Viking Trip

Doubting Sam

2007-01-16T19:41:00.000-08:00

Here is a blogger who takes a cynical view on time travel, but is clever enough to devise his own theory-prover-thingy.

Tardis Hopping

2007-01-16T17:28:00.000-08:00

OK, what the hell???

Look above me! That damn "Doubting Sam" post is still there! I'm writing in the past! Or I wrote that entry in future. But if I did write that in the future, then I wouldn't be able to see it until 7:41 PM. So, I guess I wrote that and then traveled into the past to write these three. Am I nuts? I don't think so. I think I time traveled! I mean, here I am writing about time travel. Why wouldn't I actually do it? Was I abducted like Arthur and have had some sort of memory-erase so that I don't remember how I got here? Will I just keep going on this track, in this dimension, forgetting completely about my other track that I left to get here?

Wait, maybe I ought to read that "Doubting Sam" post. (I'm not even going to link to it because it's right above this one!) Sam does talk about a fool-proof way to discover whether or not time travel works. I rifled through my wallet looking for the damned "Personal Disproof of Time Travel" document, but found nothing. So, if I really did go into the past, then I guess my past self gave up waiting and went around the corner for a smoothie. Maybe I should run out to Juice Generation and see if I'm there. I wonder what kind of smoothie I got? Would it be the same I would choose if I went out there right now? I mean, I don't feel any different...

I think I'm too freaked out by my inadvertent time travel to continue this project. I think it's time to end. There I go referring to "time" again. Seems we can't ever get away from it. A stitch in it saves nine somehow. It will tell. It heals everything. Some----s, we're right in the nick of it. Some----s, it flies. But instead of killing it, as I think in my case it's borrowed, I have none to lose to get back to where I came from. So, let's just say I'm ahead of mine and call it a human day. I'll think I'll choose mango with a little protein powder in it...

Oh, and for the record, I guess this now counts as its own travel blog.

Strange

2007-01-16T17:14:00.000-08:00

OK, the weirdest thing just happened.

It is right now 8:15 PM Tuesday 16 January 2007.

I have been writing a few posts this evening about Arthur's blog. Before that I posted what was a draft of the "Doubting Sam" post, which I had originally written on 8 January 2007. When I published it to the blog, it actually appeared chronologically on 8 January, not, as I had thought it would, at the top of my blog. (That's not the weird part.)

So, under Post Options, I changed the Post Date & Time to 1/16/07 @ 7:41 PM—the exact real time. That did the trick. It brought the post to the top of the blog. Perfect.

So, then I go on writing those couple of posts about Arthur's blog: More from the Real Thing and Real Time Travel. When I posted them, "Doubting Sam" was still on top. "What the hell?," I thought. I went to my post list and saw that the two most recent were posted at 16:43 and 17:06, respectively, a good three hours BEFORE "Doubting Sam." For the record, it is now 8:25 PM. Read the post time below. (I'm guessing it will be different...)

Real Time Travel

2007-01-16T17:06:00.000-08:00

How did you read the title? Real time travel or real time travel? I'm just curious. This is the name of Arthur's blog address: realtimetravel.blogspot.com. I didn't even register the first possible reading of that name. I was about to write a post on how intriguing it was that Arthur called his type of travel "real time." And perhaps it still is. His version, or understanding, of time is different from ours. He is challenging our thinking. If he intended that his was "real" time travel, then, while true, it is less clever. And perhaps I'm just an idiot.

More from the Real Thing

2007-01-16T16:43:00.000-08:00

As you read Arthur's blog, you will find some difficult challenges to his separate dimension theory. He theorizes that if you go back in time and make changes to the past, you will create another dimension which contains those changes. But the original trajectory of history will continue on as it was. Therefore, you cannot go back in time and kill your grandfather, for example, thereby eliminating the possibility of your existence. (This is an oft-used argument in the discussions of time travel.)

