National Geographic’s 2012 “Travelers of the Year”

There appear to be a few common threads in what people want to know when hearing a travel tale: What was the most bizarre thing you saw there? How did you prepare for your trip? Biggest regret? What would you say to someone who wants to do something like this but is afraid?

The questions asked of National Geographic’s “Travelers of the Year” hit upon age-old questions that reveal that people want to travel more, but don’t always know how, whether that stems from fear of leaving one’s comfort zone or the perceived lack of time or funds. The discussion tonight with photographer Theron Humphrey of This Wild Idea, teenager Booker Mitchell of Booker Travels, high school librarian Paula Busey, and travel writer Heather Greenwood Davis of Globetrotting Mama demonstrated the variety of ways in which people make space in their lives to travel.

Booker’s words resonated with the audience and the others in the panel when he emphasized that you don’t need that much time or money to travel: You can be a traveler in your own city. You can choose a new way to walk (or skateboard, in his case) to work every day, and in a city the size of NYC you’d never see the same thing two days in a row.

Heather, who traveled to many different countries on an extended trip with her husband and two young children, noted that most people expressed concern when she told them what she was doing – concern that she was endangering her kids by taking them out of school and into the rest of the world for a year. She felt this was mostly fear directed at places that were far away. This kind of distance is, of course, more than geographic. Psychological distance is more difficult to overcome than physical distance. Paula spoke about how she brought a Maasai warrior to meet her high school students in Colorado as a way of beginning to bridge that distance.

Theron, spurred on by a broken heart, a death in the family, and a dull job in product photography, hit the road for a year in his truck interviewing and photographing strangers. Every day for a full 365 days, he recorded a person’s life story through photographs and interview clips. The impressive result is This Wild Idea, funded entirely by a Kickstarter campaign, as well as a couple of fun side projects. He drove 66,000 miles around the United States, walked up to strangers every day, and learned about the real value of personal connection. Because after all, travel isn’t about being able to say you saw the pyramids at Giza or flew around the world, it’s about your own experience. It’s about how it changes you.

This was an inspiring conversation, and one that more people need to have. If you’re interested in reading more about these stories and others, go to Travelers of the Year. Video from tonight’s event will also be up on that site when available. Go forth and learn!

Transportation and Urbanism News

A few links to interesting transportation and urbanism news from the past couple of days:

• Greater Greater Washington, “Plan your next bike trip with BikePlanner.org.”
  Big news for those in Washington, DC who get around by bicycle – BikePlanner.org, just launched, is a great new tool from OpenPlans and BikeArlington that will help you plan your journey, whether you’re using your own bike or a Capital Bikeshare bike. You can choose whether flatness, speed, or safety (bike-friendliness) are your primary concerns when routing your trip by moving the crosshairs within the triangle at the bottom-left.
• Digital Urban, “Using Oyster Card journeys to understand how, why and where we travel in London.”
  The versatile Oyster Card is a public transportation card with an RFID that allows users to travel using the London Underground, public buses, river buses, trams, and other rail services. As detailed in the linked video, the Oyster Card dataset has allowed researchers to analyze travel patterns within London.
• TheWashCycle, “Making the Anacostia Metro more bike friendly.”
  It’s always great to hear more plans for the bicycle network in Anacostia. Anacostia, though quite hilly in places, has a growing cyclist community. These proposed ideas will help grow the number of multi-modal trips people make in the area. (On that note, having a Bikeshare membership has greatly increased the number of Metro to bike journeys I make.)

Beautiful Travel Photography from International Photographer

I recently stumbled upon this gorgeous set of photos from International Photographer: Icelandic Photographic Roadtrip

Click through the image or link above to see the photo sets from a 23-day trip through Iceland. I would agree with his note:

Take your time! There are lots of photographs to see, but each is the fruit of painstaking work, and there are many details you’ll miss if you browse too fast. So go gently, perhaps viewing just a few days at a time, if necessary. That way you’ll keep your gaze fresh!

I found his website while looking for travelogues from people who’ve been to Iceland, just searching for ideas of how to make our upcoming trip especially memorable. From this account, I got the idea to tent camp during the nights we’re driving around the Ring Road. Being late September, we’ll have to dress warmly – in many layers – and be prepared for a lot of wind and rain. At the same time, it appears that campsites are widespread and well-maintained, so I’m excited for an adventure with a few comforts (like hot water!).

