www.RogerWendell.com
Roger J. Wendell
Defending 3.8 Billion Years of Organic Evolution^SM

Northeastern New Mexico

Travel "The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls." - John Muir

"Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter." - John Muir as found on page 114 of Bill Devall's & George Session's book,
Deep Ecology (Living as if Nature Mattered)

I've never thought of myself as any kind of travel expert. In fact, as I entered my 40s, my reluctance to travel grew stronger as I wanted to spend more time with my wife, children and family. Nevertheless, despite some serious bouts with "homesickness" I seemed to not only find myself in various corners of the globe, but spending lots of time there as well!

Anyway, since I'm not a guide or travel expert this page is going to be mostly for me and my memories. If you need serious information for any destination or activity I suggest you look elsewhere, around the Internet, as the stuff I put here is all just for fun...

However, I do have one serious recommendation for anyone traveling - purchase travel insurance!!! In 2005 my wife and I took a long road trip through Australia. After eight days of some great fun she severely broke her ankle and had to be flown back to the United States by the most direct means (and in a way that would allow her to keep her leg elevated). So, on a Friday morning we were able to purchase two tickets, one business class for $7,000 USD, and one economy class (for me) for $5,000 USD - both for departure that evening.

$12,000 USD for airfare, and thousands of Australian dollars for their medical care and other expenses, would be much more than we could ever have afforded on our own. So, take my advice, buy travel insurance - we did, and it paid for nearly every related expense!

- Roger J. Wendell
Golden, Colorado

Click Here for my "Travel Two" overflow page...

My List So Far:

• United States: I've been to 'em all except Alaska (however, I've flown it's full length, twice - does that count?) and have lived (for extended periods of time, as measured in months and years) in California, Nevada, Hawaii, Maryland, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and, of course, Colorado - the one place I've called home since 1972!
• Canada: Tami and I have driven the length of Canada a couple of times and just love it there! We've been to most of the provinces, including the Maritimes, and have camped all over British Columbia, Alberta and Québec.
• Mexico and Central America: I've been visiting Mexico, regularly, since 1965. I don't speak a lick of Spanish (I studied the Russian language in college) but seem to get by pretty well as their people have always been so kind to me. I've driven the length of Mexico, starting in Denver, to get to Guatemala and back again (6,000 miles, roundtrtip). So, I think I've spent a little time in nearly every Mexican State [The country's name, that most North Americans aren't aware of, is Estados Unidos Mexicanos (United Mexican States)] and have found each to be special in its own way. I've also stopped, briefly, in Panama City but hope to get back for a closer look some day...
• Europe: I've seen a lot of the United Kingdom (Wales, Sctoland, and England) along with Germany, France, Switzerland, and Italy. I've also had some great one day and overnight trips to Ireland, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourgh, Liechtenstein, and the Netherlands. Tami and I hope to see more of the continent as time and money permit!
• Africa: Got a pretty good look at Tanzania and Kenya for some climbs with the CMC.
• Asia: I've traveled extensively throughout Tibet, China and the Silk Road. Tami and the kids and I had a wonderful experience in Japan as well!
• South America: Made some brief airplane stops in Peru and Chile but got a real good look at Argentina while on another climbing trip. Took a separate trip to Amazonia and Ecuador over the Christmas holiday of 2005/06.
• Australia: Despite my wife's broken leg we still enjoyed over 5,800 km (3,600 miles) of exotic scenery, really wide open spaces, and big sky (much bigger, in fact, than the skies of Texas and Montana combined!!)!

Pages from my Passport...

International Driving Permit

Tami island hopping...

Roger's Rant: Air travel isn't much fun!

It's no secret that air travel has become a lot less fun since 9-11. Most of us remember the days when you could chat with a pilot, use sewing scissors at your seat, or even do stretching exercises at the rear of the cabin. Now, of course, we're packed in like sardines, searched like convicts, and herded about like cattle.

However, maybe the "good old days" of air travel weren't that great either - remember when each and every flight allowed, and even encouraged, smoking??!! Boy, big business and capitalism didn't seem to have our health and comfort in mind until Uncle Sam stepped in. And, even without the smoking it took years for airlines to cleanup cabin air - they seemed to pride themselves on re-circulating filth no matter how sick it made their passengers and customers feel. Oh, I might mention that the FAA, internally, never seemed to care too much about the smoking issue either. During the 80s I was a student at their Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center, in Oklahoma, where they allowed instructors and students to smoke in the classroom - and these were three month sessions!

