Why You Should Never Eat Squirrels

Had the pleasure of talking turquoise, Kansas side roads, Hwy 50 and why you shouldn't ever eat squirrel on Peter Greenberg's November 21 podcast.

Here's the segment:

76-Second Travel Show: "Pilgrim Hats, They Real?"

Episode #010
F E A T U R I N G * 2 2 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

NO BUCKLE PLEASE

Americans celebrate the country's greatest holiday this week, and one must ask, again, with a sigh, about pilgrim hats. What were they called, did pilgrims at the famed 1621 picnic with the Wampanoag really wear them, how can I get one?

My Google searches found surprisingly little other than a video tutorial how to make one. And, out on the streets, walking the aisles of Wal Mart, Walgreen's, CVS in Oklahoma City, I discovered even less: despite Thanksgiving's enduring lure for American families, you'll find no pilgrim hats sandwiched between Halloween left-overs or Christmas ornaments and fake reindeer.

Apparently the pilgrim hats as we know them stem from the Spanish "capotain" or "sugar-loaf," so hip to men and women of London in the mid 1600s. And to Puritans wanting to look fussed up at Sunday meetings.

They looked fetching, but weren't very practical. Transforming a beaver pelt into one was laborious and buying one was expensive. In a wonderful 1896 New York Times article called "The Hats Men Wore," a quote from the 17th century lashes out on a felt hat called the "sugar-loaf." The writer complains the hats are "so incommodious... that every puffe of wind deprived us of them, requiring the employment of one hand to keep them on."

--> "Incommodious" means "inconvenient." Don't feel bad. I didn't know it
either.

Strong 'puffes of wind' certainly were aplenty in Plymouth, Mass, the alleged site of the first Thanksgiving. And this painting of the event  suggests pilgrims weren't that into hats afterall. At least not during cross-cultural feasts. 

Peggy Baker of the Pilgrim Hall -- in Plymouth -- told me today that the hats wouldn't have had buckles ("those came in the 1670s, and were a short-lived trend") and that they were worn on Sunday meetings only. (Pilgrim Hall actually has the only existing pilgrim hat -- a beige, buckle-free one worn in the 1640s by a woman named Constance Hopkins Snow.)

The '76-Second Travel Show' doesn't know what to think about pilgrim hats. Just that Thanksgiving -- its lack of Christmas-esque gift-giving tension, focus on family and football -- is worth the time, regardless of what hat you wear. Just as long as the hat has no buckles.

This week's episode was filmed in one continuous shot in Oklahoma City's Stockyards.

#ratspotting

REPORT THE RATS



A few months ago I started reporting rat spottings -- all rat spottings -- on Twitter under the hashtag of '#ratspotting.' I invite you to do the same, wherever you may find them.

After 11 years in New York, I had my first on-subway-platform viewing recently. One woman seeing it dropped her coffee with a shriek. I had my FlipVideo handy for the scene (but missed the coffee spill, sorry).

76-Second Travel Show: "Pirates vs Vikings"

Episode 009

F E A T U R I N G * 2 7 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

SSTS BANS SEQUELS, REMAKES & BIO PICS
Movies -- they're out of hand. The numbers of sequels, remakes and bio pics would suggest that the Hollywoods of the world believe we, the ticket-buying public, just can't deal with anything unfamiliar. (Evident in top films this year: Transformers 2, Night at the Museum 2, Wolverine, Ice Age 3, GI Joe etc.)

Cookie-cutter scripts have always polluted Hollywood (just rewatch Elvis’ movies), but now the cookies are getting smaller. In the decade before 2001, generally only one to three of the top-ten grossing movies were sequels or remakes. After 2001, that number fattened to seven or eight, peaking in 2002 and 2003, when all of the top-ten were rehashed films.

--> This is a threat and a concern for those of who kinda like travel, and believe there's a real benefit to learning new things and meeting new people. Contrary to the notion, as psychologists put it, of 'familiarity heuristic' -- that only what's most familiar is what's most important.

