TSA pulls pants off of elderly man during search

by Grant Martin on

It always never fails to amaze us what sort of crazy screening the TSA is doing on everyday passengers. You’ve probably seen the pictures of the security officer frisking the nun at Detroit’s airport and were thinking what we were thinking — what is a nun going to sneak into an airport? But the TSA can’t discriminate against anyone based on their race, color, creed or age, so they have search even the most innocent looking people just like everyone else.

A 71 year old man was recently searched because he had a prosthetic knee, and the TSA officer went so far as to remove the man’s pants in plain sight of the checkpoint to insure that he wasn’t hiding anything. Check out the news coverage of the incident below — we’d be angry too!

10 tips for smarter flying


Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations starts up season 4

by Grant Martin on

One of the few reasons that I kept a television for so long was for Anthony Bourdain’s Travel and Food show No Reservations. Airing on the travel channel every Monday, No Reservations always seemed to me to be a real travel show, shot from the streets in places that you or I might visit, and for some reason, seemed to have a streak of authenticity and candidness to it. Perhaps that’s why it’s so popular among the young American demographic.

Regardless, we’ve nominated blogger Jeremy as our new Bourdain reviewer, so keep an eye out for his posts recapping the show every week.

If you want to get your Bourdain on before the episode tonight, check out the preview video kindly supplied by the PR engine at the Travel Channel — and keep an eye on Gadling — I hear we might get some sweet Bourdain schwag to give away to our loyal readers.

Tokyo’s Grand Sumo Tournament kicks off

by Grant Martin on

The Nihon Sumo Kyokai Tokyo Grand Sumo Tournament kicked off in Japan this past Sunday, beginning two action packed weeks of Sumo excitement. Naturally, Gadling had room in the travel budget to send a couple of bloggers, so we captured some video from the first round of matches.

If you’ve never seen real Sumo wrestling in action, it’s a pretty fantastic spectacle, complete with everything from traditional salt throwing and the closing bow dance to all of the white people in the only concession stand line that serves hot dogs and popcorn.

The concept is simple: the first man to push the other outside of the ring or (sometimes) off of his feet is the winner. But the delicacies of the game, the tradition surrounding the event, the excitement of the crowd, the roaming wrestlers in the hall and the energy surrounding the entire building are amazing.

If you’re ever on holiday in Japan and considered looking into tickets, best pony up the fifty bucks for the cheap upper ring seats — it’s totally worth it.

Flickr adds video

by Jeremy Kressmann on


If you’ve spent more than two minutes on the Internet recently, you already know and love photo-sharing site Flickr. Today the site is breaking some interesting new functionality, allowing pro users to post videos of up to 90 seconds. Rumors of video have apparently been floating around on site’s message boards for some time now, though today marked the feature’s official launch. Users haven’t wasted any time pulling together video-focused sharing groups to take advantage of the new feature.

Some people are questioning the wisdom of Flickr’s decision. Why, they point out, would Flickr launch video sharing when sites like YouTube already dominate most online video attention? I tend to disagree with this view because I think Flickr video can occupy an interesting niche for photographers. If you consider the way most people capture travel video these days, it tends to be short snippets from point-and-shoot digital cameras. When you upload these files, computers don’t really distinguish between photo and video – everything is usually lumped into the same folder. Thus there’s an interesting opportunity to allow users to share their photos and videos all in one place. Flickr is also limiting their video size to 150 megabytes or 90 seconds, which to me also emphasizes they’re looking to capture short camera clips, not your three hour long wedding ceremony (as heartwarming as it might be).

Only paying pro users can use Flickr Video for now, but perhaps they will open it up to others in the near future. Check out the help page to get started.

Breaking News! Travelocity Gnome terrorizes South American town! Eats chickens! Steals babies!

by Grant Martin on

Video from The Sun surfaced this morning showing an alleged gnome running around an Argentinian town, scaring the living daylights out of local teens. My thoughts are that this is either a hoax or a clever viral marketing campaign courtesy of Travelocity. Watch the video below and just try to fight the urge to book a three day two night cruise to Cancun and Belize. But it’s such a good deal!

Be sure to check out the Sun Article here.