Travel Animal of the Month: The Pig

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Links:
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• Pig organs are so similar to ours we may have heart transplants from pigs some day.
• Okie-Dokie comes in second at the Iowa State Fair.
  
• Egypt slaughtered up to 400,000 pigs.
• If you're interested, it's safe to eat pork.
• Past Travel Animals: The Walrus and Prairie Dogs.

Martha's Vineyard: The Moment

Most trips -- at least the good ones -- have a "moment." An experience that either transforms you, or hits you with an kid-like sense of awe of a new place. Even a new look at an old one. When in Burma last year, I biked on a dirt road out of a village you could only get to by boat, and stopped. Farmers called out nearby and women carrying huge stacks of peppers and onions on their heads stopped to chat. I knew it before, but it drove it home for me: "stop travel" is even more rewarding than "slow travel."

I had a moment in Martha's Vineyard too, when I spent a week there researching last month. I previously had the impression, as some outsiders do, that it was a snobby place for the rich -- I wouldn't necessarily be welcomed. I couldn't have been more wrong. And I realized that right when I got there.

Arriving late on the new direct ferry from New York City to Oak Bluffs on Friday nights – nicknamed the “vomit comet” by some seasick passengers (see video below on how to avoid nausea) – I picked up my guesthouse keys from the island’s only brewpub, Oak Bluffs’ Offshore Alehouse, and found myself sipping a tasty pale ale and discussing Larry from “The Three Stooges” with a couple “wash ashore” residents relocated from Rhode Island and North Carolina. One, the bartender Glen (who looks a bit like Larry, to be honest), soon broke into a soliloquy. "People are good at two things at least. Take Kevin Costner." This I didn't expect. "People think he can just act. But I have seen his band. The guy can play guitar really well -- and he can sing too." (Judge for yourself.)



Open bar stools often lead to chit-chat, but not quite as immediate and unguarded as this. And it was only the beginning.

Vera Shorter, an active African American NAACP leader in her eighties who offered me vodka or chocolate cake on arrival of her Vineyard Haven home, first moved to the island in 1976 because her and her husband had problems buying property in New York City. "The story would always change when we showed up and they saw we were black." She found none of that on the island. "It's welcoming to everyone." Her tip to visitors: “Just go up to people and say hi. No one acts funny about it.”

I did this a lot -- talking with yacht club members, fishers, boat makers, farmers in muscle shirts named Rusty, puppeteers. After getting an unexpected invite to the members-only Edgartown Yacht Club, a gussied-up middle-aged woman leaned in to a conversation I was having with another about why Menemsha sunsets are the best on the island. "Just take a cooler of beer," she warned, solid advice considering Menemsha is a dry town. "Otherwise you'll look like a loser."

My expanded view of the Vineyard came from all these experiences, but one incident more than the others.

Back from the beach, two 12-old girls were shuffling their feet in a public park and call each other “goose” and “centipede.” They purposely ignored a nearby boy who sullenly rapped a few 50 Cent verses. It’d be a typical summer night scene on Martha’s Vineyard, but these kids were “year-rounders.” Their families stay on after the crowds of “summer people” and weekenders thin out after Labor Day.

Also they were wearing deerskin.

I was part of an audience of 25 to watch the kids, along with a couple dozen Wampanoag re-enactors, perform “Legends of Moshup” outside their tribal headquarters at the island’s remote east end. That it was nearly empty took nothing away of seeing such an event under starlight on the opposite side of the island from most visitors. It certainly crushed any lingering sense that Martha’s Vineyard was solely a playground for the rich and famous.

And it was a moment.

Martha's Vineyard: Kid Heaven

The Obamas are taking a week off at Martha's Vineyard -- and I can't think of a better place to be with your kids. There's oodles of things for kids to do: jumping off the bridge from Jaws, riding the Oak Bluffs' Flying Horses Carousel, hiking, biking, flirting with each other by the Edgartown harbor (don't think I didn't notice!), or maybe feeding the pigs at the kid-run Farm Institute. When I visited the island recently I saw kids all over the island -- usually the latest installment of an arc of overlapping generations. Their parents bring them each summer, and someday will return the favor to their kids.

