Fast Off the Mark in China

In the US we have countdown timers on green lights to tell us how long we have left to get across the street. In China the red lights count down so you can be fast off the mark when the light turns. More...

Why Men Don’t Ask Directions

My Droid X was a pretty good navigator for most of the road trip Mary and I took. Sure there was the incident of the virtual off ramp when it insisted the best entrance to a hotel parking lot was directly from an adjacent Interstate – not! And there was the attempt to leave Atlanta Airport the wr More...

Getting Back Online

You don't want to be without your computer at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare; my computer was stolen the day before in a smash and grab. The hotel has a business center, which is run by FedEx; the charge for using a sl More...

Blog Blocked by Breakin

Shards of shattered window glistened on the asphalt and on the backseat where my laptop bag shouldn't have been so conspicuous. The bag was gone, of course, and with it the laptop, extra batteries, several cables and chargers, a mouse, a USB multiport, my Garmin watch and chest strap, miscell More...

Stromboli Volcano – A Must See

You can hear the gurgles, coughs, and explosions of the Stomboli lava tube clearing its irritable throat before you reach the southwest edge of the caldera at 3000 feet. The guided hikes, all the way f More...

Hiking Down Aetna

Click Picture for Live Google Map with Garmin Data

Fo More...

VZW Droid X Flunks Foreign GPS Test – GPS Status to the Rescue

Where in the world are Tom and Mary? We knew we were in the Hertz lot in Catania, Sicily; but our droid X GPS insisted we were in Somalia – not what we had in mind. Mary wouldn't let us sit more than five minutes to let the GPS find itself; good thing because a day later it still didn't k More...

Packing My Droid for Travel

My Verizon Droid isn't going to be able to communicate with cell towers in Europe; it uses CDMA technology and Europe is all GSM. But I've gotten dependent on the droid for lots of things including navigation. In most cases, there's an app for that - even two or three apps.

More...

Ryan InterContinental

Why is the luxury InterContinental like low-cost no-frill Ryanair? Read on.

What a deal! Mary went on Priceline and got us three nights in the Athenaeum InterContinental Athens for $100 night, just a little more than we paid for the three star Acropole Hotel in Delphi.

At check-in More...

Buy Local, Sell Global

It doesn't scale. We can't all buy locally and sell globally. The less politically correct sounding version is "beggar thy neighbor".

Last week when we were vacationing in very friendly Apalachicola, I was mildly offended by a banner one block off the tourist street advising everyone to b More...