So, SSTS suggests a ban of non-creative movie making (ie remakes, sequels and bio pics) until an apology is made or at least the percentage goes down.

In exchange, the SSTS offers a free, sure-fire movie idea: Vikings vs Pirates.

We don't know who'd win, offhand, so for this episode we turned to travel instead -- speaking with Moorhead, Minnesota's Heritage Hjemkomst Interpretive Center; Nassau, Bahama's Pirates of Nassau museum; North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort, NC; and the fascinating L'Anse Aux Meadows National Historic Site in Newfoundland for Viking and pirate experts' insight.

--> Thanks to the experts for taking the time to help decipher this riddle, and contribute to the SSTS movie idea.

Chekhov Was Here

Ah, the "following the footsteps of" article. I'm guilty. Last year, while updating Lonely Planet's Trans-Siberian Railway, I retraced parts of the most punk-rock trips of all time (and wrote about it for World Hum): Anton Chekhov's trip across Russia in 1890 to spend a summer living in a penal colony.

It was pretty courageous. Going a year before the train construction began, and already quite sickly, Chekhov left his Moscow fame (and charming Muscovite devushki) behind for something he never really explained. Some say he wanted to do something "serious" (amidst all his critics who called his works "lightweight"), or from guilt over having never finishing his medical degree, or just to get away from Moscow.

What surprised me most about places he wrote about like Blagoveshchensk or Nikolaevsk in Russia's Far East is how locals really didn't care about their unexpected brush with one of Russia's great literary figures. No "Chekhov slept (or whored) here" signs to be found anywhere. Modern Siberia has its own worries to consider instead.

Here are some photos of the town he stayed at the longest, Aleksandrovsk-Sakhalinsk.

76-Second Travel Show: "Las Vegas: ScIeNce City"

Episode #008

F E A T U R I N G * 7 6 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

Includes interview with "inclinator expert" at the Luxor;
music courtesy of New York City's defunct TW-in-87.

Good trips often get a "moment" -- that single experience where, when the trip's reflected on, your thoughts fall first.

For my Vegas 2009 that will ever be the sidetrip to Valley of Fire State Park - a stunning scene resembling decayed nougats of red fudge poking out of the desert floor. The bearded rangers wouldn't talk on camera for us, but they pointed out the best place to hike: not just around the White Domes Trail, at the north end of a 11-mile scenic drive, but right up them.

Atop the White Domes' prehistoric snakeskin-style "walkway," I dangled my legs over the side of a cliff and took in the desert's complete silence. There I finally learned the key to appreciating Vegas: leaving it. Just outside town, you begin to appreciate how the nation's fastest-growing city could ever grow in a Mars-like landscape of formations created 150 million years ago.

People call Vegas "Sin City," but considering the inescapable questions of geography (among other sciences) that come up here, it's a "ScIeNce City" too. And the SSTS proudly presents the SIX BEST SCIENCE ATTRACTIONS:

CSN PLANETARIUM
Few know of this back on the Strip, but the College of Southern Nevada (CSN) opens its observatory on Friday and Saturday nights for a full-on glimpse of the stars. There's also astronaut ice cream. It's $6, beginning with an astronomy program at 7:30pm. Go by rental car. The taxi would run $75 minimum, one way.

ATOMIC TESTING MUSEUM
Near the strip, this Smithsonian affiliate has a fairly defensive look at the state's involvement in atomic testing from 1961 to 1992. Plenty of videos with former employees talking about their role in the Cold War, and an interesting shop and Miss Atomic Bomb knick-knacks. You can also arrange tours of the blasted domes at the Atomic Testing Site, north of town from here.

NEON MUSEUM
All the glitter of Vegas' neon past has been collected in this non-profit museum. There are some objects to see around downtown's Fremont Street, but the real attraction is its "boneyard," an outdoor collection of rescued neon signs that can be seen by reservation only. Call 702-387-6366.