It's something much of America comes to envy. Growing up in Oklahoma, I spent summers dodging locusts, jumping fences for short-cuts to get to air-conditioned stores, and occasionally going to most of America's favorite destination: "the lake."

If you're not near a sea, lakes -- usually never referred to by their proper name -- fulfill water-based dreams (and beer-soaked ones by age 17). Often they're a muddy, artificial one like Tulsa's Keystone -- or the one made in Deliverance outside Atlanta (Lake Lanier). I remember vacationing near Kilgore, Texas, one hot summer and diving to reach waters a shade cooler than lukewarm, opening my eyes and seeing nothing but darkness -- then a catfish poked its head out of the abyss, blew a bubble at me, and disappeared. I was scared.

It's tempting for some us non-coasters to shrug off Martha's Vineyard as an exclusive, out-of-reach country club of Kennedys. But it really isn't. I learned on a recent visit that locals are, for one thing, a diverse lot, and equally welcoming (more so than the Hamptons). And you don't have to pay $50,000 a week to stay. There are campgrounds, hostels and $100 guesthouses, plus rental houses for about the same.

It's just another form of lake, but with benefits.

If you go with kids, pick up a kids' guidebook to the island called Quest at Vineyard Haven's Bunch of Grapes bookstore. It features a few activity-based itineraries to island beaches, swimming holes and hiking trails -- all created by island students.

Favorite Place in the World

Travel talk is a lot like the "Price Is Right Game" Plinko. You drop little chips that bounce on metal pegs unexpectedly left and right (like chatting between funny souvenirs, stolen wallets, great banana pancakes, taxi scams, mountains climbed, dandruff). Eventually on the gameshow, the chip lands in one of the side-by-side buckets that offer prizes ($5000, $1000, $0). For travel talk it usually leads to a single question: "What's your favorite place you've ever been?"

After spending about a couple days of every five traveling since 9/11, more or less, I get asked this a lot. I tend to have two answers:

[smug reply] Travel isn't a contest, brother. Sounds like bongo-circle chatter, but truly travel is less about the destination than how you travel. Seeing Red Square, the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal and Tikal were remarkable, each, but I had about equal fun driving alone across Nebraska's panhandle and seeing where Crazy Horse died. Or across Bulgaria. Though some are places I'm more likely to return than others (for example, I'll never stop going to Mexico or Vietnam -- the latter's version of "The Price is Right" shown below), I can never say one is the best, or even the favorite.

[real reply] Home. Nothing really beats home after a long trip. When your travel radar and curiosity are still on overdrive, after a trip on the Trans-Siberian or a train ride to Montréal, and you see where you live more closely, with more perspective than before. It's the only time I really stop and chat with strangers, note tiny architectural details atop an early 20th-century apartment building, how waitstaff are dressed (or the fact they give you free coffee refills!), and how we line up for bagels or sit wherever we want in movie theaters.

Home's great in those days before it starts to settle to routine, BUT it takes travel to find it.

Scarborough Fair (UK) vs Woodstock (USA)

IT'S ON!
What camp are you in, beadful headbanders with flowers in their hair (and LSD in their bloodstream)? Or flowing neck-to-ankle 'kirtle' tunics, sleeveless jackets (the prequel to muscle shirts) and a little bustle in your hedgerow?

Forty years ago Saturday the world's most famous three-day testament to peace, LSD and jams hit the (upstate) New York skies in a field nowhere near, relatively speaking, its namesake, Woodstock. Traditionalist Brits -- who sat out the event (see the blog Traditionalist Brits Against Woodstock) -- have protested ever since, noting how an American upstart timed its opening as the same day as a Medieval event on England's east coast called Scarborough Fair. (True fact: both events began on August 15.)

And the gloves have been off ever since.

--> Let's VOTE to decide who would win in a fight: Woodstock or Scarborough Fair.
Please hit the buttons to the right this week to determine, democratically (something medieval Scarborough couldn't comprehend). Voting ends 3pm Friday Woodstock time.

