Blogging by Blackberry (sounds like "Blah Blah Blah")

Today, I am trying out blogging from my blackberry. (Tedious, boring figuring it out- "blah blah blah").

Here is the story about my experience in the so-called Purple Tunnel of Doom at President Obama's Inauguration. I was in Washington DC with my son Alex on President Obama's Inauguration Day. We were among the lucky thousands of people holding purple tickets to the swearing in ceremony. The ticket was supposed to provide access to a roped-off area on the Capitol lawn, in view of the stage. Before 7 AM, we arrived at the "purple ticket holders" line-up at the police blockade near the Capitol. We, along with thousands of other people, were diverted into the cold 3rd Street Tunnel under the National Mall. We were told by police that the line formed in the tunnel. We spent over four hours waiting underground. While the holders of blue and sillver tickets were apparently passing through airport-style screening in the tents set up next to the Capitol lawn, we purple ticket holders were stuck underground in a cold, crowded tunnel. Fast forward to the very happy ending that Alex and I were close enough to the front of the line that we eventually managed to shuffle out and pass through Capitol security onto the Capitol lawn just in time to hear Aretha Franklin sing and to witness the moment of the swearing-in ceremony. Thousands were not so lucky. There are blogs, photos and videos posted on the internet. NPR's All Things Considered" ran a story called "A Frustrating Inauguration for Many". One of the more descriptive captions I saw in a blog was: "The Purple Tunnel of Doom - the 395 tunnel under the Mall 4-5 hours - 50k people, a mile long, no bathrooms, no cops, no food, no light... No Hope".

Why Travel? (Three Weeks in the World)

In less than two months, I will be leaving for a three week trip around the world.

As I think about my upcoming trip, I bought Frances Mayes' book, “A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller”. I admire Frances Mayes’ writing. She wrote “Under the Tuscan Sun”.

I read the Travel Section in the Sunday New York Times before delving into the rest of the news. I was hoping that Frances would provide some insight as to why travel lovers love to travel. She did not disappoint me. She served some juicy morsels to chew on, putting to words the love of travel.

1. “The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time”.
2. “Travel pushes my boundaries. Seemingly self-indulgent, travel paradoxically obliterates the me-me-me….you are insignificant to the life of the new place”.
3. Frances wrote about her “walking notebook” where she described what she saw. “… tile rooftops, a handmade ladder propped in a fig tree, olive trees beside a stone wall…a little dirt-colored donkey stands against a whitewashed wall, a stony path winds into a smoky aura of light….” [Note to Frances: I take pictures instead. I love to try to capture those images].
4. Frances quoted Martin Buber who said, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware”.
5. “I prefer to think of the end of exploring as an invitation to return to my origins and transform them”.
6. Frances described the force of her "travel magnet" … “sending me to check my airline mileage account, propelling me to the computer to scout ticket prices, into the garage to see which suitcase has wheels ready to roll”.

On my “Blind Date with the World” trip, I hope to learn tons of things I never knew and never knew that I wanted to know, see places on my list of what I want to see, and see places I didn’t know I wanted to see.

Global Scavenger Hunters (to be)

My 25-year old son Alex and I will be leaving on April 16 for a three-week trip around the world. We know practically nothing about where we will be going. We signed up for a Global Scavenger Hunt – a contest where a group of about 30 people, in teams of two, will be competing across 4 contents and 10 countries in 22 days. The trip is being organized by a couple from Santa Monica, California. Bill Chalmers and his wife Pamela call this “A Blind Date with the World”. The group will meet in Seattle on April 17, will leave the United States for destination unknown, and then we will return to the United States via Boston on May 9. The only part of the itinerary we can know in advance is any country where a tourist visa is required. We have been told to obtain a visa for India. The trip organizers build the group by soliciting applications and interviewing candidates. To qualify, prospective participants must be seasoned travelers, have a pretty hefty curiosity about the world, have the temperament to put up with three weeks of uncertainty and challenge, and be able to pay the fee (-- and the required qualities are not ranked in any particular order). Alex and I were interviewed on a conference call with Bill Chalmers in California, Alex in Washington, D.C. and me in Rhode Island.

What enticed me? The idea of being plunked into a strange place, having to figure it out, needing to trust strangers, and discover the culture and the people, in a very hands-on way. Although we can bring blackberries, laptops, etc., to keep in touch with family, friends and business, it is considered cheating to use them as tools for the competition. Instead, we have to rely on our own resourcefulness and the helpful information from talking with local people wherever we go. The competition is organized so that each time we arrive in a new place, all of the participants will be given the same long list of “scavenges” – activities to see and experience the place – and snap a photo doing it. Think the Frommer’s or Fodor’s list of top things to do in a place – except that you can’t plan in advance and you can’t rely on guidebooks. Each scavenge is assigned a point value. At the end of the trip, the team which accumulated the most points is crowned the winner. The prize is the opportunity to go next time - for free. Examples of scavenges from previous years include: find the early morning Fish Market in Tokyo that sells bluefin sushi tuna at dawn, attend a Greek Orthodox Easter Midnight Mass at the Athens cathedral for the once-a-year ceremony, or swim with a bull shark in Singapore’s underwater world. The scavenges also include volunteer work with global organizations like Doctors without Borders and Save the Children, working on building schools, etc. –and the community service aspect is a significant part of the program. Apparently there are far more scavenges than anyone could finish in the amount of time spent in a given place. That’s a good thing – if you have been to the place before and have seen and done many of the top “to do” experiences– you can dip down further into the list to avoid repeating doing things you’ve already done.

How did I find out about this? I learned about it from my dear friend Sally, who does free-lance travel writing. Sally and I were infected by the same travel bug decades ago. We went to summer school in Switzerland together when we were 14 years old, made pretend we were French during several Eurailpass trip summers, and have travelled with our husbands for forever. Sally had received an email pitching the trip and she forwarded it to me with the teaser subject line, “Do you want to be my partner?” I sure did! But, then she decided her schedule didn’t allow it, which left me very excited about the idea, but partnerless. About the same time, my son Alex realized that his unused vacation time at work was piling up and he faced a three week use-it-or-lose-it excess for 2009. Perfect!! Both of us love foreign travel (he MIGHT have inherited that from me) and this sounded like a fantastic way to explore the world together.

The hitch was – and to some degree still is – we don’t know much about the trip organizers. Google searches pulled up several travel publications which reported stories about previous Global Scavenger Hunts. But, the information was recycled from press releases. Seeking personal references, we talked with previous Scavenger Hunt travellers (very satisfied customers, of course), who raved about their experiences.

The irony is not lost on me that our first step on this trip is that we must trust the strangers who are organizing this trip.