Thoughts and Feelings
Now What?
Jun 12th
Hey Team,
It’s been a long time since I’ve written a blog post for Amtrekker, and what with TBEX going on in Vancouver this weekend I felt forced into evaluating why that might be. The easy answer is, I’m not homeless anymore…but that feels like a cop out. The truth, as usual, is a little more complicated and a lot sillier. (“Silly” as in “flippant” or “lame.” Do not expect clowns.)
At some point, while I was traveling around North America and living on strangers’ couches, a travel blog was born. And not because I was trying to write a travel blog so much as the concept of travel blogs started to grow up around me. In fact, it wasn’t until the tail end of the adventure, when I started having more and more contact with other travelers who wrote for the web, that I realized travel blogging was even a thing. Up until that point I just thought of blogs as a fairly personal thing and that some folks, like me, happened to be doing a lot of traveling, ergo their writing was largely travel centric.
(That may have been a confusing sentence. But rather than trying to fix my slapdash writing More >
Gate 42 to Gate 42: Longest Roundtrip Ever
Oct 12th
I think I know where I went wrong. Clearly I’m not greedy enough. Frankly, it’s kind of pathetic how little I’ve learned from Gordon Gecko.
I was on the phone with everyone’s favorite triathlete, @katymoe, making sure the hatches were all battened down (whatever that means…) at the homestead when I hear over the LAX PA system, “Attention passengers of flight 276. Unfortunately we are overbooked by about five passengers on tonight’s flight to Miami. If anyone would be willing to take a redeye through Fort Worth tonight, you’ll leave about two hours later but I’ll also provide you with a $300 American Airlines flight voucher. If anyone would like to volunteer, please come see me at the service desk.”
I practically hung up on Katy. I already had a four-hour layover in Miami so I figured if I have to sit around in airports all night anyway I might as well make a couple Benjamin’s (that’s what the cool kids call hundred dollar bills) off the deal.
“Excuse me, what time does this money plane land in Miami?”
“9:45. Do you have a connecting flight.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t take off until 10:45.”
“Let me see your ticket. Ahh…it starts boarding at 9:45, that’s cutting More >
A Few Rambling Thoughts on Cruising
Nov 22nd
Hey Team,
Cruise ships are not a form of transportation. They’re more like huge freaking hotels that you’re locked inside of for 16 hours at a time with a few thousand of your closest friends (provided you don’t have many actual close friends), and when they finally open the gates, you’ve been mysteriously teleported to yet another strange city. I guess teleportation is technically a form of transportation…but let’s not dwell. Here’s my point:
You can’t go around comparing cruise ships to airplanes just because it makes your environmental impact argument sound better. Hell yeah it takes less fuel to fly from Ft. Lauderdale to Grand Cayman than it does to take a boat. Know why? Cause you’re transporting 200 people…not five THOUSAND people in a huge freaking floating city that allows for more entertainment and adventure in exotic locales than the average working class family would have the opportunity to experience during their one and only week of vacation a year by any other means.
And for those people, cruising is perfect. I can’t imagine a better way to get a smattering of everything a great vacation has the potential to offer. Not everyone can drop everything and travel for extended periods. More >
I hate Best Buy
Nov 11th
I could have made this post WAY longer than it would need to be to satisfy everyone’s curiosity and, as such, it may not make a ton of sense (Let’s be honest, how many of these do anyway?) but at least it was cathartic. As always, thanks for listening.
Hey Team,
I hate Best Buy.
I know what you’re saying, “Brett, you’re such a nice guy. I can’t imagine you being judgmental enough to not be willing to walk a mile in their shoes and try to see things from their perspective. Surely, they aren’t as bad as you would have us believe. In fact, I would venture to say that you are jumping to hasty conclusions and that you’ve probably had perfectly respectable encounters with Best Buy in the past and somehow you must be letting a single negative experience color your views of a fine upstanding company. Frankly, I expected more empathy from you, Brett.”
