A friend of mine (I can’t remember who now) told me about getting camping permits for the islands and spending a whole week there, lounging in hammocks and snorkeling in the crystal blue water. And camping passes are $5 a night. Apparently almost all of the visitors that go only stay for a day trip and return to Key West by evening, leaving the island empty and quiet. Sign. Me. Up. Who’s with me?

(thanks, Peg, for reminding me to blog about this!)

You might recall that last month I whipped together a lil’ video in order to apply for the Fiesta Movement – an innovative marketing effort by Ford that gave 100 entertaining and influential bloggers a new car to drive around for 6 months and share their thoughts and adventures with the world. Well, lucky for me, I got chosen – one of 4000+ applicants.

I spent a fantastic couple days up in New York City getting some information and training on the program. It does not suck to spend 24 hours with a group of people who are equally, if not more nerdy than me about blogging, Twitter and the Internet arts (shout out to my new friends Seth, Alexis, John, Sarah, Grace, Jody, Jill, Joe, Bliss, Eric and Alex). Here’s the first clip I just uploaded – an introduction to the car and a rainy training day at the racetrack.

There’s a bit more to it than simple videos and witty car quips. The best part of this is that Audrey and I are already planning some road trip adventures for this summer and we’ll be extra sure to make you some entertaining videos while we’re on the road.

I got to thinking about it today because my pal Hudson reblogged a link to this NY Times article about a similar (albeit more modern) subject.

Cool fanboy aside: I was given my copy of this film by Bill’s brother and frequent Richard Linklater collaborator Lee Daniel when we met at Sundance ‘07.

Who is Bozo Texino? chronicles the search for the source of a ubiquitous and mythic rail graffiti– a simple sketch of a character with an infinity-shaped hat and the scrawled moniker, “Bozo Texino”– a drawing seen on railcars for over 80 years. Daniel’s gritty black and white film uncovers a secret society and it’s underground universe of hobo and railworker graffiti, and includes interviews with legendary boxcar artists, Coaltrain, Herby, Colossus of Roads, and The Rambler. Shooting over a 16-year period, Daniel rode freights across the West carrying a Super-8 sound camera and a 16mm Bolex. During his quest he discovered the roots of a folkloric tradition that has gone mostly unnoticed for a century. Taking inspiration from Beat artists Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac, the film functions as both a sub-cultural documentary and a stylized fable on wanderlust and outsider identity.

In 1961, 23-year-old Michael Rockefeller traveled to Papua to pursue a career in anthropology and escape the silver straitjacket that came from being the son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller. After his dugout canoe swamped in the Arafura Sea, he went missing. Almost 50 years later, reporter Tim Sohn and a film crew ventured to Papua to investigate whether he drowned, was eaten by cannibals, or survived to live Kurtz-like in a remote village.

The Wend Magazine Blog pointed out a pretty radical new project called the Lost Coast Bike Expedition. It’s a couple of guys, Eric and Dylan, who are off to explore the fringes of rugged coastline from Alaska by… bike? And boat. And foot. But as most of your know, whatever the method of transportation, this type of adventure is right up my alley. I love this coastline. It’s incredible. One of the great Wild places on earth. Plus, they’re blogging about it. Yes! Here’s a photo from one of their first days:

Speaking of cool adventures, BoingBoing today wrote about a cool interactive map feature on Good Magazine’s website showing some of the great adventures of history. Click the image to see more:

[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.

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.

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!

We had a fantastic day adventuring in the pine barrens with orchid and rare plant fanatic Lord Whimsy on Sunday. It was a rainy, cool spring day, but that didn’t dampen our rare plant finding enthusiasm one bit. Whimsy, his wife Lady Pink and friend Bill were joined by Audrey, Norm, Heather, Brandy and me. Here is a video and some photos of the day. See the whole set of pretty photos here.