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Our semi-regular efforts to keep the major airlines in business.

  • Yosemite National Park, California: Nature at its most nature-iest.
    Ansel Adams, who?

    When the great B&W nature photographer Ansel Adams first gazed upon Yosemite, he must have stared dumbfounded at the splendor and thought, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat--er, I mean...view camera.” — a line that would later be co-opted by Roy Scheider in the movie “Jaws.”

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  • Redding, California: It's close to a lot of other, better places to visit.
    Lake Shasta, CA

    Having read that a famous architect had designed an interesting bridge in Reading, I suggested to my wife that we drive there for our 15th wedding anniversary. Now, my wife generally loves to travel, but the thought of spending five hours traversing the “picturesque” scenery along I-505 to visit some bridge struck her as the romantic equivalent of gift-wrapping a vacuum cleaner. Luckily, her expectations of me are even more modest, so she took what she could get.

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  • Hawai‘i’s The Big Island: Probably not the Hawai‘i you're thinking of.
    Sunset on Hawaii's The Big Island

    When we first made plans to go to Hawai‘i, we didn't know much about the place, like the fact that you put an upside-down apostrophe between the last two ‘i’s. But we’d been to Honolulu before and thought we’d gotten the gist of the 50th state: Hot sun, lots of flora and fauna, with sprawling beaches, bars and barcaloungers. So it came as quite a shock to us when our plane touched down in the Proterozoic Era.

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  • Reading, England: It's close to a lot of other, better places to visit.
    Image of Abbey Park

    This assessment of Reading, England won’t be in any way fair for a number of very good reasons. Firstly, because I spent a good part of my stay in the town ensconced in a mid-level business hotel room. Secondly, because the hotel where we stayed was a full 15 minutes outside of Reading, so I didn’t spend much time in the actual town itself. And finally, because our trip took place during the Winter Solstice, when daylight in Britain was more scarce than a straight set of teeth.

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  • San Antonio, Texas: A river walks through it. (Get it?)

    If you only ever visited Austin and San Antonio, you could be excused for thinking Texas was a pretty good place to live. The people seem nice, and the cost of living is relatively cheap. Even better, you don’t see hordes of cowboy hats everywhere like you do in Dallas or Houston. In fact, you could probably get by your entire life there just fine without ever buying a pair of cowboy boots (assuming the 24/7 Country Musak® doesn't drive you effing insane first).

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  • Mazatlán, Mexico: Lots to do and lots of reasons not to do any of it.
    Mazatlan, Mexico

    We didn't pick Mazatlán, Mexico as a vacation destination for its deep-sea fishing, sailing or any of the other things you can reportedly do there. We picked it because of all the things you don’t do there. Namely, put on pants or shoes (or deodorant, judging from the smell of our fellow tourists). This was our "sit around drinking Mexican beer while reading People Magazine" vacation. But despite our near lack of observable movement, I somehow managed to find things worth writing about: Iguanas, mostly.

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  • Cancun, Mexico: It's not all beer chugging and wet t-shirt contests (dammit).

    We hadn't originally planned our two-week vacation to Mexico for its affordability but—when weeks later I found myself unemployed (like the rest of the planet)—it seemed like a prescient choice. Regardless of its favorable exchange rate, Mexico was nonetheless a country with fascinating archeological sites and a rich history that would allow us to slip in a bit of culture between Marghitas.

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