mairin. It is said that she haunts the depths and punishes those who take too many lobster. The victims of the Liwa Mairin, the wheelchair bound and the zombies, are what drew me to Puerto Cabezas. A few years ago I almost became one of them.
I hope other divers can learn from my experience. Nitrogen Narcosis nearly killed me. It’s no laughing matter.
—
Bubbles burst forth from my regulator – the sound of distant bowling…
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I was held hostage by Nepalese monks. The weapon they used against me was hospitality.
They forced four meals down me a day. The first time I tried to leave, they consulted their scrolls and decided that the date wasn’t a good one for departure.
I was blessed by a bulletproof monk and may or may not be bulletproof myself now. (Note: if I am bulletproof I’ve totally wasted my superpower not fighting crime.)
Khenpo Sange, the head lama, sat next to me on my flight from Bangkok to Nepal where I planned on trekking, but instead got a really infected foot and held hostage. Khenpo invited me to stay near the village of Pharping (south of…
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