A Year On The Ground: Motel 0

Sallie Bingham
cultural musings, travel essay

by Sallie Bingham

In Ajo, Arizona, the $49 motel, nameless and windowless—containers for uneasy sleep—nearly disabuses the Roommate and me of the notion of traveling on the ground.


The $15 dinner, the worst yet—thick red sauce on leathery enchiladas with pasty cheese—causes indignation as well as indigestion, and it becomes difficult to put the romanticized image of the local tribe—the Papagos—together with the enormous people at every eat stop.


The US is now in more ways than one the land of giants; speculation about the sexual behavior of these behemoths only proves us hopelessly out of place. The bubble that is Santa Fe excludes us, as well as protecting us, from experiencing this country; air travel provided another layer of protection. Now we know the behemoths will win if only because there are more of them. On the airplanes, these same travelers overflow their seats, apparently with equanimity, but there are a lot more of them on the ground.

A Cautionary Tale

Shirley B. Moskow
Life Lessons, cultural musings, travel, travel essay, travel writing

by Shirley B. Moskow

In Madrid, thieves work in pairs. One tells you that a bird has soiled your jacket and offers to clean it. The other slips it off and rubs a spot. When they helps you on with your jacket, your wallet is gone and so are the scam artists. In the Caribbean, some street moneychangers deftly fold paper money so that unsuspecting travelers can’t see that they’re counting the same bills twice. The skills of pickpockets on Rome’s trolleys are legendary.

I’ve listened to many travelers recount such tales of their mishaps. Of course, I sympathized, positive that no similar fate would befall me. I prided myself on taking precautions and always being aware of my surroundings.

At the National Museum of Prague, as I was paying for a book in the gift shop, the lights suddenly went out. The old castle was all confusion as people milled about in the dark. Several minutes later, when the electricity came on, I discovered that my wallet had disappeared.

My husband and I reported the theft to the police. They seemed uninterested. We returned to our hotel and the manager helped us to notify our credit card companies. That’s when I realized that my husband and I shouldn’t have been carrying the same bank and credit cards. We had to put a hold on all of them. Now neither of us had access to credit, and between us we had little more than two hundred dollars in cash. I wondered how long it would take for relatives to wire funds. The answer was never. We were traveling through three countries, staying at a different hotel almost every night. Under the circumstances, no hotel would accept a wire.

A Year on the Ground: And Now a Blast from the Past

Sallie Bingham
road trip, travel, travel essay, travel writing

by Sallie Bingham

“Please don’t use the towels to clean luggage, shoes or cars,” the sign on the medicine cabinet in the Gadsden Hotel bathroom reads. This ancient grand dame of a place reminds me of the hotel in Pittsburg where we stayed on long car trips when I was a child; “fire trap,” my mother would mutter, hardly deigning to place herself on the cretonne-covered bed, her feet in high-heeled shoes never coming in contact with the scrofulous rug.

© Francis Donald.Now that motels rule the interstate with their room rates from $29 dollars a night to $58; the Gadsden hardly stands a chance. In its ornate lobby, marble  pillars support a ceiling of stained glass; a few undaunted individuals are cleaning up the decorations—fake ivy and silver garlands—left after a presentation for a supplement called something like Xanadu. From the number of chairs set out, they expected a crowd, but the elevator operator ( the old Otis elevator has no door and so must be operated by a employee) says no one came. Loud music blared when we dragged ourselves in but has now been put out, and the remnant of presenters is scurrying to the parking lot (security from 10 pm till 4 am, the hotel clerk assures us), clicking open locks.

A Year on the Ground: Abandoning air travel? Sticking to the ground? Am I crazy?

Sallie Bingham
Life Lessons, Lifestyle, road trip, travel essay, travel writing

by Sallie Bingham

Racing by the turnoff to the Albuquerque airport, I jeer (in my head, sparing the Roommate reluctantly riding shotgun with Jack the puppy) at the ducks-in-a-line cars turning off, each one sporting a single head as in a two year old’s toy car, heading toward the mile of glinting metal and glass, the far-out parking lot, where I used to leave my car to avoid paying literally hundreds of dollars at the packed airport garage.