Sunday Afternoon Links

Been busy lately with work, side projects, and visiting friends, so here are a couple links to check out for now.

MapCrunch: Randomized Google Streetview images. It’s fun to select “Hide location” and guess with friends where in the world the view is from. We’ve spent probably hours doing this, tallying up points and starting to learn the differences between the features of the different Scandanavian countries, for example. You can think of it as a high-speed contest in the vein of Andrew Sullivan’s View from Your Window contest. But yes, it’s absolutely geeky.

Try this one:

but does it float: A collection of art projects with a tendency towards the abstract. Great mix of photography, drawings, typography, computer-generated imagery, etc. It’s easy to lose a lot of time exploring this site because you can scroll down for as long as you’d like.

Graph of Cosmetic Surgical Procedures: This is how the number of different types of cosmetic surgery in America changed from 2000 to 2011. I find it interesting to note that the number of plastic surgeries dropped from 1.9 million in 2000 to 1.6 million in 2011 – a drop of 17%.

Other notes:

Planning to do the One Day Hike this year. Really excited about doing it but haven’t done much in the way of training yet – guess I need to toughen up my feet and my resolve.

I’m visiting a friend in Boulder, CO in May. I’d love any suggestions about what to see/do there, since it’ll be my first time there. We’re planning to do some hiking and sample many delicious microbrews.

And speaking of cool cities, I’ve also been getting to know Baltimore, MD a bit better and it’s a really fun, artistic place. Last night we grabbed a beer at the Brewer’s Art and struck up a conversation with a Texan girl who’d been living in Baltimore awhile before moving to DC. She happened to be back up there this weekend and we talked a bit about all the great (and more affordable) places to eat in Baltimore, the way the music scene has been changing in the last few years, and how she’s trying to convince all of her friends in DC to move to Baltimore.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard current and former Baltimore residents rave about how great of a place it is to live. Its proximity to DC means that there are even people who opt to live there and commute daily into DC – trading a shorter commute for lower cost of living, amongst other things. Job-wise, I’m not sure how attractive Baltimore is, however.

Another thing I find interesting about Baltimore is that there’s a group, Baltimore Green Currency, that is trying to spread a form of local currency called the Bnote. They report that over 130 local businesses currently accept Bnotes as payment. One of the bars we visited let you purchase Natty Bohs for 1 Bnote each; the equivalent of only 91 cents for a beer!

Everyday Lessons Learned: September 2011, Weeks 3 and 4

Somehow these last couple of weeks have been even busier than the week before! Sorry for the delay in posting – here are the things I’ve learned every day for the past two weeks. Any cool new knowledge you’ve picked up lately?

16: In many places, we’re pumping groundwater faster than it can be replenished – in certain parts of the Ogallala Aquifer, for example, groundwater is being pumped 20x faster than the aquifer can be replenished. This can result in a lower elevation of the ground surface in the surrounding area.

17: The penny-farthing bicycle was named for this early bike’s resemblance to two coins sitting side by side – the larger penny and the smaller farthing, which was worth 1/4 of a penny or 1/960th of a pound sterling. (Bike Snob: Systematically & Mercilessly Realigning the World of Cycling by Christopher Koelle)

18: The Kyopo Project by artist CYJO, on exhibit until October 14, 2012 at the National Portrait Gallery in DC, explores the variety of experiences of Korean-Americans. The term ‘kyopo’ refers to a Korean who grew up outside of Korea. Well worth visiting!

19: At one point in time, you could send children through the post. Unbelievable? Well, there are stories of at least a couple of instances…

20: We’re primed to spend more when we go shopping through a number of psychological techniques that aren’t immediately obvious to most of us. Martin Lindstrom explains a few of these with the example of the Whole Foods grocery stores. Those flowers by the front entrance? Unconscious to you, their presence plants the thought of freshness in your mind, since they are so short-lived and perishable. The drops of water continually misted onto the fruits and veggies? They also call up the idea of freshness, though the extra water causes the fruits and vegetables to go bad more quickly. Lindstrom is the author of a book called Brandwashed that discusses more of these techniques of manipulation that marketers employ so effectively.