Arthur claims to be using knowledge he gained in the future to come back to our present to affect change that will help the human race. But if he does so, there will still be a dimension which allows humankind to continue barreling down the self-destructive path it's on. And, I ask, from what point do you measure these other dimensions? If we can indeed travel through time, there might be an infinite number of branches of time, as a result of the tiniest affectation a visitor from the future can have from even an instantaneous appearance in the past.

Analysis Now

2007-01-14T18:40:00.000-08:00

I wrote an in-depth analysis of The Time Traveller. But then came back from the future and deleted it.

Comix

2007-01-14T18:35:00.000-08:00

Da Travla

2007-01-14T18:05:00.000-08:00

Did you check him out? Arthur, I mean?

No, not THAT Arthur.

Not THAT Arthur either.

Arthur Carlin. The Time Traveller. He is mysterious. You may have noticed. He is self-admittedly vague.

Arthur Carlin

Age: 36
Gender: male
Astrological Sign: Libra
Zodiac Year: Dog
Industry: Science
Occupation: Time Traveller
Location: Milwaukee : Wisconsin : United States

About Me

I am a time traveller using this forum to help my home dimension evolve in the best manner possible.

Interests

Favorite Movies

Not yet filmed!

Favorite Music

Classic jazz. Anything with a great pianist.

Favorite Books

Slaughterhouse 5.

Blogs

	Blog Name
	The Time Traveller

Who IS this man of mystery?

Is it him?
Is it him?

Do either of these men look like time travelers to you?

Does she?

Marco!

2007-01-13T13:08:00.000-08:00

Polo!

Where the hell is Chris going with all this, you might ask? Time travel? I mean, really.

Well, I had exhausted (maybe not exhausted, exactly, but finished with, perhaps) several different aspects of travel (excluding 13th Century exploration) and wanted to wind up my project in some clever way. THAT'S when I thought of time travel. I didn't go into space travel, of course, to boldly blog where no man has blogged before... Because I thought that might be difficult to fill with electronic journalism. Whereas time travel had the actual possibility of being an actual possibility. Therefore, a blog about time travel had the same probability of existence.

All this to say... I found a blog written by a real, live time traveler. I kid you not. It is even called "The Time Traveller," in case you had any doubts. Give it a once-over. Start at the bottom. Fascinating. Who knew?

Animotion

2007-01-12T18:30:00.000-08:00


You are an obsession
You're my obsession
Who do you want me to be
To make you sleep with me
You are an obsession
You're my obsession
Who do you want me to be
To make you sleep with me




My fantasy has turned to madness
All my goodness has turned to badness
My need to possess you has consumed
my soul
My life is trembling I have no control

I will have you
Yes I will have you
I will find a way and I will have you
Like a butterfly
A wild butterfly
I will collect you and capture you

Travelocity

2007-01-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I went to our old friend Wikipedia to read about time travel. Yikes. Technical, technical, technical. I went up to Advanced Physics in my high school Science Honors Program, but still... From wormholes and time dilation to cosmic string and the Roman ring... it all sounds dirty, uh, Greek to me. (By the way, that's a Roman ring with two wormholes over there to the right...)

Don't get me started on the chronology protection conjecture. Don't even get me started. (No, really. I can barely say it.) And can we tawk about Stephen Hawking? This lengthy Wikipedia time travel entry tends to portray the naysayer in him. He seems to downplay the whole idea—the Wikipedians constantly quoting his negative views on time travel—like: if we could, why haven't we met any time travelers? I mean, the man is a brilliant physical theorist, as we all know. I just think it is interesting (and worth paying attention to) that he doesn't have huge amounts of encouraging words about time travel. (And do remember I've done incredibly superficial research about this.)

Somewhere in the entries, a contributor wrote about methods of time travel in literature:

"The most commonly used method of time travel in science fiction is the instantaneous movement from one point in time to another, like using the controls on a CD player to skip to a previous or next song, though in most cases, there is a machine of some sort, and some energy expended in order to make this happen (Like the DeLorean in Back to the Future or the phonebooth and the circuits of time in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)."