SPRINGS PRESERVE
Appearing in reality TV shows on occasion, we've noticed, this $250 million education complex features a "Desert Living Center" and two miles of (free) walking trails that piece together Nevada's cultural and natural history. Right in town.

VALLEY OF FIRE STATE PARK
It's certainly national-park-worthy and well worth bringing some food out for a fun meal in the retro picnic shelters, and taking a walk around Silica Dome, where Captain Kirk perishes in "Star Trek Generations," or so we think. Only pop and some snacks available, so pack ahead. Don't worry if you've forgotten a hat; they sell curious "Nevada State Park" hats for $15.

HOOVER DAM
Tours of the he New Deal 726-foot dam - packed between Lake Mead on one side and the distant hydroelectric plant on the other - are available, but it's worth even just a walk across. Drive to the Arizona side for free parking.

--> STTS scientific experiment: It took 38 seconds to enter the Hoover Dam gift shop and find the first souvenir that did some "dam" word play (t-shirt: "This is My Dam T-Shirt").

Science Week: Top 3 Achievements in "Augmented Travel"

"Augmented reality" (where the virtual and physical meet) is becoming the new reality, it seems. A couple months ago, Yelp’s Easter-egg app Monocle was “discovered” -- allowing one to shake an iPhone 3GS thrice, and see digital overlays of business listings/ratings through the iPhone camera. And options expanded last week with the new Motorola Google Android phone (which features apps for 10 Lonely Planet city guides).

This dosage of science into travel means a new way of searching out a good bagel or a B&B without bedbugs. Or finally joining Jay Maynard and living a life akin to the film “Tron,” but with better acting.

The buzzy notion of a sci-fi “augmented reality,” or “AR” as techies call it, actually dates from labs in the '30s, and the term was coined about two decades ago by the remarkably bearded Tom Caudell, while using head-mounted digital displays to wire aircraft at Boeing. Some reports say he did so in 1990, others 1992.

I emailed Mr Caudell to ask which was right, and he wrote back in 20 minutes:

“It was informally coined in late 1990 and first published in 1992. The name was handy to distinguish from the idea of full virtual reality. VR was catching on in a serious way at the time. And ‘augmented reality’ was handy to distinguish it from that idea.”

Considering “augment” is simply a fancy word for improvement, I thought I’d go back and cite three of the greatest “augmented travel” achievements that enable us to hit the road and explore for our own. With or without fancy headwear.

→ Apologies to trains, rail passes, post cards, guidebooks, compasses, roller suitcases and the almighty quick-dry pants.

TRAVEL MAPS
I can certainly testify that no feature in a guidebook gets more comments – some quite colorful – than its maps. They’re a staple in modern travel, but the notion of mapping out skies, sea currents, religious domains and conquests is ancient (eg the 16,000-year-old paintings at France’s Lascaux caves depict constellations, while a 9000-year-old Turkish map shows the plan of a Neolithic village). Early navigators weren’t keen on using them though. Chris Columbus, for example, used the currents and stars – maps, he said with a sigh, were “too virtual.”

Yet the first great travel map we know of – one that shows roads and services like hotels (!) – precedes him by a thousand years. The 5th-century AD Roman road map Tabula Peutingeriana connected the Roman empire from Europe to Asia. The original is MIA, but the Globe Museum at the Vienna’s Austrian National Liberary has a 12th-century copy that stretches 7m. (It’s rarely on view.)

“America,” meanwhile, made its debut on German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller’s 1507 map “Universalis Cosmographia,” thought to be the first map of the planet . A thousand copies were made, but only one survives. In 2003, US Library of Congress paid the Wolfegg Castle in Germany US$10 million for it, and put it on view for all to see.

PASSPORTS
The first "travel papers" allowing safe passage across foreign lands date to Persian travelers 2500 years ago (per the Old Testament anyway), while the 15th-century English monarch King Henry V (who was “well educated,” yet “stern and ruthless” per the official website of the British Monarchy) is credited for promoting travel with the issue of real passports. (Though he may have just wanted easier clearance to claim France.)

