Space Cadet First Class Leif Pettersen will be reporting for duty for when/if they launch the first fam trip to the orbiting hotel – or space cruise ship or whatever – that may include jaunts to buzz the moon, as is apparently being soberly discussed somewhere at Virgin Galactic….

Back in July, my juggling teammate Steve Birmingham and I paid real money to a disappointing video guy to record us doing some of our better tricks. Due to disastrous framing instincts and an apparent spasm in his focus hand, much of the raw material this guy shot that wasn’t…

Some of you may not know that I have been juggling since I was 12 years old. Still more of you may not know that next summer I will be competing in the International Jugglers’ Association world team championships at the tender age of 44 (roughly twice the age of…

The shirtless, strapping, Pacific Islander man standing roughly 20 feet in front of me was possibly drunk, definitely pissed off, and holding a two foot machete. His unkempt hair, smoldering facial expression and posture alone would have been unnerving enough without the added knowledge that I’d just spent the day…

Twenty years ago this week, possibly even this day, was the last time I vomited. Ever since, I have self-branded as “vomit free since 93.” The 1993 episode was no run of the mill, spew-wipe-and-go caliber vomit, which is why I remember the event so well. It was spectacular enough…

Being that travel is effectively a perpetual exercise in ungraceful, humbling discovery, travel writers are often put in the position of writing about stuff that they knew little or nothing about before the trip. Moreover, the editorial understanding for these assignments is that the new experience or activity will be…

My 12 regular readers will back me up when I say that I rarely write about food. It’s just not my thing. Restaurant reviews, yes, but an entire post devoted to the stuff I shoveled into my soup hole on a trip, no. And yet, I’m composing this offtype post…

I have been sitting alone in this tiny room for a very long time. It seems so anyway. Time has a way of becoming deceptively elastic under certain conditions. Like how the three minutes it takes to eat a cupcake seems like eight seconds. Or, in this case, how time…

[This is an edited and re-mastered excerpt from my 2005 travelogue, recounting my visit to Bario, in the Malaysian Borneo jungle highlands.] Myriad thoughts race through your mind when you are lost and alone at night in the Borneo jungle highlands. Usually, this brain revving involves panic, urgency, and double…

Long term world travelers are not exceptionally brave. They don’t fight fires or deactivate bombs or take 78 hour bus rides from Spain to Romania in the punishing heat of June (the sane ones don’t at any rate). Yet, world travelers frequently hear reverential comments about their bravery from friends,…