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September, 2009:

5 Places a Hawaiian Might go on Vacation

Sep 30th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
7 comments

I have this co-worker who lives in Hawaii. He works remotely, obviously. He’s in the office this week, and he’s a pretty all-around good character. But it makes me wonder – if you live in Hawaii, where do you go on vacation? I mean, you’ve got some of the best scenery, food, beaches and outdoor recreation right there. Not to mention diversity from travelers all across the world.
I could just ask my co-worker, but that wouldn’t be any fun. So I’m gonna speculate with my Top 5 places a Hawaiian Would go on Vacation. Enjoy!
5. Greenland – So if you’re used to being warm and cozy, it seems you might want to be cold for awhile. I imagine Greenland is nice and remote in addition to being goolie-freezing cold. So it’s perfect for getting away from all that sunshine.
4. Moscow – I’ve never been to Moscow, but I’d imagine with rampant capitalism and the leftovers of Soviet architecture, a lot of it has to be an eyesore. I hear the crime rates aren’t exactly endearing it to many people, either. As for cuisine, I suppose some borscht would be a nice change from some of the planet’s finest seafood.
3. Belize City, Belize – Wow. This place is a hole. I expected it to be a lot better, because every travel rag blasts San Jose, Costa Rica, in much the same terms. But I found San Jose fun and lively, where Belize City was foul and depressing, from its airport to [...]

Five Scenes from a Friday in Sedona

Sep 27th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
2 comments

Eulogy for a GPS

Sep 27th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
No comments yet

We are gathered here today to celebrate the passing of a good friend – my Garmin Foretrex 201 global positioning system receiver.
It’s career was long for a modern piece of electronics – more than six years. It’s been soaked by foul-smelling, Phoenix-in-the-summer dude sweat. By rain. Possibly by trace amounts of urine.
Through that all, it kept doing it’s duty, starting faithfully whenever it had the battery power – and always with an amusingly ambiguous graphic that looked like the silhouette of a man with a woody nearly half the size of his body, but was really just a man whose arm was stretched out holding a GPS.
Yes, it often bedeviled me, with its rechargeable battery that needed nearly eight hours of charging. And especially that pain-in-the-ass charging/computer cradle I often lost. And the serial connection rather than USB connection. Then there was the time I rode in my second Tour of the White Mountain – I was hoping to NOT get lost this year, and to make a map of the epic 66-mile mountain bike route. Well, that damn charging thing didn’t work … I had only enough power for about 20 miles. And yes, I got lost again. But I at least finished in once piece.
But not everything devolved into fiasco. In fact, those times were few. I celebrate its steady delivery of trackpoints, the many maps it helped me create and the fact it always seemed to be able to get signal. Hiking, biking, running. Australia to Tucson [...]

Other Ways to Catch up With Wandering Justin

Sep 24th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
No comments yet

You probably can’t get enough of my. I don’t blame you. To prevent you from going through withdrawals, I offer you my Twitter feed. You’ll get something maybe once a day. Some of it won’t even be travel/misadventure-related. But it’ll be fun or I won’t say anything at all.
Oh, and something else: I have a second blog called Minor League Rocker. It’s all about my shenanigans as a member of the rock band, Hung Dynasty.

Trip Flashback: Aboard Song of America

Sep 22nd, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
1 comment

Back when I was a teenager, I considered cruises the ultimate vacation. Think about it: All sorts of activities, all sorts of food, all sorts of girls. I would’ve been happy with a ship that sailed straight into the ocean and didn’t touch ground for seven days. Alas, I had to deal with cruises that had the putting people ashore interrupting my skirt-chasing and carousing (in as much as teenagers can carouse). With my trusty wingman, Art, covering me, I had many good times aboard ships. I’ll be nice enough to Art to spare him a recap of the super-cheesy line he used on two girls within hours of boarding, and a description of his shambolic dance moves.
Cruising the Mexican Riviera
I’d say our finest time was on Royal Caribbean Cruise Line’s Song of America. By the standards of the time (the time of the cruise being 1992, when the ship was 10 years old), it was a good-sized ship. We sailed from LA through the Mexican Riviera, which included Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta and Mazatlan. I have to be honest – the ports didn’t do much for me. In fact, I got stung by a blue bottle in Puerto Vallarta. But Art and I had our usual shipboard antics, which included dragging a passed-out shipmate back to his cabin after he vented the contents of his stomach on the club’s dance floor (we were old enough to know how to avoid such a fate). We met a ton of fun [...]

Remembering Jason McRoy

Sep 18th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
No comments yet

I’m a very rational guy. But sometimes strange things happen. We can call them coincidence. And we’re probably right. But sometimes, you just wonder.
I’m thinking about this because of my last post, which referred to the late Specialized racer Jason McRoy. I haven’t thought about him in years. I met him back in 1995 with my then-girlfriend. Jason was extremely friendly and outgoing, wishing us luck in our first race – the beginner class of the Cactus Cup. Even though he was a downhiller, he was there flying the Specialized flag with Ned Overend, one of the sport’s true cross-country giants.
Anyway, Jason offered the then-girlfriend a signed poster of himself. He was naked in the photo, and had a helmet there to hide the package and keep the poster relatively family-friendly. She hung it up in her dorm room.
She even tacked it up in her new dorm room when the next school year started. That’s when I started working at my first bike shop, spinning wrenches and selling bikes. One night, we went out. I don’t really remember what we did – it was just a night like many others.
Except her poster had fallen off the wall. We kind of shrugged and hung it back up.
The next day, the news was all over the bike shop: Jason McRoy had been killed in a motorcycle crash.
The rational part of me says coincidence. It must be. Surely any higher power has better things to do than knock posters off the wall.
No matter [...]