In medieval times, the term came up either to allow the bearer to "pass" through the "porte" (city wall gate), or, if Louis XIV is to be believed, to travel from ports in ships ("passe ports"). By the late 19th century their use softened as railroads crossed Europe, though security in WWI brought them back for good, eventually evolving from fold-out papers with attached photos to booklets after WWII. (See an interesting Wanderlust article on its history.)

Passports changed travel by bureaucracizing it, but also enabling and inspiring it. Who hasn’t looked longingly at fellow travelers’ passports stamps, or been instantly revived after a globe-hopping flight with that swift, certain stamp from an immigration officer and the smell of freshly applied ink?

HIGHWAYS
A car only goes so far without roads, and – especially in the (still train-challenged) US – the rollout of the interstate during the Eisenhower administration, and highways like Route 66 during the Depression were travel game-changers. But trace those roads back – passing all the roadside billboards, truck stops and huge balls of twine built up along the way – and you’ll find your way to the Lincoln Highway, the country’s first trans-continental highway system, dating from 1913.

It wasn’t always a pretty sight. A one-way trip from New York to San Francisco, with stops in Chicago and Yellowstone and Yosemite, could take 30 days, if averaging 20 miles an hour, and camping outdoors on the plains on many nights.

The feisty Ernest McGaffey, of the Automobile Club of Southern California, wrote of its impact in a terrific 1922 New York Times article, and noted how it was one-fifth the cost of a European tour. He wrote, proudly, “Transcontinental motoring… has grown to IMPORTANT PROPORTIONS [my emphasis] during the last few years." I want that on a t-shirt.

Of the road's great draw, Mr McAffey timelessly testified:

“Nothing braces the mind and body as much as one of these catch-as-catch-can journeys where style is banished from the calendar. Sometimes you may lose sight of what day of the week or the month it is, and even the sun may be the main reliance as to what the time is. But you will soak your soul in the primitive draughts of sun, rain, wind and freedom.”

That’s augmented vision, Mr McAffey.

21 Strange Things You Should Know about These United States

CURIOS! LOST VIKINGS! BEHEADED PUMPKINS! FALSE QUARTERS! & OTHER DISPUTED FACTS!!

1. Yes, Kansas IS flatter than a pancake. Anyone crossing I-70 swears by it, but a 2003 study using a cross-section of a flapjack actually determined Kansas flatter. It failed to mention that Delaware and Florida are actually flatter than Kansas.
2. The streaking craze actually began in the “Show Me State.” On Missouri University’s campus in Columbia, students took off sans knickerbockers in 1974. For some reason, it caught on.
3. The “Old Man of the Mountain” that appears on the New Hampshire state quarter is done gone and died. A 2003 rockslide smashed the formation, but he lives on on quarters and license plates.
4. John Deere tractors made in Iowa – incidentally the nation’s leader of hogs, corn and eggs – are green. On a factory tour in Waterloo, one worker explained the color choice, “Well, they can’t be red. BARNS are red.”
5. “American Pie”? Defintely NOT the plane Buddy Holley went down in, no matter what Don MacLean (or a drunk frat guy) sings. The plane that claimed the rock’n’roll pioneer at Clear Lake, Iowa, in 1959 was actually called the “N3794N.” In some ways, catchier.
6. New York City claims it has the best pizza in America. Not to Frank Sinatra, who was known for ordering pizzas from nearby New Haven, Connecticut.
7. There is a very interesting city in Louisiana by the name of New Orleans.
8. Forget Minnesota, Oklahoma had Vikings too. Or so claims folks around the Heavner Runestone south of Poteau in the state's hilly southeast. Supposedly dating to 750 AD, the carvings seem real, but modern science types doubt their authenticity. Anglo-Saxons made that mistake too.
   