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure? Who knew? Clearly, I'm missing out on some prime popular culture. Shoot THAT to the top of your Netlflix queue, why dontcha? Push aside both the 1960 and 2002 filmed versions of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895) and chew through some classic Keanu. Excellent!

It is sad that I get stymied by the scientific and buoyed by the popular. I like to think of myself as intellectually curious, looking at the world from out in space, trying to decipher it all. And yet I can't resist including a picture of Papa Smurf in my blog.

The last I'll write about the Wikipedia nonsense is to point out the five links at the bottom of the entry, entitled Claims of Time Travel. The most comprehensive was about one John Titor from the year 2036. Here's the actual website.

And you should all know that the time travel entry begins with all sorts of Warnipedias:

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.

Really fills with you with confidence in its content, eh?

Oh, and just in case you were wondering what the hell that artwork is at the top of this post:

Artist's impression of a wormhole as seen by an observer crossing the event horizon of a Schwarzschild wormhole, which is similar to a Schwarzschild black hole but with the singularity replaced by an unstable path to a white hole in another universe. The observer originates from the right, and another universe becomes visible in the center of the wormhole shadow once the horizon is crossed. This new region is however unreachable in the case of a Schwarzschild wormhole, as the bridge between the black hole and white hole will always collapse before the observer has time to cross it. See White Holes and Wormholes for a more technical discussion and animation of what an observer sees when falling into a Schwarzschild wormhole.

Clear?

Not Far Now

2007-01-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

That was always the answer to the travel-weary question: How much farther, Papa Smurf?

It is also the answer by Apple (née Apple Computer) to the question of Time Travel. In fact, in the sneak peek at the new Mac OS X: Leopard, there is a video presentation about a new feature called Time Machine.

"With Time Machine, you can go back in time, find what you need, then restore everything with a single click. Time Machine finds and restores anything on your system...It can even reunite you with old friends...Your memories are never far away. A quick trip into your system's past and they're back with a click. Time is on your side—with Leopard."

While Time Machine only allows us to travel into the past, Apple's recent technological shove into the future is the iPhone—an iPod, a phone and an Internet communicator all-in-one—which "ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone."

Should we consider Apple, Inc. one of this world's innovators in time travel? What other Top Secret plans are they hatching in their laboratories? Calling Max and 99...

Who's on First?

2007-01-09T12:04:00.000-08:00

Well, Who's on BBC-America, actually. Doctor Who, I mean.

That is the Doctor and Rose watching the end of the world (our world), which is about to be fried as the sun turns into a red giant five billion years from now. Makes you think. Below is a picture of the last surviving human, just a stretch of skin with eyes and a mouth, in constant need of hydration (that's what the goonies are for) and with her brain floating in a jar beneath. Her physical state is the result of many plastic surgeries, not a result of five billion years of evolution. Her name's Cassandra, by the way.

I offer you this glimpse into the future, albeit one created by Russell T. Davies, in order to warm you up to the idea of my last chapter of travel writing: time travel. One of our greatest and most celebrated and longest-running time travelers is Doctor Who. In order to begin delving into time travel, I watched the entire first season (2005) of Doctor Who which I had recorded from BBC- America. I wanted ideas, perspectives, direction. While thoroughly entertaining (thoroughly!), it didn't give me too much of what I was looking for. I, of course, am studying travel writing. This was pure fantastic time travel. The series is great because it takes the time to allow for small revelations and understandings from the Doctor's new sidekick, Rose, who stumbles upon him—mid-mission—and joins him in his travels. As she slowly wraps her mind around the concept of time travel, we are right there with her. It is a difficult concept for us "linear time" beings to grasp. And, with my project in mind, how do you write about it? You can't really send postcards from the future, now can you? And can you even record your travels? If you visit the past, might that not change the future and, therefore, any entries you might have written about those travels, too? I guess we still have to get out of that timeline frame of mind.

So, onto the Internet, which has the answers to everything.