Why I Should be on the Specialized Trail Crew!

Sep 17th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
5 comments

I’ve made a decision: I want to be part of the Specialized Trail Crew.
If you’re reading this and you don’t work for Specialized, the Trail Crew is essentially a bunch of brand ambassadors that gets out there, riding, doing trail maintenance and generally being cool to other riders so they forward that coolness to others.
Well, that sounds a lot like what I do now (though I could use some motivation to do more maintenance).
This has me all written over it. Right now, I’m the guy who loans you his pump when you forget yours. I’m the guy who gets along with horses and their riders. I give directions to the nearest water fountain. If they ask -and only if they ask- I’ll help newbies pick the best line to clean a section of trail or select a good gear for climbing the local nasty hill.
Ex-shop mechanic, published bike mag writer (Mountain Flyer), bearer of crash scars, once-and-future epic racer … sounds like the right match, eh?
So why do it? Well, it’s another reason to get out and ride. It’s belonging to part of something, which appeals to the hockey goalie in me. And because we need mountain bikers out there getting people excited about mountain biking and mountain bikers.
One confession: I’ve never owned a Specialized bike (shoes, helmets and gloves are another story). My shop never carried ‘em. So why would I now? Three reasons:
-When I visited Whistler during the Crankworx festival, I got to demo a Stumpjumper 29. The [...]

5 Ways to Pack Lighter

Sep 16th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
7 comments

A good friend of mine dropped into a recent post here lately, saying that she can go carry-on even for international flights. That’s the virtue of packing light, of course. I can’t go carry-on despite being a light packer because of the length of my backpack. But I can share some of my tips for packing light. Here’s what I do.
1. Leave the jeans at home – They’re bulky and they dry slowly. Instead, I grab a pair of chinos like the REI Adventure pants. You can wear them anywhere you’d wear jeans, but they’ll take up a quarter of the room in your pack.. I also avoid military-style BDU pants for the same bulky reason. I usually have some other quick-dry stuff for more hardcore outdoor stuff – Patagonia, Cloudveil and the old-style REI cargo pants.
2. Pack in plastic – I always get a bunch of big, sturdy self-sealing bags (like Ziploc) that are two gallons or bigger. I pack everything in the bags, roll them to squeeze the air out and seal. You won’t believe how much they shrink minus the air. It also makes organizing your gear a snap.
3. Big shoes on the feet – I always wear my biggest boots onto the plane. That frees up a nice chunk of room in my pack. And that’s more valuable than having fewer laces to unravel at the security mags.
4. Skip the  laptop – Seriously, I can go without for a little while. Internet cafes -which provide not [...]

Airport “Authorities” Continue Running Amok

Sep 15th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
1 comment

Monday night, I had to visit  Sky Harbor Airport to pick my wife up from racing in the Ironman triathlon in Madison, Wisc. She flew United, which is based at Terminal 2. For a person stiff and sore from completing the 140-mile course -and with extra injuries from a crash- it’s the perfect terminal: It’s small, and you can see the un/loading ramp from the baggage claim.
She called me from the baggage claim, and I was there moments later at the farthest end to pick her up. I could actually see her headed slowly my way (that soreness was taking its toll).
As I was waiting, some guy in an unmarked polo shirt and shorts tells me to keep driving. So who was this guy? He had no insignia. He wasn’t wearing a TSA or Phoenix Police uniform. He wore an orange vest, but so do the schmoes at LAX who  solicit you for their church. I told him I’d be away in a moment, but I wasn’t eager to tell more to someone who wasn’t identifiable as any sort of authority.
Then he went to the back of my car and started writing on a pad. I got out when my wife walked up with her bags. I popped the rear hatch and helped her load.
This is where it gets interesting: I asked the guy for identification.
“It’s right here,” he said, pointing to a lanyard around his neck. I inspected the card hanging there, which seemed to be some sort of security swipe [...]

Cheat Your Way out of Airline Checked-Bag Fees – For Now

Sep 14th, 2009
by WanderingJustin.
3 comments

The Arizona Republic has an interesting story about airline passengers trying to cram as much stuff into their carry-on luggage as possible to avoid checked-bag fees. That in itself was nothing revolutionary. But a few things stuck out to me:
1. Cheapskate passengers are slowing up the laborious boarding process for everyone else because, while they can afford airline tickets, they’re too cheap and inconsiderate to check their bags.
2. Unfortunately, these self-centered skinflints are getting away with it. Heck, they should have to pay double the check bag fees for doing it at the gate. Airlines must CLOSE THIS LOOPHOLE.
3. PR consultant Melissa Rein, who is quoted in the story, apparently can’t live without half of her closet when she travels. And she’s pretty unabashed at saying she scoffs at the system. Honey, you need to work for a better PR agency that will pay you enough to afford check your bags. Or better yet … be less high-maintenance and leave a few things at home when you want to get away from it all. “She ignored fellow passengers’ eye rolls as her boyfriend stuffed the garment bag into the overhead bin,” reporter Dawn Gilbertson wrote. Dude, you picked a real winner there – like Paris Hilton, but without the inheritance. Definitely living up to the PR twit stereotype that news reporters so love to skewer (and I have no doubt Dawn was delighted to write that line).
4. Emily Wold, mother of five kids, played by the rules. She got her kids luggage [...]

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