Let's not forget all of those airlines who "expire" your frequent flyer miles! Even as I write this in early '07, some major airlines have announced reducing time-lines to as little as 18 months! And, the meal situation only worsens with time - not only has the food been historically horrible but they're now starting to charge $5 USD for a simple lunch box or simply not provide any food at all. In 2006 I started to notice people bringing aboard sack lunches, half-eaten McDonald's sandwiches, and over-priced airport pizza because their seven hour flight to Honolulu wanted to charge $5 for a soggy sandwich and a cup of pudding the size of a thimble! Actually, it wouldn't hurt me (especially!) to miss a meal or two except the terrorist scare of '06 wouldn't allow us to bring liquids aboard! Later, of course, the TSA agreed that passengers could purchase $4.00 sodas along the concourse as long as they hadn't attempted to bring their own liquid refreshments through the security point...

Anyway, as I suggested earlier, aircraft seating has always been pretty pathetic unless you had a few extra thousand dollars or euros necessary for a first-class seat to London, Sydney or Tokyo. And, of course, the only seat that ever seems to be available is the dreaded middle one unless you happen to know the reservation agent or pilot! Oh, and don't even dream of anything other than the middle seat if you booked your flight through Travelocity, Orbitz, HotDeals or TripManager as there must be some international law allowing them to only bulk purchase middle seats - nothing else! Flying with a friend, loved one or family member and want to sit next to them? Dream on! I can't tell you how many flights I've been on where couples have had to semaphore across isles and rows of seats for the most basic of communication exchanges - ramp agents and reservationists having told them, before the flight, that there was just no way they could be seated together on this flight!

If the in-flight seating isn't bad enough, have you ever had to wait any length of time for a flight that was delayed due to bad weather, mechanical problems, or just plain old incompetence? Airport terminal seating is a bad as it gets - they've perfectly engineered concourse chairs so that there's no way to lay down, stretch out, or get comfortable while waiting that four or six hours for the next flight. People, including me, have had to curl up like pill-bugs (small terrestrial isopods) on worn carpeting and tile floors for the chance at 15 minutes of sleep before being stepped on or kicked. Okay, I'm sure there isn't an airport manager on the planet who wants his terminal lined with beds and looking like a youth hostil or boarding house. Still, they could do something with those horrible seats, couldn't they?!

Which airports and airlines are to blame? Well, in my experience it's been nearly all of them. Although I've tried to avoid flying my entire life I had still logged over 400,000 miles by the time I was 51 and making this web page entry (not many miles by most standards but certainly a lot for somebody who prefers hiking over fine dining and shopping malls!). As memory best serves me, here's a partial list of the airlines and airports I've experienced over the years (some were good, some were very bad - I'll let you research that part for yourself...):

My Airline Experience:

• Aloha, American, British Air, Brussels Airlines, Continental, Delta, Frontier (both the old and new one), Hawaiian Air, Island Air, Lan Chile, Lufthansa, KLM Royal Dutch, Qantas, Southwest, Ted, United, USair, and Xinjiang Air

My Airport Experience:

• Albuquerque (New Mexico), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Beijing (China), Brussels (Belgium), Buckley ANGB (Aurora, Colorado), Chengdu (China), Chicago (Illinois), Colorado Springs (Colorado), Dallas-Fort Worth (Texas), Darwin (Australia), Denver (both the old Stapelton Airport and the new Denver International), Geneva (Switzerland), Hilo (Hawaii), Honolulu (Hawaii), Houston (Texas), Kahului (Kona, Hawaii), Kansas City (Missouri), Kiliminjaro (Tanzania), Lhasa (Tibet), Lima (Peru - Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Chávez), London (Hethro), Los Angeles (LAX), Memphis (Tennessee), Mendoza (Argentina), Mexico City (MEX - Benito Juárez International Airport - actually, I only stopped in it, during a 1992 drive from Denver to Guatemala, to us their ATT international telephone...), Minneapolis-St Paul (Minnesota), Monterey Peninsula Airport (California), Munich (Germany - Franz Josef Strauss), Nirobi (Kenya), Oakland (California), Oklahoma City (Oklahoma), Ontario (California), Panama City (Panama), Phoenix (Arizona), Portland (Oregon), Reno-Tahoe (Nevada), Quito (Ecuador), San Diego (California), San Francisco (California), Seattle (Washington), Sydney (Australia), Tampa-St Pete (Florida), Tokyo (Japan), Travis AFB (California), Tucson (Arizona), Urimuchi (China), Washington DC (both Dulles and Reagan - I firmly believe they need to drop Reagan's name from the latter...)

So, what's the verdict after being screwed by the airlines for so long?

Don't Fly!     But, as I explained earlier, I've had a pretty tough time avoiding air travel - especially for business trips and vacation destinations outside of North America. So, like most everyone else, I'll continue to demean myself with crowded, unhealthy, wasteful, polluting, and dangerous flying when other alternatives are scarce...