GAUGING THE EVENTS
Before you click twixt or twaxt, consider these four factors of festivals and fairs.

"EVENT SUCCESS"
I wondered what makes a festival a success, so I called Mr Orvis Melvin of Waxahachie, Texas' Scarborough Renaissance Festival. The festival, which turns 29 next April, was named after the Simon and Garfunkel version of "Scarborough Fair."Melvin said he would have preferred to have been at Woodstock ("a historical thing we're still talking about"). Regarding success, he offered these nuggets.

'A successful festival is when people can walk in and sort of forget all the myriad of problems, small and large. It's pure escapism. And you get an enormous variety of stimulus -- the smells of food, the sounds of music and cries of hawkers, the colors of costumes and signs.'

Edge: Woodstock


"INTEGRITY"
Some critics have suggested Woodstock was naive, or a manipulation of yuppie businessmen looking to rake in on hippie fanaticism. But then again, Scarborough Fair was just a mall. Merely a 45-day trade fair with artisans in cloaks SELLING the things they made.

On the other hand, Mr Melvin noted how renaissance and medieval fairs in the US are not a "faithful re-creation." He added, "Americans are great at creating worlds that never existed." Even his fair? "We try to limit the reality of the times -- the plague, the filth, the crushing poverty."

Analysis: draw.

"THE MUSIC"
Compare



with


Edge: Woodstock

"LEGACY"
While Scarborough Fair remains known for its bizarre ask-for-the-impossible song -- which infuriates me, for one -- the fair itself didn't warrant a mention in Lonely Planet's new entry for Scarborough -- and the town's website seems more keen about its cricket festival than the fair, which has no mention. Woodstock has had a scattering of sequels and one really bad song devoted to it. But nothing as thuggish as these demands.

Slight edge: Woodstock

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Who wins? It's up to you.
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--> Reader result: Woodstock over Scar Fair, 3-1, with two votes for a draw.

How do Civil War Re-enactors Pick Who Dies First?

WHAT TRAVEL TEACHES

If you're like me at all, you've spent countless nights burning trying to solve an immortal question: at Civil War and other battle re-enactments, who dies first? Are newbloods asked to shed theirs as the cannonballs begin to fly? Or do those tardy with dues drop early? Or is it just the unlucky, the worn out, or -- after a few days camping in a hot summer -- the stinky?


Last month, I attended the 146th anniversary of the Battle of Gettsyburg, in south-central Pennsylvania, to find out. I wasn't sure how I'd be received. At an open field a few miles from the actual field, I joined hundreds of troops in gray and blue, and as many observers drinking cold lemonade, shopping for hats and toy rifles, or listening to period music played under field tents. A historian from the nearby Gettysburg National Military Park -- which is wonderful to visit -- translated the scene of rows of soldiers on horseback tangled in sword clash and fake gunpowder from rifle shots. "There's much confusion out there."

As an Okie with a few Confederate swords in my family's collective attic, I gravitated towards the southern campsite between a couple skirmishes on the last of the three-day event. And I was surprised to hear half hailed from north of the Mason Dixon Line.

A younger northern re-enactor assumed the character of "Harrison Reed," who left his family in Albany to fight in gray. "I haven't spoken to them since '61," he said squinting into mid-day sun. One goateed dad (there were many) from upstate New York, Todd Smith, said he sided with the south because "they're more fun." His 12-year-old would be carrying the colors into a Pickett's Charge later that day, he said proudly despite both of their low chance of survival. (The Confederates saw high casualties in that disastrous attack.)

Everyone was united in why they were doing it -- for the bond with each other ("it's like a camping trip," one said; another: "you should hear the stories around the campfire at night") and more importantly a deep respect for military, past and present.

Patrick Jones, from Virginia, has been doing this for 10 years "to celebrate my three ancestors who fought for the south, and honor all those who gave their lives for what they thought was right." Did his ancestors die during the war? "No. One disappeared though," he said laughing. "And one finally surrendered two months after the war was over."

