Well, it’s Tuesday and you are probably wondering—or not—what happened to our regularly scheduled programming on the weekly No Reservations show with our eating and drinking hero, Anthony Bourdain.

Just when I was really getting into Tony’s travels to exotic locales, like the Burroughs of New York, he off and leaves us with TV re-runs.

I guess if you really need to fill your fanciful foods fix, there is always his blog.

Bourdain obviously has a significant following given the production expenses for his show. It is not exactly cheap for him to travel all over the world, while eating everywhere from street food carts to five star restaurants.

I think he has different appeals to different crowds.

Some men are likely jealous of the beautiful women that escort him and some woman probably think he is just plain sexy.

Me? I primarily like the travel aspect. I don’t particularly find him sexy and I already am with a beautiful woman.

(And yes, as a matter of fact, she is looking over my shoulder while I am writing this piece.)

But Bourdain may not live the most healthy lifestyle: beyond the weird animal parts he stuffs into his mouth, with the ubiquitous, “Wow, that’s great,” and the apparently generous quantities of alcohol, there is also his constant companion that he often holds in his hand.

In the picture below, it’s in his left hand. Or is it his right?

Let’s just say it’s smoking hot.

One last thought. Rumor has it that Tony has been a professional chef.

Let’s just hope he at least wore an apron.

What exactly is a pilgrimage?  What is the purpose? And why do it?

Well, according to the all-knowing source of information from which flows all truths, Wikepedia,

“a pilgrimage is a long journey or search of great moral significance. Sometimes, it is a journey to a shrine of importance to a person’s beliefs and faith.”

Last year, I attended the Book Passage Travel Writers Conference and was fortunate enough to meet Phil Cousineau who wrote an entire book on the subject, in which he provides a wonderful historical and worldwide basis for the age-old activity.

I bought his book with a specific interest in mind of my upcoming trip to the Basque region of northern Spain, along with my wife, whose family originates from there.

Most people equate a pilgrimage to northern Spain with the famous pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

But, in my case, this is personal. Given that my wife’s family is from that area, and that there is even a winery with her family name; although, we have yet to make an actual family connection, we are going to look for her roots (starting in the winery tasting room, of course).

So, clearly our pilgrimage will entail quite a bit of eating and drinking. Quite a bit.

So, it came somewhat as a Freaky Friday surprise when my pretend Travel Channel buddy, Ingrid, sent me the info on this week’s No Reservations episode, wherein Tony travels to his wife’s family roots to Sardinia.

And, according to the YouTube trailer below, it appears that Tony will also be consuming copious amounts of food and wine.

Wow. It’s almost like Tony and I are living the same life, except with different people, in different places, doing different things.

I am confident that Tony will be expressing the same exact thoughts on his next blog post.

We are living almost the same life, I tell you.

Another Friday and another non-revenue generating blog post about this coming week’s No Reservations show on the Travel Channel: at least non-revenue generating for yours truly. 

Anthony Bourdain…yeah, my guess is he’s getting a lil’ sumpin’-sumpin’ for his time.

This week, Tony visits New York’s Burroughs. 

Since—believe it or not—I have never been to the New York, New York (so, what in the hell is it, a city or a state?) I have no idea what a borough or burough or burrough even is (just what I love, the same word with three different spellings).

While I have traveled the world from Latin American to Asia, from Alaska to Indonesia, and from Canada to all over Europe, being from the far west, the only burrows I know are the ones dug by those darn prairie dogs (or the gophers in my wife’s garden).

But I am sure many of you know exactly what a burough is and can name all five boroughs within New York.

As usual, the YouTube trailer for the show is below, but they really under-did themselves on this one. Hopefully the show itself, on Monday evening, will be less “airy.”

 It was ironic that I got my weekly notification of the upcoming episode while I was sitting in a New York pizzeria. At the time, I was thoroughly enjoying my pizza pie at Giovanni’s with a glass of a good vintage red jug wine (I’m thinking about 3:00 p.m. last Wednesday). 

 I wish I could say this New York pizzeria was actually in New York, but alas, not so.

(So Tony. Eh. How abouts you sending me a T-shirt or a cookbook or sumpin’ for all these plugs for your show?!?)

Maybe it’s only weird if it’s weird to you.

Say, like drinking coffee that some wild animal has shit out on the jungle floor. No, really.

And paying big bucks for it. Like National Debt BIG.

This is the infamous Kopi Luwak, which has already seen the insides of the Asian Palm Civet, a wild animal said to be related to the American skunk (how fitting).

At least now I know why the people on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi were so friendly with us Americans.

Who in the hell else would pay $350 a pound for coffee? NO, REALLY. But they do offer free shipping.

Hell, it’s almost a bargain; it sold for as much as $600 a pound at one time. (Buy now—avoid the rush!)

I just noticed that the online coffee outfit is called, “Coffee For Less“.” Now that’s pretty darn funny.

And at around $65 a cup, that’s even more than Starbucks charges for whatever they call a large cup of coffee.

The stuff even got the attention of Oprah Winfrey, so you know it has hit the American mainstream. (Not sure if Martha Stewart has ever tried the stuff.)

There is a funny scene in the wonderful and moving movie, The Bucket List.

Here is a great clip from the movie where Morgan Freeman’s ailing character breaks the news to Jack Nicholson’s character, who is very rich, drinks Kopi Luwak—mostly because he can afford to and nobody else can, but never knew about it’s source.

Upon reading the explanation, Jack Nicholson exclaims,

“You’re shitting me.”

To which Morgan Freeman can barely say without hysterical laughter,

“The cats beat me to it!”

 

Of course, you know that the academia-inclined had to get into the discussion. Someone actually conducted a scientific study of sorts on the subject. So, if learning more about how the micro-structural properties are modified of coffee beans that are shit out of a wild jungle animal will convince you to spend this kind of money on a cup of coffee, well, have at it. Here’s the link. The study is fairly old, but, you know, poop micro-structural properties don’t really change that much over time, I wouldn’t think. Well, other than decompose.)