As far as post-911 security goes I've had a particularly difficult time for reasons unknown to me (although I have my suspicions...); In 2004, while en route Argentina the entire aircraft was stopped on the Los Angeles tarmac until they could find Air Marshals to escort me and a fellow passenger from Nepal off the plane for interrogation. Seems suspicions were raised when I filmed the gentleman sitting next to me with his camcorder for the benefit of his friends and family back in Nepal (who had never seen the inside of aircraft before). It's not that photography is forbidden inside an airplane (it's not) but a crew member thought it suspicious that a heavily bearded American (me) was photographing a very shy dark-skinned person (the guy sitting next to me from Nepal). Anyway, the Air Marshals had their way with us for nearly half an hour and then released us just in time so that my seat-mate could miss his flight home to Nepal. Luckily I had at least another ten minutes before missing my connection to Argentina...

In 2005 I learned why certain airline tickets have "SSSS" printed across them (Okay, I'm a little slow when it comes to these things!)) - If you look carefully at my airline ticket (# 1, below) you'll see the letter "S" repeated four times in two different locations on the card. This means that I was "randomly" selected for an extra special screening before boarding the plane. In this case something went wrong as nothing had been done to me until I was physically boarding the plane at the American Airlines gate in Los Angeles. Then, in front of everyone (of course), TSA had me "spread-eagle" for a complete pat-down search that included removing my shoes and tearing apart my carry-on luggage. So much for any privacy rights!

Click Here to register your pledge not to fly!

1. SSSS

2. Panama Baggage Tag

3. TSA tag

4. TSA tag

5. Lost luggage...

6. Excess Baggage

1. SSSS - who knows what it stands for other than you'd better be ready for some extra special searches and questioning!
2. (The Panama Luggage Tag) is in here only because it's a reminder (to me at least) how bizarre all this searching and snooping has become. In this case I was traveling from Quito to Denver with intermediate stops in Panama City and Houston. I didn't leave the airport (or terminal), in Panama City, but was again searched as I was re-boarding the same flight for Houston! I suppose all of this has some purpose - maybe angering passengers enough (like me!) that they'll create a web page complaining about it to scare off terrorists or something? Who knows...
3. A TSA approval tag? Yet another examples of the numerous tags, stickers and flyers I find attached to, or stuffed inside, my luggage when I get home after a flight...
4. Okay, maybe my luggage being a complete mess wasn't notice enough that the government took a look! This little TSA tag confirms they've dug through your underwear, cheap sunglasses, and back issues Vogue in their search for nuclear weapons and ACLU membership cards...
5. In June, 2007 I was on business in Tucson, Arizona. I arrived on time but my luggage didn't! My luggage was delivered to my hotel, the next day, with the excuse that security screening had delayed certain pieces of luggage out of Denver. However, I am an expert on screened luggage since my bags have been searched countless times I can't help notice when they've been tampered with. In this case there was no evidence of a search or opening...
6. Isn't this special?! Return home with a few souveniers or extra paperwork from your job assignment and you get charged an extra $50!!

TSA stands for "Transportation Security Administration" and is a government agency that was created by the Bush Administration shortly after the 911 attacks. Unfortunately, for TSA employees, the government (at that time) ensured they would be exempt from many of the work place protections most of us take for granted (early newspaper reports suggested TSA employees were required to attend off-the-clock briefings, didn't receive training pay, were forbidden to join unions, etc. [ref: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 01-15-2003]). Unfortunately, for us (the traveling public), employee discontent at the TSA will only make uncomfortable and time-delaying encounters that much more frequent...

On August 20, 2006 I was flying from Denver to Tampa, Florida - less than two weeks after the British had foiled a plot to bring liquid explosives aboard a transatlantic flight. In response, cologne, mouthwash, lotions and all other liquids were banned in carry-on luggage worldwide. Although I was aware of the ban it didn't occur to me that it would be prohibited to bring liquids onto the concourse since they were already being sold there! So, I went through the initial security screening, at the entrance to the concourse, and the TSA agents discovered the small bottle of fruit juice I was carrying in my daypack. They were very understanding, as this had been happening to hundreds of passengers before me, and allowed me to leave the security area to drink the juice (or they would have thrown it away right there at the X-ray machine!). I was given this orange card so as to avoid additional waiting once I returned to the screening area. Not a bad experience but certainly illustrative of how sensitive their X-ray equipment is!

My mistake! Okay, there have been a few times when I've over-stuffed my luggage with too much junk - too many electronic gadgets, too much clothing, or too many souvenirs. Not only does the bag become too difficult for me to carry but it's gotta be really tough for the ramp agents and ground crew who have to handle it as well. So, the airlines don't hesitate to put this little tag on every piece of luggage that could do possible harm to their personnel. However, before you start feeling too sorry for the airlines you need to know these few extra pounds are charged many tens of dollars extra to my already purchased ticket!