To you, I have only three things to say.
1. You talk too much.
2. You sound pompous.
3. I HATE Best Buy.
You guys already know that I’m currently somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean thanks to a generous offer from Princess Cruises and Gary at Everything-Everywhere.com. What More >
Meeting the Amazing Randi
Nov 10th
Hey Team,
You know who’s amazing? James Randi. Now that I think about it, I suppose that’s why he’s called The Amazing Randi. Huh. Go figure. If you don’t know who I’m talking about then let me give you a couple broad strokes. Randi is a retired performer who used to be a magician and a mentalist and currently heads the James Randi Educational Foundation. You may have heard of his Million Dollar Challenge, which offers a prize to anyone who can prove under scientific rigor that they have some type of extra-sensory perception. All you have to do is be able to say what it is you can do and under what laboratory conditions you can perform said talent. It’s been available for decades now. Guess how much the foundation has given away in the name of the challenge. That’s right. Zero.
Pretty awesome right? It’s great to know that someone is out there trying to prove that “real” psychics are more often than not, ridiculous amoral performers preying on people who miss their dead relatives deeply. In short, James Randi is one of my personal heroes.
And…I got to meet him at dinner the other night! It was a pre-Carl Sagan More >
Past Brett vs. Future Brett
Sep 2nd
Hey Team,
Here’s the thing about how I write posts for Amtrekker now days. I usually get an idea while I’m in the middle of doing something else that I can’t just drop so, like a respectable and professional writer, I whip out my trusty notebook, jot down a few lines and open up a Word document first chance I get. The trouble is, it seems Future Brett never speaks the same language as Past Brett.
Case in point: The only line I gave myself to go off of for this post was two words long. It said, “Rubber bands.” It’s even underlined. So…apparently there’s something that Past Brett really wants to say about rubber bands.
I’ve been wracking my brain for the last two days trying to figure out what the heck I was trying to tell myself. The only clues I have are:
1) I know where I was and what I was doing when I wrote the note and
2) I know it has something to do with travel.
As much as I love the movie Memento…this is kind of pissing me off.
That said, I suppose it could be worse. I once wrote myself a note that said:
Q: Why is he dead?
A: Crustaceans.
I would More >
Geek Cred
Jul 14th
Hey Team,
Ah HA!
Don’t worry. Everything is under control now. All it took was a little bit of…well, a LOT of finagling and WAY more effort than the average consumer would ever want to put into a clearly broken piece of equipment.
After SEVEN years of faithful service, including an intensive year and a half long period of travel crammed into a tiny backpack, my little old Sony Digital8 camcorder finally gave up the ship and shuffled off into that Japanese consumer electronics scrap heap in the sky…kinda.
I powered up the ol’ champ to get some footage of Arizona (the puppy, not the state) playing in her pool (hmm…I wonder how much I could get for footage of the state of Arizona playing in a pool) and it wouldn’t do anything but turn on and off and play the tape already in there. It wouldn’t record and most importantly it wouldn’t eject the tape.
I really wanted that tape.
An intensive Google session and three dollars later I was staring at a .pdf of the service manual for the DCR TRV340. Here’s the thing I didn’t know about sweat shops: those little kids must have some ridiculously nimble little fingers and they CLEARLY aren’t More >
2009 Travel Blogger Awards
Feb 25th
Hey Team,
It looks like that ubiquitous guide book company, Lonely Planet, has nominated little ol’ Amtrekker for Best Video Blog! Pretty exciting stuff! To vote head over to this place and do your thing.
Thanks everyone!
In other news: My video for “The Best Job in the World” went up a couple days ago so you can check that out here. And MOST importantly, I’m almost done with the newest episode of Amtrekker featuring Brian Brushwood, CJ Johnson and myself exploring the wonder of Wolfe Manor so be sure to check back later this week!
Thanks again!
I’m done.
Brett.
AKPC_IDS += "410,";