Eat Out

2007-01-07T08:28:00.001-08:00

We often travel in pursuit of cuisine.

Beginning the Wind-Up

2007-01-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

Or wind-DOWN, I suppose. I have been wracking my brain for a way to tie up this travel blog business. It has been so interesting to hear from all of you with your experiences and opinions of travel writing. Your thoughts have spurred thoughts of my own, giving me great jumping off points for continued dialogue. So, thank you.

I have found my next and last subject of travel writing and am researching now so I can formulate some stellar new posts. Check back soon.

On The Campaign Tour

2007-01-01T15:28:00.000-08:00

Politicians travel. We are not in the throes of a major political campaign at this time, but John Edwards has announced his run for president early enough for me to include him in my project (how thoughtful of him). Here is an entry from his own travel blog on his campaign website:

Elizabeth and I just finished a great interview with George Stephanopoulos, which you can watch tomorrow morning on ABC. Now I'm about to take off for our town hall in South Carolina.

The crowds and enthusiasm in Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada were absolutely amazing. We never had crowds in Iowa like the one we just had until a few days before the caucuses in 2004. The crowds in Portsmouth were larger than any crowd I've ever had in New Hampshire - in the 2004 primary or the general election. There were a thousand people outside who couldn't get in so I went outside an stood on a chair to talk to them! And I was told that the crowd in Reno, Nevada - about 2500 - was completely unprecedented.

If you're in South Carolina or here in Chapel Hill, come out today for our town hall and rally - and for everyone, thank you for doing what you have to make this a tremendous kickoff tour - online and on the ground. Elizabeth and I wish you a happy new year.

The political travel blog serves several purposes. First, it provides information. "Here is my travel schedule. Here's where you might hear what I've got to say. Here's where I might kiss your baby. Here's where you might finally be convinced to join my campaign for president of the United States." Second, the use of new technology, as proliferated in the recent midterm elections, not only gives Edwards an edge (I mean a hip edge) but simultaneously allows him to relate to people on a more colloquial, conversational level. The simplicity of his language even in the post above demonstrates an attempt to talk to the people, in their terms. His adjectives are simple. His wide-eyed, "amazed" writing voice sounds humble and just so gosh-darn-flattered at the attention and support that he's left with his mouth agape. Why, he even had to stand on a chair to talk to the SRO audience outside! Amazing!

Daily Travel

2007-01-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

I mentioned before that we must define travel before we begin to record it. How we define it might actually alter how we record it. A first-time visit to a foreign country might merit a journal, while a trip to the dentist might only warrant a note in the day planner. As I study travel and blogging, I am looking to discover the range of travel subjects covered in blogs. For example, I found this blog about daily travel in the London Underground. The author writes about different aspects of the Underground: its riders, events, structure, design and random occurrences that happen in the course of a "normal" day in the life of a commuter:

...with my site don't expect too much on maps, timetables (which the underground never really follows apart from the first and last train!) and pictures of trains (you can find these amongst my links page if you really want them). What you should expect is fun, the latest views about what it's really like to travel on the tube and a good laugh.

Today's post is about the irony of her Underground blog headlining the daily paper distributed IN the Underground. While riding the Underground, she read about herself writing about herself riding the Underground.

Also, read the post about a graffiti bomb that exploded last week in the Camden Town station.

The art is beautiful and, while destructive, sends messages and blares public art to the riders. It is like an exciting, spontaneous, temporary art installation, albeit an illegal one that will ultimately cost the city thousands of pounds to repair. Do follow the links to the photo sets. Some examples of other graffiti bombings are quite something:

Punching up the intricacies and trivialities of everyday life elevates their status, allowing legend to form. One commenter on this blog pointed out that business travel is not really blogworthy. Going Underground's Blog changes this perspective, making the mundane entertaining. She really stops, smells those flowers, snaps photos of them and writes about each one, sharing her discoveries with all of us. It's really the long-held concept of making the most out of life, treating each day like it's special, making-every-moment-count type thing.

