I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Rick Steves for an article in the Memphis Flyer. I bet there’s at least one big thing you didn’t know about Mr. European Travel, but you’ll have to read the article to find out what it is.
Category Archives: Travel
Travel: Grey Dog Treats
I won’t lie: I love the Greyhound bus. Or at least, I used to. I’m 45 now, and I hear it’s changed a little, doesn’t go to so many small towns anymore, everybody’s just on their headphones, and so on.
But many of the travel articles I’ve written for the Memphis Flyer were inspired by my lifelong relationship with the Great Grey Dog, that most treacherous of the travel gods. Here’s a piece I did that was basically clearing out the notebook of some of them.
Dog Treats
Recovered memories from the journal of a Greyhound trip back east.
Russ’s Market in Dickson, Tennessee: The trip is now a few hours old, with a C-minus Greyhound start. We were an hour late leaving Memphis, the bus is horribly crowded, and among its passengers are three people on crutches, two others who stretch across the aisle because of their size, and four or five kids who won’t stop moving or screaming. Anything else would have been disappointing.
Knoxville: There was a woman upset about something, raising all kinds of hell, and this guy identified himself as a police officer and told her, “I will help you, lady, but you need to shut your mouth.” She shouted, “I will not shut my mouth.” And by golly, she didn’t.
“How Was Your Trip”?
I really kind of hate that question. It’s nice that people ask, I suppose, but it cannot be answered, and really, they don’t want you to. All this was on my mind when I wrote this piece for the Memphis Flyer.
How Was Your Trip?
Struggling with the question no one wants you to answer.
If you’ve ever gone on a trip, you’ve heard the Question.
Let’s say you go down to the Caribbean, stay in a quiet little resort with its own beach, charter a boat for a day, go snorkeling, cook a fresh fish dinner in the bungalow, and walk on the beach in the moonlight. And let’s say that was one night in a week of such nights.
After this transformative experience, during which every day was a new adventure filled with interesting experiences, you return home to see your friends and family. And what do they say?
“How was your trip?”
On Paying the Idiot Tax
Since I’ve completely lost my blogging groove lately, and life is swirling around very rapidly, I have decided to “get something out there” by digging into my Memphis Flyer travel archives and sharing some old pieces I wrote.
This time around it’s one I did on the concept of the Idiot Tax, which I explained in the article as ”any additional expense or hassle taken on by not knowing what the hell you’re doing.”
Idiot Tax
Not paying attention can cost you.
I should be in Dallas right now. But I’m not; I’m in Memphis. At the airport. For at least three hours.
Why? Because I made a tiny mistake — tiny in the size of it, but larger in the significance. All I did was write down 12:10 p.m., when I should have written down 10:35 a.m. The latter is when my flight left Memphis, the former when it arrives in Dallas. So around 10:30 this morning, when I got online to print my boarding passes, I realized my flight was leaving in five minutes.
Loving the Layers of London
I still do the occasional travel piece for the Memphis Flyer, and one of them ran this week. It’s called the Layers of London, and it’s about finding a little treasure of a church in the old city. Enjoy.