Beyond the garage, the familiar litany of irritations waits: the kiosks that have largely replaced desk personnel, and which routinely refuse my credit card or ask for airport acronyms only a terminal supervisor would know, the ridiculous security parade, where I numbly shed articles of clothing that have nothing to do with any imaginable threat (how long ago was the tennis shoe bomber caught?), the unexplained delays and cancellations, the miserably cramped seats, the disappearance of blankets and pillows, the outrageous sums charged for horrible snacks, and now even for luggage.


This time, I’m driving—1150 miles from my home in Santa Fe to my son’s in Los Angeles.

 

Ditching Stress — An experiment

Andrea Gross
Life Lessons, Lifestyle, travel essay, travel writing

by Andrea Gross

This is the year I diet. Not by going low-cal: been there, done that. This year I'm going low stress. I'm cutting down on stress as surely as last year I cut down on carbs.


It won't be easy. Stress gives me the same high as chocolate and, try as I might, I can't see the glory in taking a vacation in order to relax. But magazines say it's healthy to turn off your mind and revel in doing nothing. I spent 10 years writing for these magazines, so I have a hard time believing them, but what the heck....If Obama can spend an hour a day playing basketball, I can spend a week a year de-stressing. (This works out to Obama being approximately 168 times more important than I am, which seems to me, if anything, an understatement.)


But it's a concept that comforts me during my first hour on the beach. I'd prepared well — brought along a beach chair, towel, sunscreen, hat, snacks, and Wally Lamb's 752-page book, The Hour I First Believed, which proves to be too heavy to hold without straining my wrists. I put down the book and wish I had my computer, the nifty laptop that miraculously connects to the web even in the middle of nowhere. But I left it home, in deference to a hubby who said that after forty years of marriage he deserved four days of Nothing to Do.


I even left my cell phone home. Well, I'd cheated a little on this point. I traded mine, which rings or vibrates with comforting regularity — see, I am important — for my dad's. His never rings because he won't turn it on. "It's only for 911," he says. So I brought along his phone and gave the number to my four kids, so I could maintain the fiction that, in case of real emergency, one of my nearly-forty year old kids call for Mommy. Everyone else, I figured, could wait. I'm not that important, after all. I can check out for a week, and the world will still turn.

Zen And The Art of Doing Nothing

Zen And The Art of Doing Nothing

Ellen Barone
Life Lessons, Lifestyle, Travel Opinion, travel, travel essay

Doing nothing is an art—and Ellen Barone has mastered it. In Zen and the Art of Doing Nothing, she reflects on the joy of downtime, from lazing in a Mexican beach casita to savoring silent moments in Santa Fe. Once conditioned to measure worth by achievement, she now embraces balance: action paired with stillness. Like a perfect margarita, her travels blend adventure with well-earned rest.

Nature Nurtures In The Amazon

Dale V Atkins
Eco Travel, adventure travel, cultural immersion, exotic travel, travel, travel essay

by Dale V Atkins

I just returned to Manaus from the Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge in the Amazon (actually on the River Negro which is indeed a black river not due to dirt but due to tanens from leaves and organic matter and has NO mosquitoes at all on the water...unlike the "muddy river" which has apparently has PLENTY.) Did I really need those malaria pills?

It is unbelievably wet there....it is not called a rain forest for nothing..You cannot go out for 10 minutes without a rain jacket unless you don't mind consistently walking around looking as if you just lost the jungle wet tee shirt contest. I opted for the rain jacket (which doubled as my icebreaker a week ago when I was marching around in crampons on the Moreno glacier in Argentina but let's stick to one rain jacket adventure at a time.).

Just so you know, before I go any further, I am as happy as I can be. I look just like a hairdresser's nightmare (or dream depending on your point of view) as my roots are huge and my curls are wilder than in the '60s. It is good that HAIR has returned to Broadway because I may go directly from the plane to a casting call. Truth is, as soon as I land, I am going to the grandkids to give and get some great hugs and smooches followed immediately by an appointment with the hairdresser.

A year on the Ground

Sallie Bingham
life, road trip, travel, travel essay

by Sallie Bingham

2009 is the year I decided to stop flying.

Not flying in my imagination, or flying down a mountain on skis, but flying on the hideous US airlines, dealing once again with the insane security regulations, the rudeness of airline emplopyees, the escalating costs, now compounded by charges for luggage, the endless waits, the numbing cancellations, the refusal to grant travelers even basic amenities like pillows and free peanuts....