You can squeeze as hard as you want but there's no more in there.

I guess I better apologize to my more cultured readers (certainly nobody that I normally hang out with) for use of course, street language, but it is difficult to talk about coffee being shit out of a wild jungle animal without saying “shit out of a wild jungle animal.” Sorry.

The online coffee link above mentions about the coffee,

“It’s thick with a hint of chocolate, and lingers on the tongue with a long, clean aftertaste.”

 

Got that.

Coffee that has been shit out of a wild jungle animal supposedly tastes like chocolate.

And coffee that you know has been shit out of a wild animal is said to linger on the tongue…with a long aftertaste.

Oh, goody.

Finally, how clean can they claim that coffee is that has, yes, let’s say it together…BEEN SHIT OUT OF A WILD JUNGLE ANIMAL.

Oh, BTW. What prompted this post was that my old doc, John-the-Country-Boy brought over a few beans the other day and he put it through the French Press for me to try.

What did I think about how this $350 a pound coffee tastes?

Sorry John; thanks for sharing your stash with me, but I thought it tasted just like coffee.

But, I did feel an urge to wipe my lips with toilet paper instead of a napkin.

If you have spent any amount of time traveling in and about the Pacific Northwest of the U.S. you have likely landed in Seattle airport, otherwise known as SeaTac.

And if you have had the pleasure of having some time to spend around that great beer brewing and coffee klatching city you have probably wandered around the Pikes Place Market.

If so, hopefully you were not an accessory to the crime of fish abuse, as least as far as the animal rights group PETA is concerned.

Yes, I am talking about the famous fishmongers who flippantly fling fish with little regard to their feelings.

Oh, it looks all innocent and everything.

But, as reported in the Los Angeles Times report, the animal group contends that,

“…the practice of lobbing fish above the heads of patrons and tourists at the market and other venues is "disrespectful" to creatures that already have gone through a lot.”

The story goes on to say,

“Ultimately, they would like to see the practice banned at the fish market, arguing that tourists would not be nearly so eager to snap photos if dead kittens or gutted lambs were sailing over their heads.”

One of the manager’s of the market, Jeremy Ridgway, was somewhat incredulous over the whole brouhaha when he exclaimed,

“I mean, the fish are dead.”

But this is a woeful situation, at least according to PETA, who think nothing of exploiting  parading around incredibly hot and sexy, naked women in their quest to prevent cruelty to these poor defenseless dead fish.

What?  Wait.

Anybody know where they are holding their next rally?

I say,

“Down to those heartless fish tossing meanies.”

“Say, (PETA model person) wanna go out for a cup of Seattle’s best after the rally?”

The mass invasion of corporate-brand mega-businesses has despoiled many once charming areas, both urban and rural.

Names that come to mind include McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and maybe the most disparaged of them all, Starbucks.

Whenever I need an infusion of caffeine, I will walk or drive some distance to avoid the domineering corporate coffee behemoth. Their business plan has obviously been to literally move across the street from a locally owned, friendly little coffee shop and run them out of business.

Some might say, well, business is business.

Well, if that is the case, why, now, is the Big Bad Wolf donning the garb of Little Red Riding Hood to fool us into thinking that our little Neighborhood Coffee Shop is back in town.

The news this week has spoken of a corporate rebranding, but it has also been recognized for what it is, an attempt of a stealth subterfuge so we might not notice their uber priced coffee-appearing beverages with weird names and sizes—as if we were ordering a true European coffee specialty right on the streets of Verona, Italy.

There is certainly nothing off-putting in a coffee shop with the name of 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, is there? But better look carefully behind the curtain.

This is not the first leviathan company to attempt to pull the corporate label over our eyes.

I noticed a couple of years ago that some of the craft, microbrew beers that were popping up at my local bar were more crafty than craft and the only thing that was micro was the taste.

Yes, I’m talking about Anheuser-Busch. And ironically, the term Stealth Beer was used in the description.

I have said on more than one occasion that I really want to go visit Cuba BEFORE the corporate colossuses clobber every street corner.

If every place looks just like downtown here, why travel?

For the sake of full disclosure, I must reveal that this blogsite has also been an attempt at stealth subterfuge.

I am really a professional, highly respected, world renown travel writer but in order to present a less intimidating reading atmosphere—such as you might find between the covers of the New Yorker, or The Atlantic (or a Maureen Dowd column), I have purposely dumbed-down lowered the level of discourse to the more relaxed and easy-to-read writing style that you have come to enjoy here.

You are welcome.

There is no lack of television travel shows for the armchair vagabond.

Pick your passion, whether you be a pampered five-star hotel traveler or minimalist outbacker who carries little in the way of amenities.

Think high thread-count sheets and in-house spas as compared to the latest in freeze-dried foods and high tech water filters.

Add to the mix whatever particular playtime avocation you hope to pique and you might be packing a lightweight $800 Orvis fly rod or $3000 Nikon camera.

And then, there are those of us who find fascination in foods we have the opportunity to savor along our adventure’s path.

Apparently I am not alone with an ardor towards exotic travels and exotic foods or some combination of the two.

That is probably why I thoroughly enjoy watching Antony Bourdain while he transects the globe with No Reservations as to where he travels or what he puts in his mouth.

While not all of his shows are equally entertaining, some are more “memorable” than others.  I am sure many of you have seen the debacle in Romania that was “mentioned” by my buddy over at Killing Batteries and later “defended” by A.B., himself.

But, love it or hate it, you will have to admit it, a T.V. show spotlighting crazy people, weird foods, drinking to excess, and far-off locales, all make for pretty good television.

As you may know from my previous post, my wife and I just got back from a quick trip up to Vancouver, B.C.