And in terms of how they pick who dies? Here's the confusing clarity:



One re-enactor suggested I could get started for "about $1000" -- that is if I wanted the full regalia and a big tent, all period-piece style. "We're everywhere, groups like us. Let me know and I'll hook you up." I might.

Of the Power of Travel Writing

Three American 'hikers' were detained in Iran after, apparently, straying across the Iraq-Iran border into a country that's surely paying attention to their writing records (one has reported from rebel-held territories in Sudan) as well as the pains the US went to to free journos in North Korea. The subject came up Thursday on NPR's On the Point, and I was feeling a fancy boots to be part of a huddle that included a State Department official and a former CIA guy. The latter, Robert Baer, guessed that the 'Berkeley bloggers' had to know what they're doing, saying he'd been 'in the area' and you have to 'cross on purpose.'

Not so, according to Joe of Joe's Trippin' blog, whom I found a couple hours earlier on Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree. He had been recently to the same hills outside Halabja, Iraq, and posted that 'it's impossible to know where Iraq ends and Iran begins.' I wrote him off-line to ask about it, and he told me: 'There used to be an open border just outside the city, but it has been closed for some time and there are no plans to open it. I was invited to celebrate with some locals in the hills, at which point they indicated (by pointing) there's Iran.'

That's not something noted in any articles of the event so far. And it's the place where travel journalists and travelers can fit into the news -- helping complete a picture that can all too often be skewed toward easily formed outside perceptions. Sometimes if you're only chasing news stories, you miss the story. Like the fact that Iraqi Kurdistan ('the Other Iraq') isn't what most would expect: it's a safe, booming place, with stylish cities with bowling alleys, whiskey bars and many locals who love Americans. Travel writing cannot replace traditional media, but (when not limited to crafting Top 10 lists) it can add to it.

Writers often strive to 'go further' than each other. Something that's been happening since way before 1890 when Anton Chekhov became the first 'Gulag tourist' by living in a penal colony on Sakhalin Island AND Joseph Conrad drifted up the heart-darkening Congo River. Often that leads travel writers to riskier, tougher places too, like Iraq. It can be a useful chest-beat, if the writer shows the broad, fair reality for those energized by the dreams dangled before them.

In a May article in the Guardian, for example, Kevin Rushby follows a fellow traveler who didn't 'give a flying f*ck' about the Foreign Office warnings against travel to Yemen. It's a fine article, and one that rightly dwells on the security issue of visiting, but I'm guessing that traveler, at least, felt differently a month later when nine tourists were slain there.

Sometimes a lot less is at stake in travel writing and experience. I've traveled across Bulgaria several times to write Lonely Planet's Eastern Europe guide. When a funny South African stoner I met at a Sofia hostel told me he was looking to buy property ('in the hills, with a garden and not many people around'), I knew where to point him: the eastern stretch of the Rodopi mountains, something not even in guidebooks yet. I forgot about it until last year, when I returned to Kardzhali in those same hills, and a local mentioned a nearby 'crazy South African guy.' We went to find him, driving one one-lane roads pastTurkish goat herders. And there he was, the same guy, now with a big home converted from an abandoned school in the hills, with a garden -- and his bong.

Bulgarian real estate agents focus on the beach or ski resorts. That tip came from being out there, traveling.

NYC Travel with Kids? Get thee to the Boroughs

THE 'DADDY TRAVELER' LOOKS HOME
If you're thinking of taking the family to New York City, a little advice. Get outa Manhattan, man. My six-month-old daughter's not exactly ready to partake in all, but I'm looking forward to introducing her to some of these great kid-friendly attractions in New York's other boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx & Staten Island).

Queens' Museum of the Moving Image. It's simply the best museum in the city. Met? MoMa? Dorks, by comparison. Where else can you play free vintage arcade games, overdub yourself saying 'we're not in Kansas anymore' from The Wizard of Oz, make your own 'flip book' you can buy, and see Robbie De Niro's mohawk wig from that eternal kid favorite Taxi Driver. It is awesome. (And free Friday nights.)

