Experimental Travel ideas

Yesterday, I picked up a used copy of Experimental Travel by Lonely Planet.  It offers a creative (and sometimes obnoxious) list of alternative ways to travel.  There is a template for each idea-- the idea itself, ingredients/tools, instructions, level of difficulty, introductory notes, and lab results.  One particularly loathsome example involved a gaijin traveling around Japan wearing a horse's head, cutting in line knowing that the Japanese are too polite and non-confrontational to object.

The following, though, are intriguing.  Check out the full list here.
2. Airport Tourism: Spend 24 hours at an airport.
5. Ariadne's Thread: Find a woman named Ariadne and ask her to make up a list of 10 places in her hometown to visit.
9. Blind Man's Bluff: Travel for 24 hours, blindfolded.
11. Bureaucratic Odyssey: Spend a day navigating bureaucracy in a foreign land, e.g. hang out at a government building.
13. Confluence Seeking: This is the most interesting.  Find a point where a whole number of degrees latitude meets a whole number of degrees longitude.  There's a whole website devoted to this.

This reminds me that I've gotta start planning my goal of visiting all 77 (approximate) consulates in San Francisco in one day (hopefully next month).  It's a much more difficult task than my visiting all five Central Asian embassies in one day in DC.

Improvised armored Libyan rebel trucks

Carspotting: 1983 Lincoln Continental in Locke, California

After visiting the rail museum, we stopped by the town of Locke.  After the Chinese portion of nearby Walnut Grove burned down in 1915, the Chinese (levee and farm workers) decided to build Locke.  It is the first and only all-Chinese town in America.  At its peak, there were 600 residents.  Now, less than a dozen Chinese-Americans live there.

The main drag is short but chock full of charm.  All the buildings can best be described as "contractor's specials".  The wooden floors are all either sagging in the middle or tilted to the side.  When we were eating at the Chinese restaurant around the corner, when I poured soy sauce on my plate, the liquid nearly slid off my plate due to the uneven floor.  (By the way, Locke Garden is run by a nice family and has some of the best Americanized Chinese food anywhere.  The ingredients were fresh, cooked to order (so there is a bit of a wait but it's worth it), and not corn starch heavy.  We had the pot stickers, an unusual but superior hot and sour soup, and ma-po tofu.)

Almost all the buildings are accessible to the public.  This is the school house.  Can you tell which China the denizens gave their allegiance to?

Al the WOP's was the only non-Chinese owned business.  WOP was a derogatory name for Italian immigrants.  It's short for "WithOut Papers".  There were a bunch of rowdy bikers drinking inside.  Otherwise, the town was whisper quiet.

This Continental was parked across the street from the bar.

Through the Opera Glass.

The dusty gambling hall was also open to the public.

The Decline of the American Empire trailer

Am trying to delve into the psyche of the Quebecois.  After watching this movie, I've concluded that they are all socialist, swinging baby boomers on the University of Montreal history department faculty.

Movie review: So-so, although the dance scene made me laugh out loud.

The Barbarian Invasions is next.

Travesty: Bahrain F1 race returns

Pardon my French, but this is bullshit.  Let's hope teams, drivers, and fans boycott this race.

This is a piece from February.  Warning: Graphic images.

And what happened to the medical staff who treated the protestors?  They have been detained.

John Wilkes Booth at Lincoln's second inauguration

Creepy.

Carspotting: Chilean Citroen Citronetas

Reader Viva Chile! went to a car show and saw these two ugly ducklings:

From my Citroen: Daring To Be Different book:
"One of the oddest versions of the 2CV was the Chilean Citroneta, an ungainly three-box design made between 1959 and 1969 by Citroen's outpost in Chile.  Based on the French sourced AZU chassis-cab unit, the first Citronetas had a two-door body (initially only in black) and an open pick-up style of boot with an exposed spare wheel.  Later versions gained rear doors and a boot lid."

See more of his car show pictures here and here.

Ratko Mladic's car

Here he is, whisked away today to the Belgrade airport.  What is that white SUV?

Canada GP 2011 ad

Can't believe I'll attend my first F1 race next week!  Is it a problem that I don't understand a word in this ad?  Oh, dear.

Risking It All-- Flying DC-3s in Colombia

Four tools were used to repair the engines-- a mallet, a hammer, a wrench, and a cell phone (lighting used during power outage in repair shop).  These pilots are bad ass.  Chicken bus of the air!