21: In New Orleans, all-day parties called boucheries are held in backyards and will often involve cooking up an entire pig – every part, including the blood, as Anthony Bourdain discovered on No Reservations.

22: Don’t wear herringbones, houndstooth or small plaids on-air. These patterns don’t capture well on TV cameras: they appear to ‘dance’ around because of the moiré effect.

23: This is probably an obvious fact to many, but South Korea has the fastest Internet speeds in the world – averaging 17.62 Mbps. The United States is in 26th place, with an average speed of 4.93 Mbps. (From a study by Pando Networks)

24: Steeling is the process of re-aligning the edge of your kitchen knife to keep it sharp. Honing steels are the steel rods that are used to hone the blade edge, and ideally, this should be done every time you use the knife.

25: Here’s a neat website called Inconspicuous Consumption – recommended for those interested in sociology, consumer culture, or product design.

26: Mosquitoes can be attracted to you by many cues, including the carbon dioxide in your breath, skin chemicals such as lactic acid, or body temperature. Basically, if you’re a breathing and sweating human being, you’re a target – though certain people seem to naturally attract more mosquitoes than others. Personally, I’ve been eaten alive by mosquitoes lately and wouldn’t mind if autumn settled in quickly.

27: Science explains: how a riderless bicycle can steer itself! Hint: it’s physics. However, the research of Andy Ruina and Jim Papadopoulos on gyroscopic torques and trail has found that these are not required to have a self-steering bicycle, as was commonly believed.

28: Eating three meals a day didn’t become the norm in the United States until as late as the 20th century. Dinner used to be the meal served at home around the early afternoon, but was moved into the evening as cities grew and more people worked further from home; the lighter mid-day meal then became known as lunch.

29: Incredible photos from the mass games in North Korea by Sam Gellman. Via Wikipedia: “Today, mass games are regularly performed only in North Korea, where they take place to celebrate national holidays such as the birthdays of rulers Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.”

30: We’re not the only office who decided to put our geekiness on display to the world around us with Post-It Space Invaders and Mario scenes on our windows. Check out Post-It War, a project out of France.

Why We Remain in Motion

From ‘The Return of the Native‘ in the Urbanophile blog:

The act of moving away from home unmoors us from the limits of our origins. It’s no surprise that the college educated are more likely to migrate. It isn’t just the skills, it’s that four years away from home opens a world of possibility in our eyes. Even at 22, if you return, it’s to a difference place than you left, because you’re a different person. Because those who didn’t leave haven’t experienced this change, there’s an estrangement from your past. You no longer fit in. There’s something wrong. The cliche is true: you can never go home again.

The full post is worth reading for a discussion on “boomerang” migration in the United States.

Everyday Lessons Learned: March 2011, Week 2

It’s been a busy past week and I just got home. Before I log off, here’s a quick weekly wrap up of things I’ve learned in the last 7 days. I usually jot down notes towards the end of the day (or whenever I think, ooh, that’s something new, and think I’ll forget) so it’s a “notes on scraps of paper” version.

08: From Matador Network: “The ‘Sliver by the River’ (aka the Bywater district of New Orleans) is famous for its Francophone roots and classic colorful southern Louisiana homes.”

09: The Scoville heat index is a measure of how spicy a pepper is. The world’s hottest pepper is the Naga Jolokia, with a rating of over 1,000,000 on the Scoville heat index. As I’m a huge fan of spicy foods, this is more intriguing than scary.

Bangalore is the fastest growing metropolis in India, thanks in part to huge international companies like Infosys, and is known as the “Silicon Valley of India.”

10: I spent some time reading arguments about industrial agriculture vs organic agriculture as methods of feeding the world’s growing population, but a lot of that’s still processing…

11: This little mark, ¶, is called the pilcrow. On the Shady Characters blog, Keith Houston describes the pilcrow with a subtle poetic flare:

They crop up surprisingly frequently, bookending paragraphs on websites with a typographic bent, for instance, and teaming up with the section symbol in legal documents to form picturesque reference marks such as §3, ¶7.