On our drive from the airport into the West End of town we noticed one particular street corner with a food cart of some type that had an unusually large crowd gathered around.

Upon arrival at the Barclay House Bed and Breakfast, we got our briefing for local food and entertainment recommendations from our perennially smiling host, Dennis.

When we mentioned the apparently popular downtown food cart, Dennis knew immediately we had witnessed the food phenomena that is Japadog.

They have a self-professed lack of perfection with the English language (I know the feeling);

“Our English is very poor. The followings may make mistakes. We are sorry.”

But, they have nothing to apologize for, when it comes to their dining fare.

You can clearly see from the list of ingredients in the dog I selected, there is nothing in there that looks bad, at least to me.

And it tasted exquisite, indeed.

But as fantastic as the food tasted, the biggest surprise of the day was that I got to eat with nobody less than Mr. Bourdain, himself.

While he didn’t say much, nor did he offer to pay, it was a pleasure to have covered the same ground as someone who knows his way around a non-English menu.

While some of you may question if this stop to sample street food lead to our later antics, I believe the timeline does not support that supposition. 

Translation: it was almost 24 hours later before the s#!t hit the fan, so to speak. (Might as well have hit the fan—we hit just about everything else within range!)

Besides, if it was good enough for Anthony Bourdain, it should damn well be good enough for me.

Although…..look at that picture of him in the lower left; is it my imagination or he does display at least a slight look of anguish?

I have previously posited posts on the unfortunate occasion of becoming ill or injured while traveling.

This story is one I would have more imagined to have occurred while visiting some far off, so-called third world country with substandard health conditions.

But life is not always as expected.

The moral of this story, told up front as you may not wish to venture further, is to always travel with ample supplies of Tums, Pepto Bismol, and Imodium.

I was poised with pen in hand—or more correctly, keyboard at fingertips—to present yet another of my typically well-written, laugh-out-loud travel stories.

(You have likely seen my previous Pulitzer Prize pieces. Hint: they were written under my pen name, Dave Berry.)

But then it hit us.

My wife and I are in Vancouver, B.C.—a most wonderful place—to celebrate our 31st wedding anniversary, or as I have taken to call it, our 2nd Annual 30th Wedding Anniversary Trip. (There is a story to that, but it will have to wait.)

We are—or were—enjoying this cosmopolitan melting pot of cultures and cuisines.

And, apparently, something happened having to do with the latter term that resulted in what I can only call “Tag Team Intestinal Evacuation.”

It was during a relaxing horse drawn carriage tour of the famed Stanley Park and it started.

What caused it we can only speculate. During the previous 24 hours we had cheerfully consumed street vendor food (from a reportedly trusted source), an expensive dinner in a well-known restaurant and a marvelous multi-coursed breakfast meal at our bed and breakfast.

Without a comprehensive CSI analysis of samples flown to the O.J.Simpson Crime Lab, we will likely never know.

About half way through the carriage ride I felt this slight discomfort in my lower stomach region. It was not until the tour was completed that my wife made mention of some significant cramps, which was relayed directly to my arm in her vise-like grip upon every spasm, not unlike her reaction to her labor contractions many years ago.

We quickly decided it would be a good idea to head back to the barn (in the vernacular of our horse-powered park tour) and to do so in all due haste.

As we approached our local accommodations—and with the knowledge that our room had only one water closet—I  was determined to maintain the inside position towards my goal of the big multi-purpose ivory bowl.

But as I slowed, every so slightly, to remove superfluous items of clothing, my wife accelerated in the outside lane and quickly “assumed the position.”

I will, for the sake of any readers who have stayed this far with this sorted tale of intestinal woes, to summarize the next three to four hours by suggesting you imagine the sound of liquid being forcibly expelled through a nozzle. 

A lot of liquid.

Finally, it was my turn in the formerly pristine white tiled room, and by then I was in the position that things were happening at both business ends of my medical malady.

Thank goodness for plastic bagged-lined garage cans close at hand.

Thus begun our tag team approach to sharing the facilities.

Our choreographed movements were as seamless as a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet.

And, more reminiscent of the closing crescendo of the Overture of 1812, we concluded, what we thought was, our final act.

But after an intermission of about an hour we discovered there would be an Act II to this sickly saga.

I hesitated to characterize this as an Encore performance as I would not know for some time that there would not be an Act III. (There was.)

In time, I was elected to venture out on to the local streets in search of bland crackers and warm sports drinks.

In fear of accidental fertilizations of neighbor lawns I packed a plastic bag, as do conscientious dog walkers, the difference being, anything requiring clean up could not be accomplished by a “pooper scooper,” but would necessitate a hazmat-rated wet vac.

After 24 hours of not much food but lots of sleep, we are back in the saddle.

We are determined to complete this visit to Vancouver with a better taste in our mouth.

Cheers!

It used to be we wished we had a better job…maybe even a dream job.

Nowadays many of us just hope we can just keep the job we’ve got (or wish we still had one).

It was no surprise when someone announced a job opening for The Best Job In The World that the competition was stiff.

You may remember it had something to do with getting to live on a beautiful island and spend your days snorkeling and the such and your evenings blogging, Twittering, and Facebooking.

I did not want anyone to get their hopes up, as it was obvious–at least to me (but apparently not to anyone else) that I was the perfect candidate. I tried my best to dissuade you from wasting your time in applying.

As the application period drew towards the deadline, I again suggested you need not apply.

And finally, I let you know when it was too late to apply.

Well, I tried to tell you that you would not get the job and I was right (unless you are a Brit by the name of Ben Southall).

Well, the Best job may be taken, but you still have two days to apply for a Really Good Job (technically a Really Goode Job).

While this one is not on a beautiful island, it is in the scenic wine country of Northern California.

If you can live getting paid to drink wine instead of snorkeling, you might be a candidate.

And the blogging, Twittering, and Facebooking are still a major component of the job description.

