There is great information and inspiration available on this planet if you know where to tune in.

Plan Your Adventures and Share Your Experiences

The online social networking scene has revolutionized the way travelers can now plan their adventures and share their experiences and expertise. Today’s independent traveler can read thousands of first hand accounts about travel in virtually every place in the world, while sharing writing, photos and experiences on blogs, photo albums and discussion forums.

It’s a great time to be vagabonding the world and sharing the adventure online.   I’ve wandered across my share of online travel communities. Some of the most impressive travel communities, in my opinion, are listed below. If you know of one that you think should be added just drop me an email.

Travel Matador has a very strong core of talented writers and true adventure travelers. This community has a real soul, an intense vibe and outstanding writing. It’s also extremely well designed and easy to use.

Travellerspoint offers plenty of travel advice and resources as well as free blogs and trip maps for its members. It’s a great community for planning and sharing your trip.

BootsnAll Travel Network – this long time and popular online travel community offers a place where like-minded travelers can come to talk and exchange stories, travel tips and ideas. The community’s membership includes thousands of people from more than 90 countries – including experts in the travel industry.

Ralf Potts Vagabonding Blog – Rolf Potts is one hard-core vagabond who has circled the globe and then some. He wrote the must read vagabonding book “Vagabonding – An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel”. His site includes information about other travel writers and resources.

Digihitch.com – “the site of sub cultural movement” – was created in February of 2001 as an interactive place on the web where hitchhikers and road travelers could meet and share resources. It includes an active discussion forum called the “Great Camp Fire”.

Trip Films – Finally a You Tube for travelers and video bloggers. Why just write about your travels when you can share the adventure with moving images and sound. The era of video travel blogging has arrived and Trip Films brings it together for traveling videographer/bloggers.

IndieTravelPodcast.com – With the advent of podcasting, travel writers can now be travel podcasters. If you’d like to hear and see travel storys and get travel tips through I Tunes or RSS feeds subscribe to Indie Travel’s podcasts.   This great resource also accepts podcasts from talented travelers.

Couch Surfing.com – Looking for a place to crash on the road? Couch Surfing enabled travelers to connect and meet cool people on their journey who are willing to put them up. You get a place to stay and they get to become a part of your adventure.

Inspiring Independent Travelblogs

Many independent travelers with an impulse to share, create their own travel blogs. God bless them for sharing their adventures and inspiration with the rest of us.

Amtrekker – This travelouge is hilarious. Brett, as self described “unemployed vagrant” made a list of 50 things to accomplish before he’d return home. One of them included firing Donald Trump. Incredibly he accomplished all 50 of his goals before returning home. Check out his list. This trip and site reset the bar far higher for anyone imagining what travel or travel blogging can and should be.

VagabondingLife – In 2006 Greg Rodgers turned in his keys and headed out the door of IBM and traded a steady job in cubicle land for an uncharted vagabonding adventure that has since taken him to dozens of countries. Not only are his adventures compelling, but his writing is truly literary. Great information, writing, inspiration and photos.

Lives in a Van.com – In December of 2007, Dave left behind his “successful” cubicle life in a larger corporation in Philadelphia and headed West in a camper van. His hilarious blog chronicles an amazing year that included falling in love at Burning Man and moving to San Fransisco to live with the love of his life and travel companion, Stacy. I first met up with Dave in Colorado after we had both been stalking each others blogs. He’s an amazing talent, an inspiration and a good friend.

Modern Gonzo – In 2004 Robin Esrock of Vancouver, Canada had the good fortune of being run over by a car and getting a $20,000 settlement for his broken knee. He bought a solo round-the-world plane ticket and took off to backpack the planet. Those who followed his outrageous blog through 50 countries on 6 continents said “They should make a movie about his life”. Well, “they” did make his life an ongoing movie at World Travel TV. Tune in and share the ride.

Honest Expression – Two young adventures, Joel and Ryan, set off from Nevada in March of 2009 to trek across North America from coast to coast. So far they braved snow storms and peddled on through, while writing passionate and honest stories complimented by rich poetic photos.

Steve Roberts, The Original Technomad – Steve coined the term ‘technomad’ while he was computing across America in the 80s on his custom built bicycle. This man is a technology lover who won’t rest until he creates the most high tech solution to vagabonding on the water, land or hair. He’s currently working on finishing Nomadness, his future sailing nomadic vessel.

Note – please email me if you know of more compelling and inspiring travelogues to add to this list.

“Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” Millions of great books, hundreds of TV channels and online radio stations, millions of blogs, websites and discussion forums and thousands of great pod casts are out there just waiting for you to tune in. Tired of consuming corporate influenced/purchased mass media? Drop out and tune into the unfiltered media you really want by subscribing to thoughtful pod casts and RSS (Really Simple Syndicated) feeds from your favorite blogs. What ever your philosophy or politics you can literally subscribe to the media you want – commercial and brainwash free.

