Killing Batteries

When people meet me for the first time in person, several undeniable truths about Leif Pettersen, negligibly famous travel writer, are readily apparent:

•    Aged like a fine wine
•    Lover of furry animals and children
•    Zen-like in his patience for bad drivers
•    Natalie Portman scholar

However, when people first get a load of this blog, apparently the first trait that springs to mind is ‘gadget junkie’. The enablers at Nokia acted on this gut instinct, which is why I am now fondling a loaner Nokia N85. Yes, fondling. It’s worse than the first time I touched a boob. I’m working this anti-social behavior out of my system now, because soon I’ll have to go out in public with this thing for some very important geeklicious testing.

Now, there’s no chance that I’ll relinquish my Blackberry. In fact if my explicit instructions about being buried with it are not followed to the letter, heads are gonna roll when I’m reincarnated. But after scanning the specs on the finely crafted, portable technorgasm that is the N85, it was difficult to pass up the offer to play with it. Indeed, the timing was exquisite, as the phone comes loaded with a slew of wicked GPS apps and I’m mere weeks away from a long tour through Tuscany – a place sign-posted by a crack team of Italy’s most dedicated underachievers. I spent something like 483,562 hours simply being lost the last time I researched Tuscany and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be out-passive aggressived by Italian signage twice. The Nokia people quickly agreed to let me take the N85 abroad, so when I’m driving in circles on this particular trip to Tuscany, it’ll only to be to find a parking spot that’ll cause the most traffic havoc (when in Rome…).

Now, to be fair to the asshats in charge of putting up signs in Italy, I’ll admit that Italian roads, and particularly the streets in the centers of historic cities, could make the hardest cartographer snap. I figured that even a squillion dollar satellite couldn’t possibly plot all those tiny, winding streets correctly and decided to do some pre-testing. I used the phone to GPS-tour both Siena and San Gimignano and, oh happy day, every single alley, corner and dead end were perfectly marked! So I said to myself, “Self, stop messing around here. You and I both know we can make this thing go haywire. Let’s show it who’s boss and take it to the most confounding, head-spinning, spirit-sapping tangle of streets in all of Italy. That’s right, Venice.” I zoomed out, floated due northeast, then zoomed back down onto that deliciously hellish maze and Buddha help me, it was all there, perfectly plotted and marked.

People, this phone is going to literally save me tens of hours of time on this trip that will be better spent signing copies of the current Tuscany & Umbria for all the groupies that follow me around in VW vans when I’m on the road. Or, failing that, playing World Series of Poker, which is also pre-loaded on the phone.

I’ll post a full Nokia N85 review when I’ve returned from my trip (or the next time I can’t think of anything else to blog about).

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

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I joined Facebook last summer, because many self-absorbed friends had taken to posting their vacation photos on Facebook and only Facebook, so it was either I join or I miss out on photos. (Tip: If you ever want to see any of your friends semi-nude, just ask to see their Burning Man photos. Boioioing!)

But joining doesn’t mean participating, and so I didn’t. I mean really, I’ve got stuff to do over here. I’m already prohibitively preoccupied by email, Google Reader, Twitter and whatever else I can find that doesn’t involve actual work. I’m hanging onto the bare minimum of daily productivity by a slender thread here. No more distractions, thank you.

Peer pressure to flesh out my Facebook page and find friends ensued. I told those people they could take their Facebook and shove it right up their MySpace, because I’m a busy man. Very busy. I have, you know, stuff going on, like constantly. I can’t think of an example right now, but rest assured it’s bedlam.

Last week I caved. My ego couldn’t resist widening the audience of people who have no choice but to read and bask in my idle thoughts and funny pictures. And you know what happened? Pretty much exactly what I predicted would happen. Facebook become a full-time job.

First there was the pictures to upload. The figuring out how to connect the Twitter feed. Then the momentous task of friending everyone I’ve ever met for the past 25 years. With Facebook’s wonky interface, none of this happened in quick fashion. And, though I’m sure this gets easier over time, with the roughly 274 options you have on each page, you can never be quite sure where a link will take you or how to get back to that thing you wanted to look at five hours ago, when you first signed on.

Then you suddenly realize that it’s 2:30pm and you haven’t eaten anything except for that coffee at 8am and your eyes are burning and your brain is scrambled and your work day window is effectively shot.

Now if career-ending non-productivity was the only issue, I might, over time, be able to balance my daily schedule, allowing me to both engage in Facebook play and earn a sustainable income. But there’s an incessant, individual P.R. see-saw that needs to be attended to on Facebook. Namely the damage control and spin required whenever someone from your past decides to get cheeky and post something personally embarrassing, like the above picture of me from a bad hair day from the final days of senior year in high school.  (I’m on the left)

When you think about it, the fallout from regrettable moments dredged up from your past could be potentially ruinous. No one would ever think to do stuff like that to you publicly if it were all happening in person, but since it’s all online, anything goes. The following video, which I found on one of my new friend’s profile page, shows what Facebook in real life might be like. [Those of you reading this with a blog reader, can view the video here]:

I saw that video after I’d spent 12 cumulative hours establishing myself on Facebook and it momentarily made me start searching for the elusive ‘delete everything’ button. Why is it OK to do that type of stuff online when, if it were to happen in real life, the ensuing violence would probably earn you a spot in the opening credits of Cops? Nevertheless, I’m sticking with this Facebook fad for now and we’ll see how quickly some identity thief gets a credit card in my name and charges up $2,000 in donkey scat porn. Because I’d never do anything like that.