12: Urban parts of Japan like Tokyo have been equipped in some unique ways to deal with its specific geographic situation. For example, they’ve engineered high rise buildings that sit on a foundation that moves within a slightly concave “bowl”, to allow the buildings to move around slightly when they’re struck by a force of nature like a quake. Actually, much of Japan’s modern architecture is designed to account for these natural disaster situations. The process of modifying existing structures to make them more earthquake-proof, however, is known as seismic retrofitting (a more after the fact kind of method as new building techniques become known), and is used to reduce the risks from tornadoes, earthquakes, and the like.

13: According to a friend: with Westerners who’ve lived for a long time in East Africa, you often hear stories of several friends who’ve committed suicide because of the psychological effects of certain anti-malarials. Certain ones can have severe effects on one’s mental state, and so are only recommended to people without any history of psychological issues.

14: Slugging is a practice of impromptu carpooling/hitchhiking that’s common in the DC metropolitan area, and not very common anywhere else in the world. Give this article a read: Slugging – The People’s Transit, by Emily Badger.

Our Freight Transit System Needs an Overhaul

The GAO has a study on the much higher externalized costs (including congestion, pollution, and crashes) of freight trucking over rail/water freight transportation.

The report acknowledges that “the current configuration of transportation infrastructure can limit the shifting of freight among modes.”

More analysis at DC.StreetsBlog.

Everyday Lessons Learned: February 2011, Week 4

22: Payola. That’s a radio term for the payment from a record company to a DJ in exchange for record airplay. A spot of history on this: “Payola, or the Payola Scandal, came to a head in the 1960s when DJ Alan Freed (the man who coined the term, “Rock and Roll”) and 8 other disc-jockeys were accused of taking money in exchange for record airplay.”

23: The Conet Project. Do some research on this work of shortwave radio recordings – it’s fascinating. You can even listen to recordings.

24: I’d seen theremins played at concerts before (it’s rare, and a treat), but never knew what they were called. The theremin is a musical instrument played by waving your hand in front of it. The antennas detect the movement and translate it into the instrument’s pitch and volume. See one being played by its creator, Léon Theremin, in this video.

Shinichi Maruyama, Kusho

25: My coworker Ashley taught me another one of the longest words in the English language: floccinaucinihilipilification, pronounced by breaking it down to flocci-nauci-nihil-pili-fication.

26: Steve Wiebe holds the live and taped world records in Donkey Kong. From the documentary The King of Kong (2007), which sounds pretty boring – it really is about gamers trying to beat the Donkey Kong arcade machine records – but turns out to be a great story.

27: Coelacanths are fish that were believed to be long extinct, but have been discovered recently along the eastern coast of Africa and off the Indonesian isles. (A related note: don’t click on the Wikipedia article for lungfish unless you want to see a raw photograph of a dissected lungfish… not for the squeamish or the about-to-eat-dinner.)

28: The Japanese word enso is represented by a stylized circle, a calligraphic stroke to mean emptiness, oneness, and the experience of enlightenment in Zen Buddhism.

Everyday Lessons Learned: February 2011, Week 1

01: My pasta tells me the longer I cook it, the higher the glycemic index (GI) level is. Hmm, so is that good or bad?The glycemic index is a rating of how carbohydrates affect blood sugar levels, and apparently a lower-GI food is preferable because your body will digest the glucose more slowly and evenly.

02: A coworker makes her own masala chai and gave me a run-through of how it’s made. Quite simple. She also tells me that “masala” is the Hindi word for spices, and “chai” just means tea.

03: “The Answer to the Riddle is Me.” David Maclean shares his experience of losing his memory in India: “On October 13, 2002, I woke up in a train station in Secunderabad, India, with no passport and no idea who I was or why I was in India.” Listen to his story here.

04: Cape Froward (Cabo Froward) is the southern tip of South America. And my friend Tif’s been there on a five-day hike. Awesome.

05: A pantoum is a type of poem that uses a formal pattern of repetition and originated from a Malay song form. The pantoum was adapted by French poets in the Age of Imperialism. (Source and example here.)

06: Learned about Super Bowl betting squares – and won a nice chunk of cash at the end of the 3rd quarter. 🙂

07: Grid cells are neurons that overlay a grid made up of equilateral triangles onto our field of vision – and work together with other cells (border cells, head-direction cells, place cells, etc) to orient you in a space. It’s what you need to navigate a physical space. Kind of weird to think about.