Queens' Museum of Art. While in the area, this museum -- in a former HQ for the UN, right in front of the Unisphere -- has the probably the coolest exhibit of all time: a 9335-sq-ft mini New York called the Panorama, with each building in the city shown. You walk in to one side, and go up a ramp encircling the city as lights simulate a day. It's fun trying to pick out a hotel or home or bagel shop you went to.

Staten Island. From Manhattan's tip, take the free Staten Island Ferry past the Statue of Liberty and get off on Staten Island. Instead of jumping back on another to Manhattan, hop on S40 bus to the nearby Snug Harbor Cultural Center with a kid's museum, the lovely New York Chinese Scholar Gardens, all set on lovely Ivy League-type grounds.

Canoe the Gowanus Canal. They say they used to dump bodies in Brooklyn's ugly canal under an overpass of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Now a public boathouse, the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club -- one of many across town -- offers free canoes of the (somewhat) cleaned-up canal on various days for kids.

Bronx Zoo. There are zoos in Central Park and Prospect Park, but the one in the Bronx is an all-timer. Here since 1899, it's set on a wide he Madagascar exhibit is new. Ask about the wild beaver that came to live on the zoo's river. 'Probably got here from Connecticut,' one employee surmised to me.

The Brooklyn Children's Museum. It's the country's first, and it was expanded recently. Fridays in summer hosts the Family Date Night with music, dance and food.

Coney Island. It's sleazy, sure, but no more sleazy than the Texas State Fair. Ride up the 1927 Cyclone -- a vintage roller coaster, grab a coney in its birthplace at Nathan's Famous, if your kid is mature enough consider a try at 'shoot the freak' with a paint gun, and hop into the New York Aquarium to see a toddler walrus. Oh, and there is a beach too.

Minor league baseball. Yankees want $300 for a ticket? Forget it. Staten Island Yankees and Brooklyn Cyclones have better-situated parks on the water and tickets for under $10. Try going when they play each other -- there's no love lost between the two teams.

Pizza & Ice Cream. Manhattan thinks it has the best of both. That's up for debate. Hard to beat the two-fer under the Brooklyn Bridge. Grimaldi's for quick pies on red-and-white checkered tables with signed Frank Sinatra photos on the wall is the classic pizzeria. Don't worry about the lines; it moves fast. Afterward walk down to the Fulton Ferry Pier -- where George Washington escaped during the disastrous Battle of Brooklyn a month after independence was declared -- for a cone from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory, set in a cute fire tower. (You can see the Statue of Liberty if you go to the far right corner of the pier.)

On CNN International

'UNUSUAL' IS THE NEW USUAL
Something unusual happened to me last week. I got invited onto CNN International's morning broadcast with Anjali Rao to talk about 'unusual travel.' That meant make-up, sitting with other guests in a compact 'green room' and talking with one's fiancee (a Hawaiian living in Las Vegas) before staring into a blank monitor and talking about life in the world's coldest city (Yakutsk, Russia), so-called 'dark tourism' experiences (including cemeteries, the World Trade Center and Auschwitz), before plugging the funny things you find around the corner in Paris: sewers.

Some of these ideas are rather extreme, but the idea of doing things unusually -- be it volunteering a day or simply going to secondary attractions (perhaps Laos instead of Thailand, Lisbon instead of Barcelona) -- is becoming a growing norm as travel 'catches up with itself' and more travelers are feeling comfortable going further than every before.

Above is a short behind-the-scenes video of my CNN debut if you're interested. Or go here.

9 Reasons to Go to Toledo

LOOKING FOR A LITTLE TOLEDO LOVE
Toledo is the Rust Belt's Kansas. A stand-in for joke-butts, like the tag of a snide, faux incredulous remarks ('where you from, To-le-do?'). Even Jay Leno got into it. On his penultimate performance hosting The Tonight Show, he attacked the Ohioan city. 'JetAmerica has announced $9 flights, making it the first budget airline in the country,' he said in his monologue. 'The catch is you have to go to Toledo.'