So, I will not fly this year. After all, we can stilll remember when we used to drive and take trains; we still have cars and Amtrak still manages to cripple along. So there are alternatives to the gross mishebenavior of the commercial airlines. Why not try them?

Expense? Probably. This will be one of the things I'll track: gas has gone down again, motels are not expensive, meals on the road can (perhaps) be cheap.

Time? Certainly. But what are the pay-offs? A closer relation to the landscape? The opportunity to meet, and talk with, strangers? A better understanding, even, of that mysterious entity, our continent?

Relationships? Strained by extended time together in a car or a train compartnemt? Probably. But, again, what are the rewards?

Hanukkah Behind Bars

Judith Fein
cultural immersion, cultural musings, holiday tradtions, holiday volunteering

by Judith Fein

Christmas lights fringed the adobe walls in downtown Santa Fe, and I was feeling gloomy. In a few days I'd be leaving the country for a work assignment, and I wouldn't be able to celebrate the holidays with the kids behind bars.

For several years, I had volunteered to teach them creative writing, and I'd become very attached to them. In spite of their crimes, I loved them because they were just kids. Their life stories were punctuated with abuse, abandonment, and pain, and I knew their young hearts would ache with loneliness during the holiday season.

Impulsively, I called the head of the jail. He said I could have a special holiday session with the kids the following night.

Almost all of the Hispanic and Native American kids were Christians, and I wondered if any of them knew what Hanukkah was. I spent the next day buying plastic dreydls (tops) and gold-wrapped chocolate coins called Hanukkah gelt, and then I cut up more than 600 paper chits. In case my Hanukkah idea was a dud, I bought and signed Christmas cards for the kids.

As I was leaving for my Hanukkah mission, my friend Kitt arrived at my house with an enormous 50-pound pillowcase full of candy. "A little something for the kids," she explained.

TRAVEL TO TUNISIA

Judith Fein
adventure travel, cultural immersion, exotic travel, north africa, small group travel, travel, travel photography, travel writing, tunisia

by Judith Fein

BE A TRAVELER AND NOT A TOURIST; IF YOU TRAVEL BETTER, YOU WILL WRITE BETTER.

Join award-winning travel journalists/photographers Judith Fein and Paul Ross on a CULTURAL IMMERSION TRIP TO TUNISIA, MAY 8-22, 2009.

 

The goal of the trip is to teach participants how to travel deeply in a safe, exciting, exotic, accessible country and to write about their experiences.  The pieces will be read aloud to the group every day, and hands-on instruction will be offered in travel photography, no matter what your level of proficiency.

 

The 14-night, l5 day trip will include all the highlights of Tunisia-- from the ruins of Carthage to the island of Djerba during a festival dedicated to a woman; from cave dwellers to souk shopping; from Berber villages to Bedouin markets to the stillness of the Sahara desert at night. In addition to visiting the sites, participants will have contact with Tunisians from all walks of life--AND THIS IS THE HEART OF THE TRIP. You will go into homes, music studios, caves, kitchens, mosques and spend time with open-hearted, friendly locals while learning about their culture--how they think, eat, work, live, create art, worship and feel about the world. 

Year End Thoughts

Judith Fein

by Judith Fein

The year 2008 is hobbling to the finish line. It's been a tough twelve months for many people--personally, economically, professionally, emotionally. Everywhere, holiday banners and songs proclaim "joy to the world" and a "season of joy." But how can one find joy at this time? As always, we look to our travels for lessons.


In Northwest Arkansas, Charles Banks Wilson, 90 years old, has endured health challenges, but keeps himself buoyant by doing something remarkable: painting every day. His work hangs in major galleries and he could easily retire and gaze out the window at the cycles of nature, but he goes into his home studio, squeezes oil paints onto his palette and dips his brush into the colors. We're not sure he whistles while he works, but his paintings reflect his deep appreciation of people and life.



In Damascus, Syria, a successful and well-known restaurant owner confessed that his satisfaction does not come from renown or money. He derives joy from helping orphans and refugees.

In Sydney, Australia, a famous didgeridoo player died this year. He made a name in world music and was an inspiration to musicians and fans of Aboriginal art and culture. To commemorate his life, many Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people gathered at the harbor; the former played the didgeridoo to accompany him back to dreamtime. In the middle of their mourning, there was great joy.