Delayed Baggage Report

Bummed Out In Baggage Claim The incidence of lost luggage is up dramatically. Here's how to speed recovery. By Lauren Young BusinessWeek, April 23, 2007, p. 102

"You know your trip is in trouble when only a trickle of suitcases from your flight arrives in baggage claim. Then the conveyor belt halts, never to start up again."

"Short of not checking your luggage in the first place, you can't do much to prevent it from going missing. However, you can take steps both before you board and after you find yourself bagless to improve the chances of recovery."

• For starters, use that camera in your cell phone to take a picture of your suitcase so you can give a good description.
• Pay careful attention when your bag is tagged at check-in, an obvious safeguard that many travelers overlook in their excitement or haste - It only takes one key stroke to get the airport code wrong at the ticket counter...
• Place a copy of your itinerary and contact info inside your bags - it'll help the airlines join you and your baggage again!
• What do you do when you arrive at the airport and your bags don't? Never, ever leave until you file the appropriate paperwork and get copies!
• Instead of waiting on a long claims line in the baggage area, hightail it to the ticket counter, where the agents should be able to help.
• A comprehensive travel insurance plan can save you a lot of hassle if your bags are lost or delayed.
• If your bags do show up but items are missing, don't put the matter to rest until you've contacted (phone, fax, email, letters, etc.) that airline's customer service chief, operations manager and other top officials.

Roger's Remedy: What are the best ways to travel?

• Walking! - In my opinion there's nothing more natural, economical, and healthful than walking. You take in the world at your own pace while having very little impact on anything. I've walked the length of cities, canyons, mountain ranges, and islands. Walking and hiking are always the easiest yet most satisfying modes of travel. Here are what some greater thinkers than I had to say about walking:
  • "Walking is man's best medicine."
    Hippocrates (460 BC - 377 BC)
  • "Walking is also an ambulation of mind."
    Gretel Ehrlich
  • "My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you."
    Henry David Thoreau, Walking

• Cycling! - Probably the most efficient mode of travel and easily my second choice, next to walking. Cycling is easy, affordable, and healthy. I've cycled in China, along the Silk Road, in Hawaii, and all over California and Colorado. Unfortunately automobile drivers can make things a little difficult for cyclists so be careful out there!
• Buses, subways, and mass transit! - Who hasn't taken a bus? I've ridden 'em all over the world and find them inexpensive and very reliable. And, of course, the subways and light-rail systems of San Francisco, Denver, Tokyo, Washington DC, and London can't be beat. The world needs more of these kinds of travel options - especially in my own country...

• Sailing! - If I had the time I'd much rather sail to Hawaii than fly there. Sailing is an efficient form of ocean travel that'll probably realize a resurgence as energy resources grow more scarce. I have sailed a little bit, in various places, but not enough to make any positive impact on the environment so far...
• Trains! - I believe they're pretty efficient, as measured in BTUs per passenger mile, but am not sure as it gets rather complicated calculating seat percentages, cargo, etc. Either way, trains are a lot of fun and I was able to enjoy a 400 mile trip along the edge of the China's Taklamakan desert. I hope to take one across India but it all depends on how much time is available, etc.

Driving     Warning ticket - Globe, AZ

Okay, I'll admit it! As much as I love to save fuel and get exercise I've also enjoyed the grand adventure of a road trip! Even at age 16 (1970), having just received my driver's license, my parents allowed me to drive (their car!) the length of the southern California desert and across state lines. As time went on I drove all over Canada, Mexico, and huge portions of nearly every U.S. state. Problem is, as friends and family will attest, I received more traffic tickets (always for speeding) than anyone I've ever met. Luckily most of 'em didn't go against my driving record as I "earned" them in other states and countries. And, even more lucky, as I approached age 50 officers seemed less inclined to give me "real" tickets - just a lot of verbal and written warnings with amazed looks that somebody twice their age could be in such a hurry! A disclaimer, of course, is that folks (including me) really need to obey traffic laws because other people can be hurt beside just us. Nevertheless, thank you Officer #221 in Globe, Arizona for the warning ticket (photo at left) you wrote me that warm spring evening in June '07 - of course the thorough car search wasn't much fun but it sure beat paying a fine!!

Links:

Back to Roger J. Wendell's Home Page...

Abbey | About | Blog | Contacting Me | Copyright | Disclaimer | Donate | Guest Book | Home | Site Index | Solutions | Terms, Conditions and Fair Use
Copyright © 1955 -