Big hoopla tonight over LeBron James choosing a city. Will he stay in his hometown? Where will he go? Cities and teams smushed into one entity. All the speculation about his travel plans is over now. With the words, “I’m going to take my talents to South Beach,” LeBron’s Miami-bound.
“I never wanted to leave Cleveland, [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Home'
Choosing a city the LeBron James way
July 9th, 2010 No Comments
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Check out the Steamtown Ice Harvest Train
January 10th, 2010 2 Comments
We move to be moved, but we can be moved without moving.
Here’s a bit of local flavor from around my way: The Ice Harvest Train running from Steamtown National Historic Site (Scranton, PA) and picking up big blocks of the cold stuff in Tobyhanna, PA.
This is how we (used to) do it…enjoy.
Milestone — 50th post! [...]
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Being homeless helps you travel
January 7th, 2010 2 Comments
Again, for the millionth time: The choices you make at home directly impact your travel options. We know this.
If you’re committed to the asylum of long-term travel, it helps to spend “at home” time in travel-conducive housing. In other words, to live with minimal anchors.
The article Men Who Jump the Picket Fence in today’s New York Times touches on this connection, albeit [...]
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The fruits of falling behind
December 30th, 2009 No Comments
I’ve been falling behind lately, battling inertia like lots of other people.
I’m not going to describe the malaise — it’s the same as yours. Not going to submit any remedies or prescriptions for shutting it down.
However, one of Chris Guillebeau’s suggestions in that last link is to carry a notepad everywhere you go. Hm — [...]
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Snow falls in Bethlehem, PA
December 20th, 2009 1 Comment
Dry, miniature snowflakes fell on Bethlehem yesterday, leaving the city sparkling. Residents raised hoods, locked arms, tucked chins, and squinted eyelids against the flying snow.
Throughout the storm, pizza delivery drivers trafficked their cargo with little regard for personal safety. Around 7 p.m., a teal Neon with a silver spoiler, Dominoes sign, and supreme confidence barreled [...]
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Dark news from the Lehigh Valley
December 17th, 2009 1 Comment
Forget steel. American Weirdness is booming in the Lehigh Valley.
Today’s headline: Teacher dead from heroin overdose on a school night. A beautiful 24 year-old biology teacher, blond. At a high school 28 miles south on the previous day, the same drug lulled a girl to sleep in class.
Bowhunters recently found a decomposed body in the [...]
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What would you be doing right now?
December 13th, 2009 1 Comment
One of the first instincts upon a change of location is to start thinking in terms of parallel existence–comparing hours, schedules, routines, and so on.
Sitting on the roof of the hotel, staring at the moonlit Taj, you think, “I’d be walking into work right now.”
This isn’t so much looking back, but looking sideways. Conditional thinking: [...]
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Born to Cover Ground
November 6th, 2009 No Comments
Christopher McDougall’s Born to Run has been getting a lot of attention this year (here’s [what I think is] the original article that led to the book ).
I haven’t read the book nor gone shoeless (yet), but McDougall’s original article and the media swirl around his book have helped me develop a new view of [...]
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What if you don’t get the inner journey?
October 31st, 2009 2 Comments
It was the perfect recipe for transformation: A month-long trek around a clump of stupendous mountains. An ancient pilgrim path. A motorcycle through the jungle. A summer of scraping by with a baritone sax.
So what happens when you finally reread your journals and realize the pages are filled with mental dandruff? Quick shots of confusion, [...]
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A Quick Pilgrimage to Pittsburgh, PA
October 27th, 2009 3 Comments
Made a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh last weekend with my dad for the homecoming football game. Quick domestic travel, always a welcome complement to the long international breed. Left the Lehigh Valley at 4 pm on Friday and returned 29 hours later. Just over 19 hours in the Steel City.
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Travel Self vs. Home Self
October 22nd, 2009 3 Comments
Do you play by different rules at home and on the road? When surrounded by the familiar versus overwhelmed by the new?
It’s a massive challenge to merge the travel self and the home self. To approach the world with open intensity no matter what part of the planet happens to be underfoot.
Do any of the [...]
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Can Work and Travel Coexist? A Lesson from Funk.
October 10th, 2009 No Comments
When it comes to work and travel, the groove sets up the payoff.
Consider Funk. A bass lick is all the more nasty when the bass has been hanging in the pocket, keeping a low profile. When after seven or maybe 15 bars of solid groove, it pops.
Drops all constraints, steps forward, goes deeper, and realizes [...]
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Where Will a Walk Take You?
September 17th, 2009 No Comments
Have you walked across your city? Have you witnessed the bell curve of its development? Would you take the same route you’d use to drive? Or would you seek out some sort of alternate, foot-friendly route?
Yesterday I read about a back-up plan that many Bihari peasants keep in mind: Make the month-long walk to Calcutta [...]
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Want To Travel? Start Walking.
September 14th, 2009 No Comments
Not knowing my car’s transmission would soon be dead, I recently wrote something in praise of walking. Backhandedly, about the negatives of cars and even bicycles. Here it is:
Given the choice of any mode of transportation, I prefer my feet. I don’t have to lock them to a streetlamp before I go into the cafe. [...]
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The Hazards of Prolonged International Exposure
September 11th, 2009 1 Comment
The right mix of cigarette smoke and cologne puts me on a sidewalk in Granada. A grey-blue overcast sunrise through a crack in the blinds is another Utica snowstorm. The smell of rare wood burning (a piano, let’s say) is the rush of India.
The more places we visit, the more elsewheres we can be transported [...]
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Who Cares If Your Car Eats Into Your Travel Budget?
September 8th, 2009 No Comments
You’re outwardly concerned about saving as much money as possible for travel.
So what happens when, en route to your Labor Day Weekend bonanza, your car starts giving a death rattle and limps the last 50 miles? When it appears that this might be the point at which an outside force places your lifestyle in greater [...]
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Why I Turned Down a Year in Asia for Bethlehem, PA
September 1st, 2009 6 Comments
Photo by Marty.fm
A couple months ago, I told some friends and family that the time had come. That I’d been home almost a year, and would soon hit the road to teach English in Asia. Boom–gotta get out of here. Next stop: Daegu, Korea, or Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
We’re trained to follow through on what we say, [...]
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Why Live in a Small Room?
August 24th, 2009 2 Comments
A small room forces you out of the room. It cuts down the number of anchors you can keep. A bed, two chairs, and a desk. Clothes in a duffel on the floor. Forget A/C, put a fan in the window and bring in the world.
A small room amplifies the assertions of what you put [...]
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Go to the Best Hotel in Town for Free
August 18th, 2009 No Comments
By the end of this post, you’ll know how.
The Hotel Bethlehem used to be the go-to spot for all facets of tycoons hoping to cut deals with Bethlehem Steel.
Today, it still has the white-gloved doormen, martini bar, and 20 foot-high red neon sign on the roof begging for a superhero fight scene.
And it still has [...]
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Real Travelers Don’t Get Homesick
August 17th, 2009 No Comments
Yeah, right.
Have you ever had a bad bout of homesickness? I’m talking severe–where you start missing traffic, and junk mail, and having plaque scraped off your teeth at the dentist? How did it hit, and how did you deal with it?
It suffocated me as a feeling of having slighted my family and friends. As [...]
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