Sorry I did not get the word out sooner but I just picked up on this story in our local newspaper.

I got a kick out of one quote,

“The new hire will earn $10,000 a month, plus lodging in a private home. The short-term assignment: explore the Sonoma County wine country, sample hundreds of wines and use social media like Twitter and Facebook to tweet, blog and otherwise create buzz about the winery.”

My thought is that after sampling “hundreds of wines” it won’t just be the stories you write that will be “buzzed.”

I’m leaving for Canada with my lovely wife at “dark-thirty” tomorrow morning for our 2nd Annual 30th Wedding Anniversary Trip so unfortunately I won’t have time to do another 60 second video application. (Truth be known, I never got to doing one for the Best Job In The World.)

I guess I will just have to wait for the next job opportunity that involves getting paid to recreate and drink alcohol.

If you hear a call for applicants for A Mediocre, So-so Job please let me know.

Part of the allure of travel is to sample the cuisine of other cultures.

Except when they involve barbecuing an animal that a short time earlier sported a name, such as Fido.

Another exception for me would be when the meal consists of pieces and parts of the anatomy that are used for higher thinking, licking, or procreation.

But maybe that’s just me.

With my fascination of fanciful and sometimes faraway foods, I was aroused when I found something called a slaw dog, one day while innocently pursuing the Internet, where everyone knows, one click leads to another.

Some states take the slaw dog very seriously, to the point they even undertake mapping projects to quantify whatever it is you would want to know in regard to this sometimes popular meat-like menu item.

Just in the last month or so I have seen two variations in just one city: the slaw burger and slaw pulled pork sandwich.

There are no lack of references (well, at least a third of a million Google hits) to slaw dogs, and their ingredients, in various versions.

Some maybe just a little over the top.

Including some women who may end up losing theirs–top, that is–when they play games in the coleslaw, that is obviously the topping component of the slaw dog.

(READER CAUTION: the pictures in that last link contain women in unnatural positions doing things with coleslaw never intended by Martha Stewart.)

Of course, slaw dogs are by no means the only unusual food item you might encounter while traveling the planet.

Far, far from it.

Hell, just watch an episode an Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations or Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, and you will see that a slaw dog is rather on the tame side of wild foods of the world.

So, what is the weirdest food that you have actually eaten and where was it consumed?

Did it kill you (or make you feel as if you wish it did)???

Yes, today is yet another festival of an international nature.

While tomorrow you will get a post on a somewhat lesser known festival, I could not pass up at least a mention of today’s significance.

The history of Cinco de Mayo is often confused and sometimes a source of political discourse.

But, then again, nowadays, we all know what this day is all about, right?

Drink up girls - St. Patrick's Day is 11 months away.

Pity the poor pig.

Everyone knows that pigs are smarter than dogs.

Well, at least so I’ve heard.

Actually the Penn State University research I Iinked to doesn’t really come to that conclusion at all.

Not because it isn’t true, but they have no way of confirming it:

“There is no such thing as an animal IQ or other standard measure for animal intelligence that would allow a straight comparison.

But there are certainly enough other websites that make that claim.

And of course pigs were given a bad rep when they were up to all sorts of mischief in George Orwell’s tale of an un-utopian society in his classic novel Animal Farm.

Not the best day for pig P.R.

So what does any of this have to do with my supposed travel theme?

Well, a recent story USA TODAY, about what might be called pig abuse, caught my eye as we prepare for our big trip to Spain later this year.

Spain is known for an amazing array of awesome cuisine, which includes the Segovian suckling pig.

I will not comment on the unusual culinary requirements for this menu item, other than to say it is not nearly as objectionable as foie gras.  Thankfully, not many things are.

It is less of a “how it is fed” and more of “for how long“.

Anyway, Segovia Spain is well known for some of the world’s best suckling pig and who am I to not partake of the local culture.

It would just be a downright  faux pas of foreign fashion.

(Although, I did stop at any thought of tasting some of the barbequed four-legged animals while I was in Indonesia; you know the ones that bring your slippers and go woof-woof.)

Poor pigs, they just don’t get any respect.

I wrote some time ago about pigs that played a stand-in role for humans for military tests of a so-called skyhook.

Let’s just say, the pissed off pigs provided some real interesting in-flight entertainment.

So, back to the recent USA TODAY story.

The latest military use of pigs was to test body armor by subjecting the swine to roadside bomb blasts while they–the pigs–were strapped into Humvees.

The test results were reported as:

“The research on pigs has determined that body armor does not worsen brain injury.”

That of course begs the question, how exactly did they make that determination?

And, more importantly, were those the same pigs used by Penn State University to compare to dog I.Q.?

Not to give anyone the mistaken idea that I would rather have our loyal, devoted members of our military in anything but the finest of personal body protection, but I just have to ask the question; with the current state of General Motors and our worsening environmental conditions, couldn’t they have put the pigs into something a little more “green,” like a Prius?

Hmmmm. I wonder if there is a Save the Suckling Swine Society in Spain?

Given the number of my recent posts regarding alcohol I have every intent to write a story that has nothing to do with drinking.

But this won’t be it.

Not when tomorrow is a prodigious milestone in the annals of alcoholic consumption, namely the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition.

And I would suggest that you don’t leave until you at least take a quick look, below, at a CamelBak application you would never have dreamed of.

The repeal of prohibition was the result of the 21st Amendment, which somewhat ironically is the legal drinking age, at least in my home state of California.

But what is the travel slant to this news tidbit?

Well, if you happen to be on a road trip across the good ol’ U.S. of A it might behoove you to know what post-prohibition “blue laws” remain on the books, some more bizarre than others.

Prohibition became the law of the land under the 18th Amendment and was fueled by a plethora of crazy ideas that were circulated and now appear to be something beyond fiction.

To name but a few:

“A major prohibitionist group, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) taught as “scientific fact” that the majority of beer drinkers die from dropsie (edema or swelling).”

