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Posts Tagged ‘planning’

The Car or the Road?

Posted in City Living, tagged , , , , , on September 14, 2011 | 1 Comment »

I cancelled my car insurance yesterday. This is how it went:

I dial 1-800-INSURANCE-COMPANY and answer all the compulsory questions to get to customer service. “Thank you for calling INSURANCE COMPANY. How can I help you?”

“I need to cancel my car insurance.”

“Are you moving out of the country?”

Short pause. Oh, how I want to answer YES to you, INSURANCE COMPANY Lady. I want to say to you “Why yes of course! After months and months and months, nay, years of consistent, purposeful saving I am leaving for the open road. The possibilities are endless, INSURANCE COMPANY Lady. I quit my cubicle job. I bought a backpack and a one-way plane ticket. I’m making this happen. Why – I have no need for car insurance anymore!”

But alas, I can’t answer “yes” to that question. I am not moving out of the country. “No, my car was stolen – in May,” I hear myself say. The rest of the phone conversation is remarkable only because INSURANCE COMPANY cancels my policy without hassle.

With that, my car is really gone.

As you may remember, four months ago my car was stolen. That day, I sat with my friend on the stoop of my apartment, somewhat in shock. I said to her “You know what, maybe this day will be the first page of my memoir. It will say ‘My adventures around the world began the day my car was stolen.’” Thinking that my disillusionment with the city would finally force me to really focus on getting out, I began to seriously think about what a timeline would be for saving enough money to take a gap year and do what makes me happiest – travel.

But what I’ve found is that no one can be passionate about saving. Saving is boring. It is not glamorous. Saving is saying “no” to people. Saving gives you a lot of time to cultivate the bitterness against your immobility and the crime responsible for it. I want to save $20,000. But I also want my car.

I want to be able to leave the city when I want to. I want to be able to visit my friends in the suburbs with ease. I want to be able to visit my family. I want to do all of the things that I cannot do because some asshole decided he could take my fully-paid-off car from outside my house. And I realize the reason I feel like I want a car so much is because it wasn’t my choice, or my fault, that I lost it. And yet, to buy one, now, would certainly be a setback in my savings goal. It would be a setback to my aspiration to travel. But until that day comes, I will feel stuck. And bored.

And so, I must confess, it is really hard for me to see the big picture here. I know that to travel gives me the greatest happiness. And I know that I cannot withstand interminable days in a cubicle at a job in which I have no hope to advance. I am literally going nowhere – mentally, physically.

So which do I choose? The car or the road? Am I strong enough to make “the road” happen, without “the car?”

Let’s hope so.

My car in happier times - Road tripping.

Please, if you’re reading this and you have any advice to offer regarding saving such a large sum of money and not succumbing to an antisocial zombie-like state of mind, do please share in the comments.

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Earthquakes and Hurricanes and Disaster Preparedness, Oh My!

Posted in America, tagged , , , , on August 27, 2011 | 4 Comments »

The difference between Tuesday’s earthquake and two-hours-from-now’s Hurricane Irene is that the great quake of the East Coast was so surprising. In fact, according to the Telegraph, immediately following the earthquake, Twitter reported a record 5,500 tweets per second. Earthquakes of the geological sort are not very common in Washington, DC. But you know, neither are hurricanes in New York City.

Hurricane Irene RSVPed to the party, like last week. Rarely do disasters give us so much warning. She let us know that she was coming, and that she’s wearing her finest dress. She might be a little tired by the time that she gets here after stopping over for a spell in the Bahamas. But she will get here. I know because I have been obsessively stalking the Hurricane Tracker.

The Hurricane Tracker is for severe-weather enthusiasts what the Santa tracker is for small children. The Hurricane Tracker allows us to adequately prepare (read: panic). Unlike the earthquake, whose sudden arrival and departure left us all with a surge of useless adrenaline, tracking the hurricane is an exercise in building and sustaining the anticipation. Mostly this means that people flock to the store for the “essentials.” In order of importance: water, batteries, bread, milk, flashlights, candles.

In an effort to hone my journalistic skills, I bravely took to a suburban Pennsylvania Target last night to appraise pre-disaster American human behavior.

The first thing that I noticed was that there was nothing but sparkling water. A frustrated Target employee: (ring ring) “We are SOLD OUT of bottled water.” (hang up) (ring ring) “We are SOLD OUT of bottled water.”

Bread – the staple of snowstorms proved that it is very much in vogue pre-hurricane too.