Crazy Crossover (Thanks, Google)

2006-12-29T19:27:00.000-08:00

3 juin 1972 à New York, NY - John Kennedy Jr est invité sur le banc des New York Mets au Shea Stadium, avant leur match contre les Braves d'Atlanta. © AFP

The title of this post refers to my story about stumbling upon the New York Mets in John F. Kennedy Airport.

That kid had an awfully big bat.

How did we write?

2006-12-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

How did we write back then? How did we keep track of our travels? How did we share our experiences?

On another big trip, my grandparents went to Italy. We got postcards from them every other day. New pictures on the fronts, new stamps, new postmarks, new brief mentions of an adventure or a view. We pored over every inch. Examined every component of this communication, feeling, somehow, that we were participating in their exploration.

When Michael and I traveled through Europe in the back seat of my parents' rental car, we wrote in our diaries. We got locked diaries for our very first trip. And kept getting them for each new trip. I particularly remember a Ziggy one. My entries were rather mundane (ref: Kevin) but Michael's were more experiential, more poetic, more artistic. But those diaries were for ourselves (they had locks for crying out loud). The memories were just for ourselves. They weren't to share, really.

How does that differ in a travel blog? The new technology allows for an instant and potentially very wide audience for your travel diary. Does it change your writing voice? When you write to remind yourself of an experience, how does it differ when you write to entertain? I wrote a blog when I lived abroad last year. Its primary purpose, or perhaps its impetus, was to share my adventure with my friends and family back home. I am happy to have a potentially permanent record of my experiences, yes, but am I happy they are out there potentially permanently for all to see for(potentially)ever? If I wrote for a specific audience, an audience that was gathered to share in my journey, what effect does my writing have on future, unrelated audiences? Will it hold up? Will people find it at all of value? Will there be some governing body or judgment bench that decides what survives in cyberspace and what does not? Have we just created a new place for trash? Where do all the abandoned blogs go? Do they actually waste space? Is all the material on the Internet accumulating in some way that will wreak havoc on, or at least compromise, future societies?

What are your thoughts?

Kevin's Recipe

2006-12-28T18:59:00.000-08:00

Kevin reminded me of something...

His recipe for giving future to our past:

Combine a couple events
Change the years
Add even more famous people or incredible happenings

When I was four—yes, people, get used to it. Chris is back, in all his tangential ways—when I was four, we went to (probably) John F. Kennedy Airport (formerly Idlewild) to see my grandparents off on a big trip. They were flying to (hold onto your hats, girls) California.

This was 1972. Still in the glory days of air travel, when whole families would travel to the airport to wait with grandparents at the gate until they boarded the plane. Lillian and Johnny were flying with their dear friends, Herman and Charlotte. In support of Herman and Charlotte were their grandchildren, John and Tara (was Tara even born? I think so). Along with Lillian and Johnny and Herman and Charlotte was the entire New York Mets baseball team. I don't know when it was first noticed that we shared the waiting area with the likes of Yogi Berra, but it was. The daughters and sons-in-law of the traveling grandparents were a-twitter and can we take a picture well I'm not going over there me neither are you kidding oh just give me the camera I'll do it. That was my mother. The brave soul who sidled up to the famous ballplayers and asked if they would take a picture with the boys. The boys meant us! John and me, the big four-year-olds. So we sat on the floor in front of all the Mets men in their suits, dress suits for travel. Mom took out the Polaroid. The BIG Polaroid. The one with the old-fashioned accordion looks that takes one picture at a time that you have to pull out of the cartridge and then peel off the film once the tiny, fun-to-play-with timer goes off.

My mom took two pictures. One with us in front of the entire team. One with the generous Kenny Singleton (who later went on to play for the Baltimore Orioles—shocked you didn't I? I know a thing or two about sports, yo) who squatted down to our level. The picture with Kenny Singleton came out real nice. The one with us in front of the suits was just that. Us in front of a bunch of suits. My mother had cut off all their heads!