“Some desperate and unfortunate people during Prohibition falsely believed that the undrinkable alcohol in antifreeze could be made safe and drinkable by filtering it through a loaf of bread. It couldn’t and many were seriously injured or killed as a result.”

“Prohibition led to a boom in the cruise industry. By taking what were advertised as “cruises to nowhere,” people could legally consume alcohol as soon as the ship entered international waters where they would typically cruise in circles.”

The last one might explain why some cruise ship passengers are famous to this day for heavy consumption of alcoholic beverages.

And prohibitionists did not want to take violations lightly, so they created a list of possible punishments:

hung by the tongue beneath an airplane and flown over the country

exiled to concentration camps in the Aleutian Islands

excluded from any and all churches

forbidden to marry

tortured

branded

whipped 

sterilized

tattooed

placed in bottle-shaped cages in public squares

forced to swallow two ounces of caster oil

executed, as well as their progeny to the fourth generation

The only thing that seems to be missing is waterboarding.

And why do some of them look a lot like modern voluntary measures or even methods of pleasure for certain people (not me, of course).

But it wasn’t the 18th Amendment that banned us from carrying any liquids–alcohol included–over 3oz. onboard a commercial airline flight.

Given that no one in their right mind would want to drink the “tap” water onboard an airliner and with more and more airlines now charging for a bottle of water (can you spell monopoly?!?) we are forced to suffer a constant state of dehydration, which as any frequent flyer knows, is counterproductive to reducing the affect of jet lag.

So, how can we somehow prevail in our need for adequate libations liquids on commercial airline passages?

Well, I have just discovered the potentially perfect solution which utilizes a CamelBak reservoir, just packed in an unusual position.

Unless you are morbidly obese already, according to the ad this creative device makes it possible to carry over a six-pack of your favorite brew, or over 80 oz. of another personal drink of choice, and just make it look like you have been drinking a lot too much of same.

In other words, you will look just like a typical red-blooded American.

These people are geniuses!

The same company also markets a product for woman called the WineRack.

I will leave it to your imagination (or by clicking on this link) to view the obvious.

I just dare you to ask that woman in Seat 16B why she seems to be “shrinking” in a certain area as the flight progresses.

And it gives the concept of breast feeding a whole new meaning.

Looking at the website, to my knowledge there is nothing metal in either contraption.

So for the guy’s beverage containment system, the question is which one of you will risk a TSA pat-down and have to answer why your “stomach” is making a funny sloshing sound.

“Gee, officer, maybe I overdid my pre-hydration for my flight to Singapore.”

Those of you who, for some tortured reason, have been around this site for a while will quickly recognize yet another alcohol-related story on a supposed travel blog.

But the excuse for this reoccurring theme is somewhat based on justifiable reasons–which I’m sure the counselors at A.A. would attribute to just plain old rationalization of another bad habit.

I certainly don’t have the literary writing chops of the good bloggers out there, and while I may aspire to such lofty goals, I certainly don’t allege to be anywhere close yet.

But, alcohol and great writers have gone hand-in-hand (or more accurately, hand-to-mouth) for more years than I have been alive, and that is going back a loooooong way.

Maybe the problem is, I just don’t drink enough to make the Dean’s List of the really great writers.

I guess I am just going to have to work a lot harder at it.

As to how the travel aspect relates to alcohol, beyond the chance to make a complete fool of yourself far away from home (although cell phone cameras and You Tube have greatly reduced your anonymity) the rationalizations reasons to drink while we travel abound.

Thanks to one of my virtual travel writing BFF’s, I have recently acquired the taste for yet another form of libation, namely Strongbow.

Thanks Leif. No really, thanks, Leif.

So as you can see, when I looked for a career path to make my adult beverage consumption habits appear to fit the job at hand, travel and writing seemed like a natural fit.

I had briefly considered residential roofing, based on the beer binging I had witnessed when our home needed a new roof, but my balance ain’t all that good BEFORE I start drinking.

All this brings me to the birthday, yesterday, of the iconic breakfast drink, the Bloody Mary.

This morning I heard a short bit on NPR that gave one version of the origination of the drink.

Apparently, there are no lack of alternative stories.

Whatever the truth may be, I have certainly appreciated the existence of my form of a pre-flight checklist, albeit at the greatly inflated airport bar prices.

And let’s not forget it makes a great way to loosen up after sleeping on the ground, while camping out under the stars.

But the real question remains: exactly how much alcohol will it take to make me a real gooder writer person?

This blog post is for the three of you who are not currently on the road driving to grandma’s house or are already sacked out on the couch from too much wine and too many helpings of tryptophan-laced turkey. (Urban myth alert: read on.)

We just arrived in Lake Tahoe for our pre-ski season reconnaissance mission and turkey dinner extravaganza.

Quick report: no widely anticipated snow in sight but the turkey is in on the bar-b-que.

We—we being my daughter’s red-headed, snow boarding maniac but all-around nice guy boyfriend—is cooking two, count ‘em two, turkeys; one on the bar-b-que and the second in a boiling cauldron of bubbling hot oil that we siphoned from the crankcase of my politically incorrect ¾-ton, 4WD Ford pick-up.

Long before personal fitness became a national imperative we would try to fit in some exercise before and after the gluttonous feast.

Whether it was The Big Chill-inspired pre-dinner football game or an after-meal walk, we attempted some method of packing the load further down the alimentary canal as necessary if for no other reason than to make room for Round Two of the feeding frenzy.

I hope all of you are enjoying family and friends sitting around the dinner table with what is the outcome of three days of shopping and cooking that results in about 15 minutes of gluttony that leaves a kitchen full of dishes and gravy puddles on the floor.

So get out of the house for a bit of exercise for your own health.

(I need the few readers I have to stay alive.)

That is unless you happen to be enjoying the day in Santa Monica, down in Southern California, where some areas may be just too inviting for some sweating and heavy breathing.