Cathy Miller, from the Toledo CVB, is a Toledo lifer, who doesn't have the answer why there's so much dissing. 'I guess it's because we're a mid-sized Rust Belt city that's never really made a name for itself,' she said by phone. 'But I think we're our own worst enemy.' She says there's plenty to do here -- much potential -- but Toledo, and Toledoans, need to do a better job promoting it. Kevin Knepley, manager at Tony Packo's, meanwhile, is pretty sure everyone already knows how good the city is. 'It's an absolute gem -- always has been.'

Though Jet America went bust before its first flight, things may look up. There are great free museums and new bike trails drawing more attention to its river shore. Plus, a new convention center is set to open soon will house a new minor league hockey team and rock concerts. And there's more than enough to fill a weekend for those in the area -- and willing to challenge the same ol' outside perception of a town once nicknamed 'Frog City' for the hopping inhabitants of nearby marshes.

If you go, here's my nine-point planner for a two- or three-day visit.

Stay at the Mansion View Inn. This B&B occupies a huge 1878 mansion in the 'Old West End,' a historic hood with (allegedly) more old Victorian homes than anywhere east of the Mississippi. Rooms are nicely decorated, if a bit flowery, and it beats a chain. Rates start at $129.

Catch the Mud Hens. Remember Klinger on MASH? He wore a Mud Hens hat. The local minor league baseball team has, since 2002, played in what Newsweek called the best minor league ballpark in America (Fifth Third Bank Field). Go, buy a ballcap, and try to figure out what in the world a 'mud hen' is.

--> Way before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League baseball by joining the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, African American player Moses Fleetwood Walker played for the Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884.

Buy The Blade. Travel rule: Always but the town paper at least once. Second rule: In Toledo, buy it every day you're there. Because it's futile to not support a daily paper -- The Blade -- which has a more weekly sounding name, than the actual entertainment weekly: Toledo City Paper.

Bike along the Maumee. Speaking on nomenclature merits, is there a better named river anywhere than the Maumee? Pronounced 'Mommy', the river runs along downtown, with new bike trails to reach a growing scene of outdoor restaurants. Afterwards, try a spin on parts of the nearby 63-mile Wabash Cannonball Trail, a rails-to-trails project.

See the Glass Pavilion. The Toledo Museum of Art created a 'glass pavilion' in 2006 to tribute the city's past era as America's 'Glass City.' It caught the eye of The New York Times. And, hey, like the highly regarded city zoo, it's free to visit.

Look for a copy of 'We're Strong for Toledo.' It's the city song. And it should be on any visitor's iPod.

Visit little or unknown war sites. The tense Ohio/Michigan relationship was born in the 1830s during the Toledo War over ownership of the 'Toledo Strip.' Find out what the fuss was about, or bike -- on the Wabash trail (above) -- to the site of the Battle of Fallen Timbers, a 1794 Revolutionary War left-over between US troops and one of the largest Native American federations.

Go kayak Put-In-Bay. It's a kid-friendly island on Lake Erie by day, a party scene by night. It's also some of the area's best kayaking, optimistically (if awkwardly) dubbed 'the San Juans of Washington, of Ohio.' You don't need wheels. Take the Jet Express ferry from nearby Port Clinton, then rent mopeds, bikes or kayaks. Maybe try some taffy.

Tribute the king of carousels! A neighbor of Toledo, not New York or Fun Town USA, gave us all Americans our first collective spin on a carousel. That was in 1841. The original's gone, but Mansfield's Richland Carrousel Park (sic) has a recreated one.

Get the world's most famous Hungarian hot dog. Tony Packo's was a local favorite for hot dogs until February 24, 1976, when Klinger (played by real-live Toledoan Jamie Farr) changed everything, by plugging it on MASH. Now some 800 framed, autographed styrofoam buns testify to famous visitors (eg the last couple presidents, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Motley Crue's Tommy Lee). Stick with the original location at 1902 Front St in the old Hungarian part of town, Birmingham, east of the river. A dog costs $2.69.

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By the way, the town's named after the Spanish city -- possibly -- because Washington Irving (who wrote about headless goons) liked the Spanish town and suggested it to his brother, an area resident, in 1832.