To this day, we laugh about that picture. She's quick to defend herself with the fact that she was the only one with the nerve to approach the Mets. We're lucky to have gotten what we did. She did have the wherewithal to ask them all to sign an envelope that she pulled out of her purse. She keeps that envelope with Yogi's and Kenny's signatures along with the two pictures in a giant, falling-apart family photo album that we stumble upon from time to time.

I won't even start telling you about the day we saw Björn Borg at the airport. Maybe that was LaGuardia.

Sifting Through My Poop

2006-12-28T18:23:00.000-08:00

OK, that was another of my alarmist titles. But it ain't inaccurate. My friend Kevin responded to the "My First Time" post by not only posting a comment, but by writing a very interesting post of his own on his own blog, Frivolous Motion, in which he, well, in which he sifted through my poop.

Aug. 20, 1962
The first time Sally hears about school.

In addition to dissecting the concept of "firsts," Kevin writes astutely of storytelling:

...in the interest of constructing a perfect narrative out of the chaotic tangential truth of our lives, we pick and choose memories to turn into events and highlight as important. Sometimes we will combine a couple events, change the years, add even more famous people or incredible happenings, in order to be able to share a story rather than something...mundane

Do give his post (and his blog) a read. It is well worth it. He would definitely get high marks if HE were writing my paper. Oy.

My First Time

2006-12-27T07:41:00.000-08:00

If you don't count a trip to Niagara Falls when I was two and actually drove a boat, then I guess my first trip of note was to Sweden when I was eight.

My parents took my brother, Michael, and me to Sweden in 1976. I remember visiting my grandfather in Göteborg, my aunt and uncle and cousins in southern Sweden, more distant cousins on the island of Öland and finally a trip up to the nation's capital, Stockholm, to visit more distant relatives and also to sightsee.

I remember both my grandfather's apartment in Göteborg, Sweden's second largest city, and his summer house at Näset on the shore. I remember picking black currants and red currants and gooseberries off the bushes in his yard. I remember meeting my Swedish cousins for the first time and Staffan, the youngest, could say a few words in English and to this day I can recall his "funny" pronunciation of "Chris and Mike." We played with toy soldiers and the dogs and ran through the university campus on which my uncle taught. All this on days when we didn't go for long walks to find cherry trees, which my uncle Birger and cousin Sune would climb like monkeys straight to the top and the rest of us would just stand in place at the bottom yanking every cherry within reach off the tree and shoving them in our mouths.

I remember visiting the Royal Palace in Sweden and learning about the king and queen (a real king and queen!). We saw (and touched) a ship that had been recovered from the harbor that dated back several hundred years. We met my dad's cousin Ingemar and his girlfriend. We went to Skansen, an outdoor animal park, with indigenous animals from all over Sweden and actual houses and barns from all different regions of the country. I still have a little donkey that I won in a raffle on my eighth birthday.

I remember all of these things. But the story I tell most of all was of the initial flight over. We flew Air India, and either it was the spicy food or the air-travel-for-the-first-time, but I had to poop desperately and ran to the back just as the plane began its descent into Heathrow in London. There was, of course, a long line. So I ran back to my seat, told my mom the news, sat down and promptly had diarrhea right there in my airplane seat. Yelps of horror erupted and I was whisked by the stewardess back to the secret staff bathroom and cleaned up somewhat. When we got to Heathrow, my mother took me immediately to an airport bathroom where she threw out my soiled undies and I had to endure the humiliation of not only pooping on a plane, but walking through Heathrow airport without any underwear.

How did I start?

2006-12-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

It's almost as if it were a false start, ladies and gentlemen. (Once again I speak in the plural, in the hopes that there are more of you than there may actually be.)

I feel the desperate need to share with you the germination of this project. I spent last winter living in Stockholm, Sweden and experimented with blog technology for the first time then. I wanted to share the humor and confusion and adventure of my abroad experience with friends and family back home. So I did. At Viking Around.

For my final project, I thought I'd take a look at travel blogs. What they are. What they can be. What head are the writers in when they write? Why do they blog?