9. First subway in the states? That’d be Boston not New York.
10. Some like to brag Delaware is the only state east of the Mason-Dixon Line. A severed part of it is actually too east. By topographical accident, the 12-Mile Arc (meant to solve quibbles between Lord Baltimore and William Penn) accidentally claims bit of New Jersey, across the Delaware River, now part of the sad, unclaimed “East Delaware.” Technically it’s not Jersey, though all you find there is weeds and empty beer bottles (shown below).
11. It’s said the Maine Coon Cat are descendants of Marie Antoinette’s pets. She apparently wanted them to live in America, and lost her head for it.
12. In Montana, livestock outnumber people (on two or four legs) 12 to 1.
13. No one knows what state was inaugurated first, North or South Dakota. In one swoop in 1889, both were blindly signed in back to back. In books though North gets the nod as the 39th state, South the 40th, due to the alphabet.
14. Paul Bunyan? Some say real. But he NEVER would have worn blue jeans, like modern-day lumberjacks (or his disfactual statues in Minnesota). Levi Strauss turned old-world denim into blue jeans in 1872, while Bunyan’s legend dates from the 1830s.
15. Roswell thinks of itself as UFO nation. Not to Max, Nebraska. Max farmers were terrorized by aliens in 1884, well before Roswell was founded.
16. Most disparate temperatures in the US: Fort Yukon, Alaska, where it reaches 100 degrees in summer and 80 below in winter.
17. Rhode Island’s real name is Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, which is just absurd. And should be mandated to be, in full, on their license plate.
    
18. Iowa City and San Antonio don’t like each other. Each claims to have the world’s biggest nickel: Iowa’s is 16’ x 3”, San Antone’s is 13’ x 4”, but is – locals remind you – double sided. “Like real nickels are.”
19. The ice cream cone is, some say, a St Louis accident. When cups ran out during the 1904 World’s Fair, an ice-cream vendor lifted some Belgian waffles when the Belgian waffle vendor was flirting with the Swiss chocolate exec, and tailor-rigged “cones” in real time.
20. Forget the Vikings or Chris Columbus, Alabama claims Welsh Prince Madoc made it to Alabama in 1169 – on a strict A-to-B Wales-to-Bama itinerary apparently. No other region in the US seems to claim a visit to Madoc and his princely outfits.
21. The song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is a damned lie. John Denver name-drops West Virginia, but it’s inspired by Maryland’s backroads: that's a completely different state. Reminds one how Omaha tends to get treated. One Counting Crows song places it “somewhere in middle America” while Groucho Marx put it in “the foothills of Tennessee.” Ah, life before GoogleMaps…

Most Expensive Airport: Huntsville?

Photo by freethehops, via Flickr

This week we learned that Huntsville, Alabama is the nation's most expensive airport (average fares reached $471 in the last quarter). Or is it?

Barbie Peek, a Crimson Tide grad and a director at the Huntsville International Airport, says that number is a bit misleading. She told me "68 percent" of the 1.2 million annual flights landing there are "on business" and paying "higher business fares." And the report, taking in the nation's top 100 airports (Huntsville actually ranks 111th in passenger traffic, alas), excluded the most expensive ones ("no Alaska or Hawaii airports").

What's more, according to my own research, it's not really true. Looking at roundtrip economy-class fares of select routes leaving January 29, Huntsville was actually the cheapest:

• Newark, New Jersey --> Huntsville ($301)
• Seattle --> Tucson ($309)
• Tulsa, Oklahoma --> Casper, Wyoming ($331)
• Anchorage --> Nome, Alaska ($442)
• Grand Forks, North Dakota --> Chicago ($492)
• Los Angeles --> Hilo, Hawaii ($644)
  

If you go to Huntsville (called "H-Vegas" locally), there are a few things to watch for.

• SCIENCE NON-FICTION. Huntsville is home to the greatest three-day $449 program of all time: adult Space Camp (as featured in the underrated Will Ferrell movie Stranger than Fiction). It's connected with the city's top attraction, the Rocket & Science Center Museum, which shows how Huntsville helped put a man on the moon by attracting German rocket-building scientists in the '50s. The museum also explains how astronauts use the toilet.
  

• HISTORIC DISTRICTS. Elsewhere in town are several historic districts, including the antebellum mansions of Twickenham.

