Watching the Waves

by Erik Olsen on

Perhaps the most common, or at least well-known, phrase to come from the mouths of surfers is “Surf’s up”. My guess is that we might be hearing that phrase a lot more lately because discovering that the surf IS up juts got a whole lot easier. A relatively new site called Wavewatch lets you check out how the breakers are rolling from the comfort of your office chair. That means you can get that memo done for the boss and as soon as the sets start rolling in at five feet or so you can say sayonara to the fax machine and the conference room and it’s hello ocean.

It looks like many of California’s best beaches are covered including Ventura Point, Malibu, El Porto, San Clemente, Huntington Beach, Newport at 56th Street, and Oceanside, as well as other places around the world.

Live cams show breakers in real time, and in other areas live satellite feeds show the local conditions. It’s a solid site that seems to already have a pretty good following.

City of Contrasts. Bite Me.

by Iva Skoch on

If I read one more time that a place X is a “place of contrasts” I am going to scream or start sending letters, depending on which side of the contrast spectrum I will find myself. Beijing has been called a “city of contrasts” by CNN, Los Angeles by PBS, St. Petersburg by The Mercury Sun, Genoa by The New York Times (Et tu, Brute?) The list goes on.

In fact, when you type in “city of contrasts” into Google, you get 113,000 hits. You get hundreds of pictures when you type in the same in Google Images. The funny thing is, most of those pictures show no contrast at all, even if the most trivial kind. Take the picture displayed. The description says: Kazan, Russia: City of Contrasts. And, where would the contrast be? The ugly houses versus the less ugly houses?

What I want to know: Is there a place on Earth that’s NOT a place of contrasts? Contrasts are everywhere – the poor and the rich, the new and the old, the beautiful and the ugly. Contrast is a given. Even my kitchen is a place of contrasts, if you examine the unwashed dishes next to the hand-cut crystal glasses.

As places start looking more gentrified and similar, travel writers will really need to get more creative. That is one good thing globalization could accomplish.

Golf With a Twist

by Erik Olsen on

I’m not much of a golfer. Most of my friends can attest to that. I’m not horrible, it’s just that I’ve never really mastered the driver, a rather important part of the game. Also, when it comes to being outside, I much prefer hiking or kayaking to hitting a little white ball around a nicely manicured lawn.

But if golf’s your thing, AND you want to add a dose of adventure to the game, you might be interested in a show called Adventure Golf. The program follows around an amateur golfer named Ian Cross as he plays courses in Dubai, Japan, South Africa, Scotland, and Florida. After the round, he takes viewers around the local environs and shows them (one would guess) all the lovely poverty (except in Dubai) that skirts the course.

Ride on a Great White

by Erik Olsen on

Sorry, just saw this over at Jason’s blog and had to post it here for diving fans…wait, forget that. Anyone and everyone is going to love this, a video showing Jean-Michel Cousteau not just in the water with, but RIDING a great White Shark.

The Tick!

by Neil Woodburn on

Occasionally, we here at Gadling like to stretch the boundaries of what constitutes “travel” and do a silly little post that is dear to our hearts, but frankly, not really travel related.

Of course, we can put a nice little travel spin on pretty much anything we want if we try hard enough. Take for example the news I came across yesterday that my favorite cartoon, The Tick, is finally being released on DVD after being off the air for ten years in America.

The Tick, for those of you who don’t watch cartoons, is an irreverent superhero in a bright blue costume who fights crime along with his sidekick Arthur, a pudgy ex-accountant who wears a moth suit.

The Tick is a pseudo-philosopher who is a bit low on brainpower but more than makes up for it with a good, simple heart and plenty of dumb brawn. Between his rally cries of spoon!, the Tick has been known to delve into such diverse topics as evil, fish, the attributes of a moustache, alien probes, and Joseph Stalin.

So where’s the travel angle you ask? Well, in the third and final season, the Tick goes to Europe on a Superhero Exchange Program. He switches places with Belgian superhero Éclair and finds himself in Antwerp where the King of Belgian has been kidnapped.

With his new superhero partner Blitzen (a muscle-bound German frau who first takes him dancing in a techno club) Tick matches wits with Octopaganini, an eight-armed villain who is a master violin player and also does battle with The Eastern Bloc Robot Cowboy, a deranged gun slinging vending machine from behind the Iron Curtain.

Meanwhile, back in the States, Éclair and sidekick Arthur take on the Breadmaster and his army of tiny gingerbread men. Goodness wins out when the cookie army goes prematurely stale, prompting Éclair to make the observation that, “Once again we find that you can’t disguise the foul taste of evil with artificial, or even natural sweeteners.”

Are you with me here?

Go buy the DVD; trust me, you’ll love it.