Somewhat puzzling since every government talking head is pretty much telling us that we will lose power. Good luck drinking your gallons of milk before then.

Lucky day – there was still enough peanut butter and Nutella left for me! Overheard in this aisle: “Get me a jar of apocalypse peanut butter!”


You’d have more luck finding a candle than a flashlight. Unless you want the last $39 flashlight.

But good luck powering your flashlights as there were no D-batteries to be found.

What? No one needs fresh breath?

Or extra wind?

Much to the admonishment (“Yeah, Amanda, it’s going to be really fun when you don’t have running water”) of my coworkers, I sort of love Hurricane Irene, even though I’ve experienced the full gamut of emotions that comes when at first you don’t think something is going to be a big deal to the day-later realization that holy shit you don’t have any non-perishable food in your apartment that doesn’t need to be cooked. All the while I had been not-so-quietly rooting for Philadelphia’s destruction (personal grudge) I was seeming to forget that IF all the power went out and IF the water stopped running and IF all the stores shut down, my occupation would change from marketer to LOOTER. My trip to Target somewhat quelled my fears:


As a modern-day city dweller, I am wholly dependent on other people to live – even the people at the corner store who sell me milk when I’m too poor to eat anything other than cereal for dinner. (Note: I am too proud to buy milk the day before a blizzard or hurricane. I’m using the excuse that the power is going to go anyway.) Somewhere between being told to fill up my bathtub with water (see: comment made by my coworker) and to get ready to use my mattress as a shield against high winds, I realized that the Hurricane Tracker is just a count-down clock to a personal survival test. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I have thought that this might be my Tommy Lee Jones in Volcano moment.

Bunkered down in my apartment in this relative calm-before-the-storm with my bounty of crackers and peanut butter, there’s nothing left for me to do but wait and take comfort that there’s nothing I nor anyone else can do to stop it.

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Five Travel Lessons in Jurassic Park

Posted in Jurassic Park, tagged , , , , , , on August 18, 2011 | 3 Comments »

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading travel blogs, it’s that travel blogs love to make lists. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m new here. I could tell you that I’ve been to five continents and to every time zone, but I just don’t feel like I have the authority just yet to tell you which are the 5 ugliest states or what the 7 top reasons to go around the world are. I really want to bring some of my travel expertise to the table though, so here goes. Here are five invaluable travel lessons you can take from the 1993 Steven Spielberg action-adventure masterpiece Jurassic Park.*

1. Look with your eyes, not with your camera.

One of the most remarkable things about Jurassic Park is that after two hours of being terrorized by dinosaurs, no one has taken a picture to prove it. Granted, I guess, this was before Instagram, but in this world, they’ve engineered DINOSAURS! You’d think someone would have a camera, snapping away! (“Hey there John Hammond, take a picture of me in front of this Brontosaurus – careful not to cut its head out of the frame!”) But, look at the wonder (disbelief?) on Grant and Sattler’s faces – these people are actually absorbing what they are seeing in front of them. Sometimes, while traveling, we tend to get caught up in preserving the moment instead of being IN the moment. While on safari in South Africa, I took over 500 pictures of animals that weren’t even dinosaurs! Jurassic Park teaches us to sit back, look, and marvel for a minute – with our eyes.

2. Planning your wardrobe can save space in the backpack.

Dr. Ian Malcolm and Dr. Alan Grant have two different “looks” and each works for him. Dr. Malcolm’s strategy is all-black, which is pretty smart if you think about it because theoretically he never really has to think about what to wear. Dr. Grant rocks the full-fledged adventure outfit (including the adventure hat), which, if you’re going to be roughing it, is the only way to go. Both characters probably didn’t need to pack much – and this is the key to happy traveling. One pair of pants can take you a long way. Lay out what you’re thinking about packing, and then eliminate maybe 1/3 of that. Then, you’re ready to go. I may not have an adventure hat, but I do have “adventure shirts” (yes, I really call them that), which is just a 5-pack of those Hanes Men’s white t-shirts you can buy in K-Mart or Target next to those packs of underwear for like $4. They can go anywhere, do anything, and are completely disposable if you rip them or get them super muddy.
Also, a Hawaiian shirt doesn’t look good anywhere. Not in Hawaii. Not in Jurassic Park.

3. When you’re in a theme park, follow the rules.

When you don’t, you end up falling out of a rollercoaster or being eaten by dinosaurs. Also, you probably don’t want to buy anything in the gift shop. Overpriced.