Tune In – Podcasts, Blogs and Syndicated Feeds The free ITunes software from Apple is available for both MAC and PCs and makes it easy to manage and subscribe to online radio and audio/video podcasts. Some of my favorite podcasts include “Democracy Now TV and Radio”, Bill Moyer journal on PBS, Real Time with Bill Mahr, the Onion Radio, and A Prairie Home Companion from National Public Radio – produced in my home town of St. Paul, Minnesota. For a listing of podcasts available from the Public Broadcasting System in the US visit http://www.pbs.org/podcasts

You can now search all the major search engines specifically for blogs on topics that interest you. Technorati.com in particular can help you tune in to the blogs that match your interests.

You can also tune in to blogs and websites by subscribing to their RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds so that updates will automatically be sent to your news reader (also known as Aggregators).

Turn On – My Favorite Travel Books

“The world is book and those don’t travel read only one page.”
– St. Augustine

I find the typical “Travel Guides” with their extensive and tedious listing of places and to do lists tiresome. How many people wander about lost in their guidebook, looking up from the pages occasionally in search of road signs?

I’ll take a few pointers. But after that I’ll improvise, thank you very much. It’s inspiration I seek in a travel book and the below recommended one are over flowing with the inspiration and excitement that is the essence of travel at it’s best.

Vagabonding in the USA – A guidebook to energy by Ed Buryn. First published in 1973 this inspired hippy dippy classic set me and many other vagabonds in motion.Note – Although this book is regrettably no longer published vintage copies can be purchased at Amazon.com

A reading from the Book of Buryn –

Travel is about your inner self and how you exchange energy between that inner self and the world . . . It may sound strange but becoming a vagabond is a religious action.

Ordinary tourists try to control their fate to protect their tender delusions from the shocks of reality. By pre-planning every aspect of their trip – whether vacation trip for life trip, they think they can circumvent the will of God and Fate. Vagabonds know better, and let things take their natural course.

The Electric Kool- Aid Acid Test (1968) by Thomas Wolfe. I never understood day glow clothes, acid parties, painted school buses and the hippie live and let live philosophy until I read this book. This book takes you along for a virtual road trip on a day glow painted school bus with Ken Kesey (author of “One Flew Over the Cookos Nest”) and his fellow Merry Pranksters and their madman driver Neal Cassady (who Jack Kerouac immortalized as “Dean Moriarty” in the famous beatnik classic “On the Road”). Dam, if I was born ten years earlier I’d like to believe that I’d have been on that bus for real.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) First published in 1957, some six years after it was first written, the mythology is that it was written on a 36 meter (120 foot) scroll of paper, single spaced without paragraph breaks, over three weeks of continuous stream of consciousness writing fueled by coffee and Benzedrine. The story follows Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty (inspired by the real life Neal Cassady) as they careen cross-country in search of the next great place and epiphany, fueled by jazz, speed and city lights.The book has inspired shiftless vagabonds and want to be writers like myself and thousands of others ever since.

Excerpt from “On the Road” – Page 1” I first met Dean not long after my wife and I split up. I had just gotten over a serious illness that I won’t bother to talk about, except that it had something to do with the miserably weary, split-up and my feeling that everything was dead. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road. . . . “

My favorite page – the last page – page 309
“So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars’ll be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear?

The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.”
– The end –

Vagabonding – An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts Rolf is one hard-core vagabond who has circled the globe and then some. He was also inspired by Ed Buryn and his classic Vagabonding in the USA guidebook to energy and references some of Ed’s good gospel in his guidebook. Rolf has gone from being a student of vagabonding to a master teacher. His guidebook is both philosophical and pragmatic. It’s a must read for all aspiring vagabonds and is available at Amazon.com

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972) by the late Hunter S. Thompson For shear drop off a cliff frenetic paranoid insanity on the road Hunter had it down. As Hunter S. wrote – “The weird Turn Pro when the going gets weird”. He was a real pro at stretching the bounds of weirdness so the rest of us could feel well within the bounds of “normalcy” while still creating loads of havoc.How much of what Hunter S. wrote did he really live or could he really have survived? Who the Hell really knows.But pick up this book, jump in the back seat of his convertible and take the craziest road trip you will ever manage to survive.

“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” – The Movie (1998)

Starring Johnny Depp as Hunter S. Thompson and Benicio Del Toro as his “Attorney”

In my opinion, this movie is excellent and renders the absurd nature of the book extremely well.

Below is a beautiful and poetic excerpt from Fear and Loathing that Hunter S. considered his finest piece of writing –

“San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Anti Consumerism Media

I’ve always felt that the degree to which you “Buy In” to commercialism determines the degree to which you have to “Sell Out” to pay for it all.

In the US people have really bought in and paid for much of it on credit. This makes them indentured servants/slaves to the big banks, who you may notice always own the tallest skyscrapers. If you really want to roam free then don’t mortgage your future for toys you don’t need. Just say no to all the commercial hype that is brilliantly designed to make you feel inadequate and insecure if you don’t buy in.