“The ocean view, the air and for some the architectural spectacle have transformed the area into a huge outdoor gym rimmed by multimillion-dollar homes.”

One guy doing sit-ups was approached by an officer of the law and was told,

“If you continue doing this, I will arrest you. It’s not allowed here.”

Down in the land of the overly skinny and faux tanned starlets you could get busted for exercising in the wrong neighborhoods—wrong being where the rich folks don’t appreciate the common people exercising their bodies as well as their legal rights to use the public streets.

But being L.A. they do have certain allowances, as one guy related,

“If I lived here and there were all really good-looking people working out, I probably wouldn’t mind,” said Mr. Parcells, 45. “So I guess it depends on who parks in front of your house”

Well, gotta’ sign off: I have a full day planned that so far has entailed a beer and a gin & tonic with wine, scotch, some apple brandy and hot buttered rum on-deck.

And they say it is something in the turkey that makes us sleepy.

I think not. (http://www.sltrib.com/food/ci_11070843)

It seems like it was just a month ago I was bemoaning the fact that pubs in Great Britain were going out of business before I even could get there.

Wait, that story WAS just a month ago.

And now the ones that remain may be forced to curtail happy hour.

A recent story stated the problem as too many ailing livers in people in their 20’s and 30’s: the story reported that liver damage can occur after drinking 15 to 25 years.

As one of the comments listed below the article pointed out what should have been obvious; based on their math, did some of these people start drinking when they were only five years old?!?

You know, I could put up with the longstanding stories of cold, dank fog and people with lousy teeth–neither of which can I confirm or deny, since I have yet to land in that part of Europe, but when the pubs are being shuttered and the happiness quotient is being forced to decrease, I may have to rethink my travel plans.

I guess I better plan on packing my flask.

But there’s more.

There’s the exchange rate in Great Britain.

If I loan someone a dollar and they offer back “a penny for my thoughts” and I don’t get an additional coinage back, I know my dollar ain’t worth what it used to be.

Bottom line: When I finally make it over the pond to England, I may have to search for a pub still in business; I better not wait around for happy hour to save some money; and speaking of which, mine’s hardly worth anything over there.

No wonder travel can be stressful.

And in this case, drinking–or just attempting to–may just make it worse.

I have just got to get on top of all these international traditions, especially if they entail drinking copious amounts of red wine in the middle of a work week.

I consider myself somewhat of a world traveler and I have been to France, but somehow this annual drinking tradition has completely gone under the radar, or to use a better wine analogy–has slipped past my nose–which based on the size of my schnozzola is not a task without some level of difficulty.

Much has been written on the history of this event with perspectives in two camps: one promoting the fun nature of the tradition and the other pooh-poohing this as a marketing scheme to sell millions of gallons of cheap wine to uncultured drinkers.

“At one past midnight on the third Thursday of each November, from little villages and towns like Romanèche-Thorins, over a million cases of Beaujolais Nouveau begin their journey through a sleeping France to Paris for immediate shipment to all parts of the world. Banners proclaim the good news: Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! “The New Beaujolais has arrived!” One of the most frivolous and animated rituals in the wine world has begun.”

Copious amounts indeed…we’re talking 70 million bottles a year.

“…the race from grape to glass may be silly, but half the fun is knowing that on the same night, in homes, cafes, restaurants, pubs, bars and bistros around the world, the same celebration is taking place.”

On the side of harping on the hype,

“Why it was decided to make the region’s humblest juice—a wine mainly borne of its worst vineyards, a wine barely removed from the fermentation vat, a wine that is nothing more than pleasantly tart barroom swill—its international standard bearer is a question that will undoubtedly puzzle marketing students for generations to come.

Apparently part of the fun and frivolous aspect is that the wine is sometimes delivered by non-traditional forms of courier, such as hot air balloon, fire truck, elephant, rickshaw and at one time, even the Concorde supersonic jetliner.

Part of the backstory to this wine enjoyed worldwide on the same day is that as few as two or three months ago the grapes for this wine were still on the vine.

So much for the whole aging in fancy oak barrels for years and years and then some more years in your cellar.

To call this a young wine is like saying a cow standing out in the pasture is rare beef.

Put another way, it is said that Beaujolais Nouveau “is as about as close to white wine as a red wine can get.”

I will confirm that by mentioning the first bottle (of four!) we drank this evening was such a light red color you could almost read the wine label through it.

I won’t say that was the case with the fourth bottle, but that may be based more on it being the fourth bottle than a significantly darker color.

The best quote on the subject may be,

it is a “festive wine to be gulped rather than sipped, enjoyed in high spirits rather than critiqued.”

The event got my wife and I out on a downtown patio on a warm, autumn day that turned into a starlit evening with enough cooling to hint of the coming change of season. We met new friends and pretended to compare the salient differences between the various bottles being enjoyed.

Not a bad way to spend a Thursday evening.

Now, what other worldwide drinking events are out there for me to discover?!?

So what are you doing this weekend?

While I am still nursing my lil’ ol’ surgery–at least in terms of using it for an excuse with the wife for a little more attention and a few less chore assignments–I am hoping to get back up in the mountains, starting with nearby Apple Hill and then head further up to the high country to see the incredible fall colors.

Click here to learn more about the Apple Hill area, including maps and other travel planning information.

Plan on an early stop for something sure to raise your blood sugar into the danger zone but will make your tummy purr like a happy kitten.  And grab a bag of apples for the road trip–we are really into the Fuji’s, but you can see you will have plenty more varieties to choose from. (We happened to buy the apples at High Hill Ranch and the pastries at Mill View Ranch–both are on the Apple Hill map.)

And if you wish to enjoy some baked goods once you get home, bring an ice chest and a buy a frozen pie or two. If you hide one in the back of the freezer, maybe it will even last until your holiday dinner crowd shows up: won’t they be impressed.

