[photo: jtashipphoto]

I’ve always loved the idea of being a stowaway on a big ol’ container ship. It sounds like such a romantic thing to do. Not to mention a great metaphor. When I was younger, I did a lot of research about how I could make it happen. Turns out, if you’re not working on the ship, you’ll have to pay. No stowaways these days(?).

But really, it’s not a bad idea to travel by ship. Check out this How To article from the Travelers Notebook. It does sound like fun! Slow travel, FTW.

This is often how round the world routes work: book your freighter ticket and then plan in a few weeks in every major port. With freighters, the possibilities for your adventure are almost endless. Just think: anywhere global commodities are shipped are places that you can disembark and spend time soaking up the local culture before re-boarding.

I (Audrey) recently took a trip down to Hot Springs, Arkansas to begin researching a documentary film I am making. I met my mother (whom the film is partially about) down there and we spent 5 days digging up the past, eating fried catfish and barbecue, bathing in hot springs and soaking up the vibe of this little town, and I have to say- I am in love with the history and old Americana feel of Hot Springs. Here are a couple of photos from the trip, the rest are on Mark’s Flickr page. I will be posting more about this project in the months (and years?) to come, I may even create a separate blog for the film, but I will keep everyone POSTED. Ha ha. Pun intended.

Sailing:

Fireworks!

Acadia National Park:

BBQ!

One of my new almost heros (almost, since I have not yet, in fact, read his famous book The 4-Hour Work Week), Tim Ferris just posted an interview to his blog with Slovenian marathon swimmer Martin Strel who became the first man to swim the entire length of the Amazon river. Yeah, that’s 3,274 miles, folks.

Choice scary quote:

Q: What were the biggest challenges you faced on the Amazon swim?

A: …Piranhas, snakes, spiders, candirú, bull shark or other animals which make unpredictable attack; you have to be ready all the time if any piranha attack you. We had some buckets of blood ready in case of emergency, to distract the piranha and get them away from me if necessary…

…Peeing; I didn’t pee into the water straight as this attracts a very dangerous fish called the candirú, which lodges up human orifices with a razor-like spike and then sucks your blood. I was peeing all the time through the wetsuit…

Choice awesome quoted quote (from a book about the adventure):

An expedition is 95 percent misery and 5 percent ecstasy. After three weeks of constant motion in a land far way from home, something strange occurs in the sould of a man. He gets broken. The first symptom is a tired or sick feeling, maybe even some fear and a little helplessness. Loneliness. Then something slowly changes within. The old attachments start to fade and he becomes completely present. He forgets about all the crap that keeps him up at night back home. None of it matters anymore.

Second, my friend Dorothy posted these consecutive lil’ rants on Facebook (exhibit B) that made me laugh out loud (ie: LOL). She really is a funny girl, though. You should read her blog, too.

[click img to see it full sized]

Longtime readers will know that I day dream a lot about long distance bike adventures, but it’s been a while since I wrote about one.

At MountainFilm in Telluride this year, we had the pleasure of catching this amazing film made by two young French Canadians called Asiemut. The courageous and adventuresome couple, Olivier Higgins and Mélanie Carrier (heros!), bike their way across a significant portion of the Asian continent completely on their own. It’s an amazing film, truly one that inspired me in my own dreams of documenting such an adventure. It’s one of those films that makes you think, ‘damn, you can do anything if you stick your mind to it!’

If you’re planning on doing a trip like this (who isn’t?) they’ve got some great tips on how and where and when to travel on their website. I’m bummed they don’t have a full trailer up on YouTube, though they do have this short clip to give you a sense of the tone of the film:

Asiemut certainly reminded me of my blog buddies, Project Pedal. I’m sure they’ll dig this. Maybe you guys would like to do a bike trip with Audrey and me next? Haha. I can’t wait to see their film!

Since I’m a video nerd, statements like this make me drool (over the possibilities):

We filmed the whole documentary film with a semi-professional camera, mini-dv Sony pdx10, 16:9 format. We traveled with seventy mini-dv tapes and two 360 minutes lithium batteries. We also had one charger, a stool, and a laptop. We took ourselves every single images of our film!

As you can see on the picture below, we had a camera mount that permitted us to film and to speak to the camera as we biked. We created it ourselves in the north of China with the help of two amazing chinese welders. It was attached at the front of our luggage support and was also attached to our handlebar. It was a homemade camera mount, quite heavy, but worked very well!

[Vampire Weekend]

We got to enjoy a very relaxing, sunny summer day listening to music outside at Drexel’s campus this past weekend (see all the photos here). The Popped! Music Festival got a lot bigger this year. Last spring we were cramming into small local venues watching great up and coming area bands. This year, it was a full-on festival complete with international musical acts.

My friend Alexis did a great job pulling this thing together over the past year. I helped her out planning a bit early on, so Audrey and I scored some VIP passes and had a good time watching the (ahem) mild debauchery going on back stage.

If you’d like to see some live music clips from the event, check out my music vlog yvynyl live.

I sure miss it sometimes! Here, just look to the right of where I’m standing above:

What’s not to love about that during a hot n’ humid summertime in the big city, huh?

“The Bronze Anvil Award annually celebrates the growing scope, creativity and strategic importance of public relations tactics, and represents the highest level of tactical achievement in the public relations industry,” said Arthur Yann, 2008 Bronze Anvil Award committee chair. “The outstanding work done by this year’s recipients is truly deserving of such noteworthy recognition from their industry peers.”

And please pardon me, but I can’t help use this opportunity to share one of my banner ads I made last year (when we were still called “Cheap Dates”). It makes me laugh:

We were lucky to spend the weekend up near Wellsboro, PA to celebrate our friends Andy and Darshana’s wedding. Andy’s folks have this amazing farm right on the edge of the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, which I have never seen before. We camped out there, falling asleep to the sounds of wild nature - toads and owls and all sorts of cool sounding beasties.

We took a hike out to the rim of the canyon, swam in one of their small lakes, played mad bocce ball, ate awesome vegan goodies until stuffed to the gills, and built huge campfires. An A+ event, for an A+ couple. Happy day!

Marc’s been churning out some amazing shows all year, and his new project is sure to entertain. He is quite a character. I think the Philly Weekly put it best when they said, “Interviewing Marc Brodzik of Scrapple.TV is like wrestling a Tasmanian devil covered in baby oil.”

Here’s the first episode of one their new series called Back2Basics:

It was taken by Sloan Shang for this excellent new project called Everywhere Magazine, a travel mag made by people’s contributions online. I dig the project, do check it out.

What’s most interesting to me, though, and why the photo caught my eye is that it was taken in Balmorhea State Park - the very place that Audrey agreed to marry me on the day of my 30th birthday while we were on a cross-country road trip. Also, completely randomly, my best friend Norm has that exact same bus. And it’s for sale (in case anyone’s looking for one).

[UPDATE: The film was awesome! We totally enjoyed it and it made us laugh out loud. Super summertime blockbuster. Also, I grabbed a quick shot of Dave in the credits!]

The good people of P’unk Ave and The Hacktory are putting together a free event called Ignite Philly on Wednesday June 11th at Johnny Brenda’s at 6:00pm. I’ll be there!

The basic premise of the thing is to ask some local innovators to get up on stage and give a talk about what they do. The catch? They can’t speak for more than 5 minutes and their powerpoint slides will only stay up 15 seconds max. Should be an excellent time for all us nerdz and non-nerdz alike.

You won’t want to miss the awesomeness of featured speakers like:

Hope to see you there!