So, yeah, by all means, friend me. But I’m not gonna do all that “25 Things You Didn’t Wanna Know About Me” and join your “I Like Beets” fan club. At least for now. Ask me again in about six months.

[STUPID PHOTO OF ME CREDIT: Peter Kelen]

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

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Whew! Now that my Unemployment Anxiety resting heart rate has dropped below 120, I feel comfortable speaking authoritatively about travel writing again and ditching the blog post I was preparing on how to break down the sandwich prep station at closing time at Jimmy John’s (as if they’d have me).

As my Twitter followers already know, I’ve once again tip-toed off with update duties for the next edition of Lonely Planet Tuscany & Umbria. Needless to say, this is one of those jobs where food, wine, photo opps and bragging rights make research a squillion times more fun than the actual writing. Indeed, Tuscany writing is equal parts smug euphoria and controlled nervous breakdown. Being that 50,000 writers have already written 584,937 articles about Tuscany, the pressure and challenge to not regurgitate 134,485,832 clichés is powerful. Also, the knowledge that Tuscany guidebooks outsell the Bible (rather, they would outsell the Bible if I were God) is a little unnerving while you’re trying come up with 15 synonyms for ‘tasty’ every day.

So it is with a happy heart, a monstrous thesaurus and several nerve-soothing bottles of wine that I begin my pre-pre-research trip preparation. (Oh my god, what will I wear?)

In Freelancerland, guidebook gigs are no small commitment. They tend to be rather lengthy and all-consuming meaning usually you’re pledging to do that job, and only that job, until the job is done. So every time I’m considering a guidebook job, even one as coveted and lucrative as Tuscany, I go through a veritable tornado of indecision and doubt. Do I really want to invest three months in this thing? What if something better comes up? Am I too pretty for guidebook work? Did the statute of limitations expire from that thing that happen the last time I was there?

Unlike the easy afternoon that it takes to prepare for a 1,000 word magazine article, getting your head ready for an encyclopedic, 50,000 word guidebook job can take anywhere from three frantic days in the corner of a hostel in Florence (not recommended) to a slightly more serene two weeks in the privacy of your own home, a setting delightfully devoid of cleaning ladies cussing you out and splashing mop water on your maps. Text from the previous edition needs to be reviewed; requirements/requests/suggestions from the editor need to be absorbed; in the case of Lonely Planet, a giant sleeve of maps needs to be organized and marked up; and, depending on the destination, dead language skills need to be revived.

Further to the latter item, I like to walk around telling people (women) that I speak (butcher) Italian. I can get away with this because less than two years ago I lived there for eight months, coping with day-to-day tasks and eventually researching the current edition of Tuscany & Umbria, relying heavily on my rudimentary, but adequate Italian language skills. However, that was two years ago. And Italian is my newest and weakest language. Having not uttered a complete sentence in Italian for so long has resulted in what feels like a complete memory wipe. Furthermore, in the meantime I’ve been called upon to speak copious amounts of Spanish and Romanian, pushing Italian even further into the shadows of the thickly canopied surface of my cerebral cortex. As I’ve already discussed at great length, trying to keep track of three foreign languages that are so closely, confusingly, maddeningly similar is not one of my strong suits. I can still read Italian and even listen to it with difficulty, but I couldn’t cobble together a grammatically correct sentence right now even if you dangled a $500 bottle of Brunello di Montalcino in front of me.

In addition to all the above excitement, I’m also getting my affairs in order at home to be gone for so long. Things like stopping the mail, emptying the fridge, stocking my bags with the right clothes/meds/tech/books, setting up ‘Emailio’ (my email auto-responder and Bolivian astrological advisor) with a snarky message all have to be attended to with precision timing and obsessive-compulsive detail.

Also, since this is Italy, there’s the genuinely serious matter of clothes. I struggled with this last time, trying to strike a balance between comfort, utility and not looking like the village hobo. Since I’ll be hitting the ground in March, the issue of shorts versus pants shouldn’t be a problem this time around, but I have more nuanced issues to deal with, namely shoes. I walk anywhere from three to nine hours a day while I’m researching a guidebook. The idea of choosing style over comfort is ludicrous – unless you’re in Italy. The fact that I have been forbidden to shop for my own clothes since 1997, only exacerbates the situation. Any suggestions for non-punishing Italy guidebook author attire will be greatly welcome.

Finally, I’m seriously considering putting a call out for travel companions for this trip, who can act as expense-sharers, navigators, and personal protection. I spent much of my last Tuscany guidebook research trip lost and coping with batshit crazy people and I think these predicaments would be greatly eased by having a second and/or third body around. More on that when I actually have travel dates set. Though if you’ve got the money and time off in March/April, you should start updating your resume now. Not quite the best job in the world, but you could do worse.

Agonizing over travel insurance? Maybe I can help…

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