Of course, it’s easier said than done to swim against this tide. But watching the PBS show “Affluenza” might just help you build up your immunity to all this toxic commercial hype.

The show is described as a “Through revealing personal stories, expert commentary, hilarious old film clips, dramatized vignettes, and “anti-commercial” breaks, Affluenza examines the high cost of achieving the most extravagant lifestyle the world has ever seen.”

Af-flu-en-za n. 1. The bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that results from efforts to keep up with the Joneses. 2. An epidemic of stress, overwork, waste and indebtedness caused by dogged pursuit of the American Dream. 3. An unsustainable addiction to economic growth. 4. A television program that could change your life.

According to the show’s producers “Last year, Americans, who make up only five percent of the world’s population, used nearly a third of its resources and produced almost half of its hazardous waste. Add overwork, personal stress, the erosion of family and community, skyrocketing debt, and the growing gap between rich and poor, and it’s easy to understand why some people say that the American Dream is no bargain. Many are opting out of the consumer chase, redefining the Dream, and making “voluntary simplicity” one of the top 10 trends of the ’90s.”

Adbusters – Champions of the Anti Commercial Hype Movement

Ever since I stumbled across a copy of the edgy and satirical magazine “Adbuster“, I’ve been a fan of the Adbusters Media Foundation and its work in lampooning the advertising hype driven media.

This “not-for-profit” anti consumerist foundation was founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz of Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. They describe themselves as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.”

In addition to taking on mass consumerism, Adbusters has had the guts to do what virtually no mainstream media organization has ever done when it pointed out that many of the supporters of the Iraq War are Jewish. It also openly questioned why this fact and the Jewish influence on American foreign policy is never discussed or questioned in the mainstream media. Oh boy, didn’t they know this was forbidden?

Of course they were savagely attacked and accused of “anti-Semitism” for pointing out what the mainstream media consistently neglects to mention – that US Middle East policy is dominated and largely directed by Israel and the Jewish lobby in the US.

Will the American media ever connect the dots between US support for Israel and Arab hostility and terrorism toward the US? Or will we first have to loose a major US city to nuclear terrorism before can draw a line between the dots? Now that’s food for thought isn’t it? When the bomb goes off – remember where you heard it first.

So just say no to all the advertising hype and try to dig beneath the mainstream media to live, think and travel free.

Generally Interesting Web Sites

SimpleLiving.Net – The Simple Living Network provides resources, tools, examples and contacts for conscious, simple, healthy and restorative living.

It offers a discussion forum and newsletter and loads of interesting featured books and bumper stickers. My favorite, which I have yet to practice, is “Live Simply so that others may Simply Live”. Those with an interest in anarchy and vandalism might consider spray painting this slogan on all objects of ostentatious gross over consumption.

Council for Secular Humanism – The Council for Secular Humanism is North America’s leading organization for non-religious people. The website offers interesting essays and articles from a humanist perspective under “Dangerous Readings“.

Secular Humanism is a way of thinking and living that aims to bring out the best in people so that all people can have the best in life. Secular humanists reject supernatural and authoritarian beliefs. They affirm that we must take responsibility for our own lives and the communities and world in which we live. Secular humanism emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for tolerance and cooperation.

The Onion – this sardonic and absurd publication started out as a college humor magazine in Madison, Wisconsin. Nothing is sacred and all aspects of life and society from politics, religion to personal fitness are subject to severe lampooning.

Jim High Tower “America’s #1 Populist” – Long time national radio commentator Jim Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom. He has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be – consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

Hightower’s latest book, Thieves In High Places: They’ve Stolen Our Country And It’s Time To Take It Back, is a New York Times Best-Seller. His previous books are If the Gods Had Meant Us To Vote, They Would Have Given Us Candidates; There’s Nothing In the Middle Of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos; Eat Your Heart Out; and Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times.

Hightower frequently appears on television and radio programs, bringing a hard-hitting populist viewpoint that rarely gets into the mass media.

As political columnist Molly Ivins says, “If Will Rogers and Mother Jones had a baby, Jim Hightower would be that rambunctious child — mad as hell, with a sense of humor.”

Democracy Now TV and Radio – Democracy Now!’s War and Peace Report provides listeners with access to people and perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media, including independent and international journalists, ordinary people from around the world.

You Can Work From Anywhere.com – Interested in letting go of the work place apron strings and working from anywhere? Now days with cell phones, online conferencing and chatting, email, instant messaging, remote access to computers etc. working out side the office is upon us.

This site offers in-depth advice and consulting on the technologies and processes that can make working from anywhere a reality.

Adbusters – this on and offline magazine lampoons the toxic advertising driven media that we are all bombarded with. It is published by a “not-for-profit” anti consumerist foundation that was founded in 1989 in Vancouver, Canada. They describe themselves as “a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.”

Ultimately, the publishers of Adbusters see it as an ecological magazine dedicated to examining the relationship between human beings and their physical and mental environment.

Do you have any resources to suggest?

Please feel free to email me any suggestions for other freethinking resources. Just click on the contact link on the right side column of this site.