4. The strong survive. The weak die on toilets.

Okay, this may sound a little dramatic, but I promise it’s practical. Before traveling, I always amp up my workouts as part of the preparation process (in part to build up my strength and in part so that I can run away from whatever may chase me). While you may not run into dinosaurs (fingers crossed) there are many small stressors out there just ready to prey on your weaknesses. Even air travel, which is basically just a lot of sitting around, exposes you to low cabin pressure, dry air, and the sicknesses of your fellow travelers. (Make sure you drink water – not booze – when flying!) It’s important to be mindful of what is appropriate to eat (and not eat) when traveling abroad. Getting sick is no fun. Spending too much time on the toilet can ruin a travel experience. (Thankfully I only lost one night when I got food poisoning in Ecuador, but unfortunately that night was salsa-dancing night!) Remember you may be doing twice as much on half the sleep, so take care of your body!

5. For God’s sake, don’t shine a flashlight in a T-Rex’s eye.

Self-explanatory.

So there you have it, the five travel lessons in Jurassic Park. Book a flight, grab your suitcase, and hold onto your butt.

*I’ve been reading a lot of David Foster Wallace lately, so please permit me the use of an explanatory footnote. On several key occasions this past year, I realized how pervasive Jurassic Park really is in everyday life. In the middle of my 5K in June, when I was feeling woefully out-of-shape, I thought to myself (more than once) “Boy, I’d be really fucked if a dinosaur (or, okay, more likely – a lion) decided to chase me.” And hiking through the Amazon Rainforest? JUST LIKE JURASSIC PARK. (Ask my friends, I must have said this at least six times). So, you can see, this isn’t a completely irrelevant post.**
**Although leading critics may (rightfully) say that I’m 18 years too late in writing this.***
***I hope you enjoy it anyway.

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World Wide Blog

Posted in Ecuador, tagged , , , on July 14, 2011 | 4 Comments »

There it was, a question looming in the air.

I wasn’t particularly dressed up for the occasion, and yet, I had been anticipating the moment for months now. Could it really be this easy? I say yes, and then, a few months of planning, and then… bliss? Why wouldn’t I say “yes?” I had been waking each morning thinking, could today be the day? But when faced with a question that needed the answer, I felt the rush, the swell of excitement, the acknowledgement of a potentially life-changing committment.

Staring at me in the face, the question begged an answer: “Confirm purchase?”

I took a deep breath, hovered my cursor over the word “Confirm” and clicked. Yes, I will go to Ecuador with you, Avianca Airlines.

But what of the time between airline purchase and the big day?

I am no stranger to international travel, and my planning process usually consisted of purchasing a Lonely Planet book and reading it cover to cover, cross-referencing hotel recommendations with Trip Advisor, booking a few hotels, and finally, creating a cheat-sheet for those accompanying me (currency conversions, helpful phrases, etc.) I was meticulous. I was prepared.

In the past these trips have been as simple as booking the chapel, finding a priest, and walking down the aisle. The difference between past trips and Ecuador is that this is the first trip I’m going on since I joined Twitter and became a reader of travel blogs.

I sent out a Tweet, long before I purchased airfare but after I had decided that Australia would be too hard, and the responses I received were encouraging. Pretty soon, I was able to find travelers who had been to or lived in Ecuador and who wrote blogs about their experiences. I still bought a guide-book, but I found myself referencing it less and less and referencing the world-wide blog more and more, especially when I (literally and figuratively) stumbled upon posts like this one from Brendan’s Adventures, which are comprehensive as guides in and of themselves.

My planning process has taken a much more unconventional route, but I appreciate having learned how not to be a target for crime and a first-hand account of where the real equator is located. I have enjoyed reading travel stories, which upon second glance, contained little gems of helpful information.

Of course the danger in reading blogs in preparation of a trip is that you may allow another person’s idea of a place plant a seed of prejudice in your mind. I must confess that reading blogs about being robbed in Quito led me to momentarily question why I was dragging three close friends through a city where bad guys lurk around every corner. Of course then I’d find a photoblog post, and my heart would skip a few beats, unable to withstand the torture of the planning phase at all.

So here you have it: a blogger blogging about blogs blogging about travel. Blogs are valuable as a planning tool because they are able to show you a place in a way that guides may not have the liberty of time and space to do. Engaging with people in the way absolutely affected my travel plans, as before booking my flight I was unable to gauge whether Ecuador sans Galapagos would be worth the trek. I am so grateful to have gleaned information from people who are as passionate about travel as I am. Now it is my job to go out and have my own experience. I cannot wait to meet Ecuador.

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