Once you filled up both your tummy and your tank (in your S.U. V.)–thank goodness that gasoline is below four bucks a gallon–set the GPS for east and enjoy the scenic drive on your way up the hill.

Be prepared for quite a temperature range. We went up the other day and while it had been in the 80’s in the Sacramento area, it was 25 degrees going up the hill (check out the car guage) and we even ran into some snow.

It is difficult to know when the changing colors are the most magnificent, as it varies by tree species, elevations, aspect, and local weather.

Some nice person has created a website to help you catch the peak of the fall colors, such as the quaking aspens up in Alpine County, as well as other areas; I suggest this website for fairly up-to-date info submitted from readers just like you.

If your timing is fair to good you might catch a scene like this one but be forewarned;  I just saw Apple Hill described in the Sac Bee as Apple Hell on weekends due to masses of road choking, apple pie eating, wine tasting Sacaramento-ites, so if  you happen to work a shift that gives you a Friday or Monday off (or, cough-cough, you’re not feeling too good and can’t come in) you can avoid the unwashed masses standing in front of you at the apple fritter counter by avoiding those weekends.  Alternately, get up early and show up in your P.J.’s.

Damn, now I made myself hungry…where in the back of the freezer is that darn apple-berry-sour cream pie we brought home.

I have lived fifty-seven years on the west coast of the United States.

When I tell people the well-known cities in this country I have never seen–cities that people travel from other countries to visit–I do it with some trepidation and embarrassment as if I might be considered somehow inadequate.

This, not even considering my self-conceived stature as a professional global humor adventure writer.

The fact is that once I got a passport and got a taste of the exotic nature that foreign travel often entails, I have spent more time in Europe, Mexico, and even Indonesia, than I have over on the far right side of a map of the U.S.

And while I have every intent to see those iconic American cities–you know the ones–I can’t say I have any regrets, so far.

One place abroad I have never visited is Great Britain. This has not been due to lack of interest.

I have relatives in Wales, which I have been negligent in visiting, although many of them manage an annual winter trek to Colorado for skiing. (Yes, I have been to the Rockies.)

And I am overdue a pilgrimage to Scotland where my now-deceased mother spent a decade between escaping likely death in Nazi Germany (which was the ultimate fate of most of my mother’s family) and her eventual home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she met my dad and little me was born.

No, the holdup as of late has not been due to lack of interest or intent.

I guess I am just too damn cheap with an exchange rate that gets me 50 cents (of value) for a dollar bill.

But get there I will.

With my affinity for microbrewery beers and my longstanding travel interest in visiting as many local purveyors as possible, wherever I go, I lust for the day to go pub crawling in England and visit small town pubs across the Irish landscape.

So, it was with great alarm the other day I read a recent Newsweek Magazine article that reported on the decreasing numbers of what has been described as something “central to the cultural and social life of the nation,” that being the neighborhood pubs of Great Britain.

Apparently five pubs go out of business every day.

Whoa, tell me it isn’t true.

Establishments such as the Museum Tavern has hosted such notables as Karl Marx and Arthur Conan Doyle and have been part of the “deep roots in the British psyche” providing “both sanctuary and meeting place.”

The trend of declining public houses, as the pubs are often called, have been blamed on a wide range of factors: from increasing prices for a pint; to the poor economy; to smoking bans; to the availability of cars to drive somewhere else for non-drinking pursuits (ed. note: not sure what non-drinking recreational activities could take the place of a nice mug of Guinness); and even to “takeaway pizzas…and a DVD.”

Even Prince Charles has become involved in this time of national crisis, where more than half of Britain’s villages have gone dry. The Prince is a sponsor in a nationwide campaign to let everyone know that the “Pub Is The Hub.” 

Certainly a royal calling for a member of the royal family.

As the story concluded,

“Pubs provide a setting for some of life’s indispensables, things like comradeship and the chance to study the foibles of one’s fellow humans. Ask Karl Marx–or Sherlock Holmes.”

While I certainly encourage Brits to please do their part to keep these national treasures in business until I can get over there and carry my share of the burden, if any of them start talking to Karl Marx or Sherlock Holmes, it might be time to call it a night.

And once again I seem to have found a connection between travel, travel writing, and recreational alcohol consumption. (Or would this be professional alcohol consumption?)

Sorry for two Short Trips in a row. (See yesterday’s bit on these new travel story-lite posts.)

And I have to apologize ahead of time to who should be my new marketing director, based on the increase traffic flow to this site just from a little link from his site, but due to north winds in the Sacramento Valley of sufficient strength to blow the color of my kayak, our scheduled trip to tempt a fusillade of warning shots in a local lake is postponed until next week. No Fear…there will not be blood!

But in lieu, we will be running up the hill, looking for the best apple fritter above Placerville in the renown Apple Hill area and then on to Hope Valley, in Alpine County south of Lake Tahoe, to check out the fall colors.

Film at eleven, of course.

But to get to a story of someone luckier than me, check out this story of a town whose domestic water supply magically became a supply of domestic wine. http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/10/oops-italians-g.html

And there is always someone who looks a gift vino in the mouth, as you can see in this quote from the story:

“Not all householders were thrilled, however: one woman said that she had been cleaning the floor at the time and as she refilled her bucket, “I noticed the smell of alcohol. Wine is fine for drinking, but not for cleaning.”

Tell you what, lady…I’ll come clean your damn floor as long as I can drink the rinse water.

For today’s travel, we are not going to the Middle East.

Back in the day, I was among the cool kids who spent Friday evenings cruising Main Street in their shiny, full-sized examples of Detroit’s best.

Anyone remember those days where the primary pastime was the boys watching the girls watching the boys while driving miles and miles but never going anywhere?   (Obviously this was pre $4.50/gal gas.) The era was well represented in the iconic 1973 film, American Graffiti, directed by George Lucas, of Star Wars fame.