• MOUNTAINS. This part of Alabama, near the Georgia/Tennessee tri-state border, isn't a flat delta. Just east of town, the 2100-acre Monte Sano State Park is home to a 1600-foot mountain with trails going up for views.

• FOOD. The "fine dining" scene of Huntsville has grown in recent years. For a "local yokel kinda place," Peek recommended the BBQ at Greenbrier (around since 1957).

76-Second Travel Show: "Traveling with Beard & Darth Vader's REAL Mask"

Episode #007

F E A T U R I N G * 4 0 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

Links: Christoph Rehage's unreal travel video, The Longest Way -- see it on YouTube; New York's Metropolitan exhibit "The Art of the Samurai" (through January 10); a couple good beard resources: Christopher Oldstone-Moore's "The Beard Movement in Victorian Britain" and an article "Growing a Beard." Music: San Francisco's mighty Tender Few.

SSTS viewer Leif Pettersen, and blogger at KillingBatteries.com, wrote in about beards -- he's thinking of growing a "vast, luxurious one" but wonders about hygiene and its effect on his "attractiveness" on the road.

I made my travel beard debut along with my first-ever head shaving while updating Lonely Planet's Central America guide in 2003. It was a big sprawling, "terrorist" beard by the end of the trip -- my mom didn't recognize me when I got back.

I learned two key things:

1. There's a bald club. I didn't realize it but bald people -- shaved bald, at least -- stop each other on the street and exchange tips. At least it happened in San Cristobal de Las Casas, Chiapas, in southern Mexico, where a gringo stopped to note that "you lose heat far quicker without hair up there; wear a hat." I did.
2. The street-respect the wildly bearded garner. Not talking moustaches, soul patches, the dreadful goatee or trimmed George Michael beards (see right). But real beards. They can only mean two things to passerby on the sidewalks del mundo: a) you're a sciencey genius (see here for more on scientists and beards); b) you're a freak. Either way, you win. No one messes with geniuses or freaks.

I've had plenty of "accidental, organic" beards since 2003 -- like the one I grew for episode seven, in solidarity with Leif. And generally draw the line against anything manicured. If you need to trim it, make it look pretty, cut the thing off.

But one warning. Beards sometimes take a life of their own, evident in the anonymously created (now defunct) Twitter account @mikebarishbeard -- tributing the frequently rich facial decor of travel writer Mike Barish.

--> The STTS will try to answer all viewer questions.

Bearded in Kamchatka, Russia (before it was a Williamsburg staple)

76-Second Travel Show: "Travel Magazine Olympics (Oct/Nov)"

Episode #006

F E A T U R I N G * 44 * B O N U S * S E C O N D S

We understand the time constraints on your life. We understand, too, you like to dream. That's why SSTS has poured through five travel magazines for the October/November 2009 period and picked out the three best contributions for you to read.

Only one is available online. All three are examples of how the best travel works: anyone who is passionate about something will make you care about it too, even if you know nothing about it. Even bullriding.

• GOLD: Afar's piece on how french bread rebounded from "mediocrity" in the '80s to something worth detouring for in Paris. It's written by an amateur DC bread-maker who tries by error to learn how to make bread the French way. I hadn't realized how much culture and pomp were in all those baguettes. I should have known. I'll certainly look at them differently whenever I get back to Paris.
  
• SILVER: Conde Nast Traveler's Readers Awards will get the attention in its November issues, but the best piece is about the glorious alcoholic roots of New Orleans. The long intro makes you ashamed of your own drinking scene (seriously ashamed), and it gets capped with a surprisingly readable list of the 38 best bars in town. Maybe I should move to New Orleans.
  
• BRONZE: American Cowboy, that's right American Cowboy, devotes about half of its pages to travel, and the most entertaining piece zeroes in on the most popular part of the rodeo: bullriding. Illustrations show the best and worst rides of all time, plus details on different leagues, scoring systems and where to see it next (like Las Vegas' championships ending today). It looks better in print than its website.