Two guys, two thumbs, one week and no money. Hitchhiking across the U.S.

by Jamie Rhein on

There’s a line in the “The Hitchhiking Movie” that made me laugh. Ryan Jeanes, one of the two guys who decided one fine day to hitchhike across the U.S. from New York City to Berkeley, California in one week to test out the kindness of strangers says, after one car dropped them off at what looks like the middle of nowhere, “Three miles further and only 3,000 miles to go.”

There are the rides one takes when hitchhiking because at least a short ride means going further in the right direction, and who knows when there will be another chance to sit down again?

It took Ryan and Phillip Hullquist 23 rides to make it across the U.S., although, I don’t know if they made their deadline. If they didn’t make the deadline, they would have missed their flights back to NY. Ryan had purchased the tickets before hand to add some motivation.

After reading the text on the movie’s website and watching the trailer, I became intrigued about the unfolding of the journey. There are the people they talked with about their trip who thought they were nuts, and the stories of the people who gave them rides. All are woven into the narrative while the scenery adds the backdrop and also highlights the diveresity between the coasts.

Whether they made it from New York City to Berkeley, California within their self-imposed time period is almost beside the point. Having a goal did influence the outcome. People altered their own trips to help Ryan and Phillip out. Because these two vowed not to use any of their own money, their success depended upon others’ generosity.

Their success also depended upon their willingness to stick out their thumbs to see what would happen. Sticking out their thumb took effort. According to Ryan, they “piddled around for awhile” in New York before they actually hit the road. Starting seemed to be one of the hardest parts.

Last spring, there was a story about three friends who were driving through 48 states in less than a week. Some states meant a quick trip through one small section, and in one case, in and out on the same road. At Four Corners, they checked off Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, for example. “The Hitchhiking Movie” reminds me a bit of that story, except Ryan’s and Phillip’s success involved others’ efforts. In the case of driving through every state, it’s a matter of getting the geography, gas, and bathroom breaks just right.

The “The Hitchhiking Movie” was released on DVD this week. Watching it seems like it would be a great boost to fuel the traveling spirit. Here’s the trailer to get you in the mood. You can buy the film on the 11 Visions Website or pay to watch it online.

Think you don’t have the money for that vacation? Wrong

by Jeffrey White on

We all know that we could find quite a bit of “extra money” to put toward traveling if we readjusted our daily budgets and started to save a little bit here and there.

Still, some of us might need a tool to help make this happen.

There’s a Web site out there ostensibly designed to help show people the types of spending they can cut, and how much saved money that’s likely to yield them.

The people over at TravelMuse have come up with what they call their “Yaycations Calculator” — Yaycation being a term I thought our very own Brenda Yun had coined — which is meant to prove that we all have the money for that special getaway, even if we don’t know it.

The calculator prompts you through 20 categories and asks you what you’d be willing to live without. That coffee-to-go five days a week? Over a year, that could save you $390. That sandwich on the run at work? We’re talking $1,820 a year in savings if you brown bag it.

I went through each category and chose the cheapest item in each to cut. My overall savings for the year? $41,016. Woohoo! I’m going on one hell of a vac…er, yay…cation!

OK, so the site is simplistic at best, and perhaps complete BS at worse. Still, it’s kinda fun to play around with, and its basic lesson of making small budget cuts to afford travel down the line is a sensible one.

Daily Travel Deal: $13.95 car rentals

by Grant Martin on

Our theme of discounted vacations continues, with yesterday highlighting the opportunity to score 100 hotels for under $100 each and today bringing car rental deals.

Hotwire is now hosting a sale on vehicle rentals across the board, from as low as $8.95 per day in Minneapolis to over $20 near New York City. Combine that with a dirt cheap hotel and discount plane ticket and you’ve got yourself a short little vacay that’s only a shade more expensive than that exotic STAYcay that you were planning. Just make sure you book early because availability is limited, and this deal could expire.

Don’t forget to loop back to AOL’s top five travel deals if you haven’t gotten your daily fill of discount mayhem.

Daily Travel Deal: 100 hotels for under $100

by Grant Martin on

In rough times like these, it’s important to save money on every facet of your travel, whether it’s business or personal. Airfares are controlled pretty tightly by the industry, but hotels are a great way in which you can cut a few costs.

Short of camping in the park or staying at a youth hostel, there are plenty of hotels that you can find at reasonable rates, especially in this economy. To that end, AOL travel has compiled a list of 100 great hotels for under $100, separated by domestic region and international destinations.

It’s a handy check during your hotel scouring to see if there are any super steals for your destination.

Check out the list of 100 hotels for under $100 here, and make sure you swing back to the hot deals section for any up to the second updates. And remember, inventory is limited so travelers should act quickly to take advantage.

Good Deed Travel: House building in Mexico vs drug cartels

by Jamie Rhein on

As the news stories about the drug cartels in Mexico have increased, I’ve been struck by the contrast between the violence I’ve heard about in cities like Tijuana and what I experienced one year ago–just an hour over the Mexican border past the outskirts of that city and its urban sprawl.

High up a craggy hill, up winding, steep roads, where shacks of pieced together boards and metals served as ramshackle houses, I was hopefully helping to make the life of one family better. The other 160 people I was with–ranging in ages from fourteen to early sixties, were also building houses nearby. For a week we worked in groups to build twelve simple, two-room adobe structures with concrete floors and solid, leak-proof roofs.

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Last year, I wrote a post about what prompted me to do such a trip. This is a follow-up.

Although I didn’t go to Mexico this year, the trip did happen. A little over two weeks ago, more Mexican families were handed the keys to their new front doors. Afterward, the bus loads of do-gooders, mostly adolescents, waited to go through customs to cross back into the U.S. for lunch at an In-N-Out Burger in San Diego, a hot shower and a night at a hotel.

If their trip was at all like ours, the stories they told each other as they waited were not about drug trafficking, but about the families they got to know and what they accomplished in five days. They will have mentioned the pleasure they found from mixing cement, measuring and cutting boards, pounding nails, and laying out the roofing. More importantly, they will have talked about the connections they made with the Mexican families. What will have struck them the most is how the families were so generous, kind and, in general, happy.

These are the stories I heard last year. From what the people who go on this trip every year have told me, these stories are typical. I think it would be great if these stories ended up on the news once in awhile.

One of the criticisms that I have heard about the recent news stories about Mexico is that there is so much focus on drug trafficking and the brutality of the cartels that people are getting a lopsided, and not totally accurate view of the country.

It’s not that I think that by building one humble house at a time, people can change the world, but it’s a different version of the world. Mexico is also filled with people who are focused on having a quiet, decent life where their kids are safe.

Still, as we were driving from where we were based to the border, the closer we got to Tijuana, the more graffiti I noticed. The simple, calm beauty of the countryside gradually shifted to what I perceived as anger, particularly since most of the graffiti was on the outside walls that surrounded housing developments of the people who worked in factories.

The contrast between the scattered clusters of houses where we had spent our time, and these walls was striking. I was happy that we passed on through.

A year later, the images of Maria, her grandsons and her son who live in the house I helped to build are much stronger than that graffiti.