I was there, right in the middle of these cool kids driving up and down the street. When it was time to stop, it was me that they hungered for.  It was me that they came to talk to. It was me that they got out of their cars to come see.

And it was me that was wearing the funky red apron and hat and stood behind the counter at the local Red Barn restaurant–think McDonald’s but less cool–and it was me who literally got to ask these cool kids,

“Would you like fries with your order?”

I was the epitome of the un-cool.  No car. No girl. No letter jacket. And stuck at a minimum-wage job on a Friday night.

Sometimes after we closed and were supposed to be cleaning up, someone would fling a fry at another worker and once in a while it would escalate into a full-blown aerial assault of artery-clogging, congealed-fat coated food items.

What brought me back to those fond memories of my supreme nerdness was a recent story of another hamburger joint, but this one in Beirut, Lebanon.

At this new place, I would worry less about a food fight and be a lot more concerned about a fire fight outside the front door, especially given it’s locale.

But I will have to give it to the proprietors; they opted to capitalize on the current situation by calling the place Buns and Guns, which garnered some free publicity in the process.  Given the 25,000 Google hits, apparently a whole lot of publicity.

The name might conjure up an image of a Middle Eastern version of a Hooters with buxom waitresses wearing ultra-short shorts while packing heat on their hip in the form of a 9mm, but considering the religious fervor in that region of the world, they probably were just thinking about the standard faire of bread rolls and the run-of-the-mill weaponry you would find at any fast food restaurants that happen to be in a tough neighborhood: just your normal complement of AK-47 Klashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.

Of what’s left of my 1,000 places to see, I would love to visit the Middle East, but I think I will give it a few more years for us to be welcomed with open arms and gratitude for allowing American-style democracy to break out over there.

For now, I am hesitant to visit someplace where if the stray bullets don’t kill you, the cholesterol might.

Hey, that’s not me saying that…it’s the slogan right there on their sign.

Ordinarily, it only looks like I’m drunk when I pedal my bicycle down the road. 

Sometimes it’s just me futzing with the foot clip thingies, which is a surefire way to go down with the ship, so to speak.

More than once I have gone over in slow motion, unable to un-clip fast enough.

Or maybe my wabbling-ways are me just trying to skirt around a plethora of potholes.

And it could be a full-out evasive maneuver in an avoidance attempt of swarming wasps.

But traveling by bike is supposed to be a good thing, even if I don’t exude a vision of grace and athleticism.

So when I was at the Farmer’s Market over the weekend, I saw an invention that would forever allow me to explain away my wobbly wheels as I pedal somewhat off the straight and narrow.

I witnessed an invention that is certain to garner greater interest in traveling by bike–even more so than spurred by the rapidly escalating gas prices.

The measly water bottle holder, which has not really changed since Napoleon rode into Waterloo on his low-rise Schwinn, has been supplanted by a device that can truly offer aerobic exercise AND constant liquid refreshment.

There are still a few issues to resolve with this bike-bound blender.

Beyond trying to figure out how I will be able to maintain an adequate ice supply while on long cross country adventures, my primary question is how to keep the straw from becoming tangled in the spokes.

And I guess I need to find out if adding rum to the fresh fruit frappe would be considered a form of doping.

Tequila and I are no longer on speaking terms.

Haven’t been for quite some time now and I don’t see us making up for a long, long time–if ever.

The culmination of my affair with the green-labeled bottle is too many years ago to remember and too few to have forgotten.

What is it about tequila that for so many people, a single event of having just too much of a good (?) time ends up being the last time?

Sauza Hornitos Reposado.

Even the words strike terror to my tummy.

 Just today I was talking about this phenomena with a guy at my local gym who commented that,

“It seems like tequila is the only [alcoholic beverage] with so many people having a lifetime aversion [after one act of significant overindulgence].

Amen, brother.

For me, the event was a camp-out up in the high desert of northeast California, at which I was totally lacking of adult supervision–meaning my wife was not around that trip to monitor my behavior.

As often is the case with tequila, one swig leads to another…dozen.

This lead to hours of abject suffering from intestinal gymnastics, which you might say became a significant emotional event: basically I never wanted to feel that way again. Ever.

And now after, oh, so many years later, even the smell of that vile cacti-based potion causes my stomach to churn.

You know the oft-repeated line from Dodgeball, “I just threw up in my mouth a little?”

Well for me, if I even smell tequila it’s more like throwing up an entire putrid, rotting, maggot-infested cow carcass in my mouth.  (Oh, were you eating?!?)

Yes, it’s really that bad.

There are some things that we can’t remember and there are things we wish we couldn’t.

On a subsequent camping trip at Punta Chivato, along the Sea of Cortez in Baja, after one evening of emptying multiple bottles of the same poison, we had two campers down…face down in the sand, to be specific. This lead to the young kids of one of them to ask their father, “dad, is mom going to die?”

The answer, luckily, was no, but she probably was wishing so later that evening.

And to this day, Laura gets the same stomach-wrenching reaction when smelling tequila.

While researching this topic I never thought that a study on aversion therapy of sheep would enter into this picture.

“[The study] divided them into three equal groups, ear-tagged with red, white or blue. Those in the red group got a liquid dose of lithium chloride, a drug with therapeutic use for humans. The blue got the same drug in capsules.”

“The white group got placebos — empty capsules or plain water. Yes, placebos. They might be sheep, but this is science, Doran said.”

“Doran likened the sheep’s reaction to humans who…down too much tequila and come away with their own personal cautionary tale.”

“Afterward, the sheep showed no outward difference, but the drug was apparently doing its job on the reds and blues: a mildly unpleasant sensation in the stomach was sending a message that apparently lasts a lifetime.”

I am not sure how these scientists determined the level of sheep discomfort.

“Mr. Sheep, on a scale of one to ten, please rate how much you hate this research project.”

But the “lasts a lifetime” part I get.  Oh, do I get it.