I can speak to my loneliness. I was living abroad for the first time and while I did have family in Stockholm, I was still away from my circle of friends and family in New York. I needed to connect in some way. By living my life there as if my friends were part of it, as if I were even having these experiences just to share them with them, it made it more bearable. We discussed in our blogging class the point at which you become your blog, or, more specifically, when you live your life just to blog about it. I can't say I did this to write about it, but what about writers who do. And I mean writers, not necessarily bloggers. (No disrespect meant at all.) I refer to authors who embroil themselves in a different life, so they can better understand the novel they are writing. Or journalists who walk in different shoes so they can better report on a different culture. Blogging is by partial definition writing about one's own life. So the blurred lines happen everyday, not just for a specified period of study.

I blogged for companionship. I wasn't even hep to the comment realm at the time. Neither were most of my friends actually! In fact, as we have discussed, the whole medium was still new to people. Here's an example from a comment of how a close friend of mine was handling all of this electronic communication:

I'm sorry that I haven't figured out the skype(spelling?) thing but i'm an ignoramous when it comes to those things. I could have sent you this in e-mail but I wanted to prove to you that I'm actually reading your blog.

The travel blog allows the writer to stay in touch. It allows the reader to accompany him on his travels. It allows for a connection across great distances. It also challenges the reader to keep up with the technology adopted by the writer. It forces the audience to step up, to meet the artist halfway. If the viewer is not proficient in the medium, she will not be able to experience the art.

Where does one start?

2006-12-19T20:22:00.000-08:00

At the very beginning, some say. Some say it is a very good place to start.

Just for kicks (and because it is a source so controversial) I began at Wikipedia. (Let it be known this is the FIRST time I've used Wikipedia to begin research for a research paper.) It wasn't very helpful. The entry on travel blogs is rather weak. Although it did pique my interest in reading or re-reading some rather elderly literature.

I then went to what is normally my first point of departure: The Google. The first door I chose lead me to a terrific site just all about travel blogs. "Travel Blog is a unique free online travel diary for travellers across the world."

It further defines itself as "a collection of tools so that travellers can write down a journal, send the address to family and friends, set up automatic mailing lists so that everytime you add a new entry to your list your friends get an automatic email. Also the theme is travel, the tools are designed to cope with you moving around, maps and flags are linked from each journal. Photos can be added to your journal (if you have a digital camera or scanner) - many internet cafes have scanners - if you have some must see photos you should get some help there. We have a photo gallery for each blogger to be able to showcase their best photos, complete with slideshows. We encourage our members to link to useful sites about areas, to help out future travellers. Write reviews, guides, journals, add photos."

As we read further in its About section, we learn that it was launched in 2002 and that the founder, Alistair Watters, still travels and maintains his own blog. Really worth checking out. I read a recent entry about diving in the Galapagos Islands. It seems the blog serves different audiences in different ways. I, personally, have never been to the Galapagos Islands. Seeing the underwater pictures from his dives were fascinating. Hearing about his being in the water with a school of hammerhead sharks was exhilarating. An experienced diver will glean different information from this entry. She will be interested in his notes about the diving company and the water currents, for example. Both useful and enticing, Ali's blog serves multiple purposes, as does travel itself. [That was a lame, "wrap-up" kind of sentence. Stupid.]

And We're Off!

2006-12-15T08:11:00.000-08:00

Let's take a trip together, shall we?

I'm studying travel blogs for my final project of this terrific class which examines blogs as a medium of communication. We've pulled them apart, broken them down (both blogs and bloggers), discussed their future, discussed their past, and, not to be left out of the excitement, have created our own.

In this final burst of electronic energy, I will examine travel writing in the form of the blog—both my "paper" and my subject. I invite you to participate in this. Along the way, I will ask for your input, regarding your own travel experiences. We have found the comment threads on blogs to be rich sources of information exchange.

So, Bon Voyage, as they say. Or GET THE LEAD OUT, as my friend Caitlin would say.