Lemme esplain: say you’re planning a big life-changing travel trip – like a year in India or something – you sit there with your airline tickets all reserved and ready and you know you’re about to spend thousands of dollars and have untold wild adventures in unknown lands, yet you sit, hesitating over the mouse with your finger slightly raised and beads of sweat building around your temples.

Nervously, you finger the button, but don’t push it. You’re flirting with it. You get up, have another cup of coffee. You sit back down and the ‘complete transaction’ icon stares you in the face, but so does the ‘close browser’ button. The action to commit is so clear – just *push the button* – make friends with the unknown future, extend your hand, embrace it. And then, finally, once you do, you’ve crossed to the other side. Take a deep breath. You’ve committed and there’s no turning back. But it feels damn good. You’re all in.

Rare are the opportunities in life as clear as this. Go with it.

Recently, I discovered Atlas Obscura, “a compendium of this age’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica.” It speaks to my heart:

The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist. If you’re looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.

 
This guide is simply full of some of the most incredible stuff. For example, one of the entries in Pennsylvania, mere miles from where I went to high school, was totally unknown to me until now. How had I never heard of this place before!? It’s called The Sonorous Stones of Ringing Rocks Park, basically a field of musical, ringing boulders in the middle of the woods. Incredible.

[photo: David Hanauer]

Here in Philadelphia, you’ll find a number of odd spots, including the Shrine of Saint John Neuman. I’m going to have fun exploring (and contributing to!) this outstanding project. Lord Whimsy, you must be all over this already, yes?

Be sure to check out our friends Ravens and Vultures who were kind enough to lend us their excellent music for our soundtrack.

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.

A couple weeks ago, my buddy Julia invited me to make a video for the Fiesta Movement program she was helping put together. I was a bit reticent at first, being the busy fella that I am. But after she told me that they’d hook me up with the totally sweet 2011 Ford Fiesta for 6 months in exchange for sending me on little adventures that’d I’d twitter and vlog about, I came around to the idea. Fun!

Today I found myself with an empty Sunday afternoon I thought, “what the hell?” So here it is, in all it’s nerdy glory. I know I’m rather shameless y’all. Please forgive in advance.

Audrey and I have a soft spot in our hearts for the Pine Barrens in New Jersey. It’s one of the most wild areas on the East Coast, and lord knows we love wilderness. As it happens, our friend Allan (aka Lord Whimsy) knows a heck of a lot about the nature and history of the area and loves trecking out to the cranberry bogs in search of interesting stuff. In case you missed it, I took some of my favorite photos of the year on our orchid hunting adventure last spring. It was bitterly cold out – only 5′F and windy – today, but we had a great time exploring.

As always, there are many more photos on my Flickr page here.

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.

Snowboarding at Solitude in Utah from Mark Schoneveld on Vimeo.

Oh, and… ICE BEARD!

Audrey and I just returned from a fantastic and relaxing vacation to Utah for Christmas. If you’d like to see photos of such a thing (and hey, why wouldn’t you?), check out my Flickr set.

Stay tuned for my awesome (nerdy) video of me snowboarding and squealing like a little school girl. To give you a lil’ taste, check out my awesome ICE BEARD!

Right now, I have an eagle eye on the stupid weather which so far is not cooperating very nicely. Both sets of parents are begging us off this trip, or at least to find alternative travel or whatever. Right now, I’m still 90% 50% 0% sure we’re set to leave Friday evening. Stay tuned.

I’m going to gather a group of folks to get down to DC for the historic inauguration of our 44th President. January 20, 2009 will be a great day! Out with the old and in with the new, says I.

Destination DC has a cool site up to help mitigate what will certainly be one big ol’ crowd of gawkers (via Intelligent Travel). I’m ready to brave the madness myself. And I’ll bring a set of binoculars, too.

If you want in, leave your name below and I’ll let you know more details soon. Probably going to be just a day trip from Philly. Let’s carpool!

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:

Sadly, a day after I sent them my subscription payment and a couple weeks after enjoying the first issue I got in the mail, Everywhere Magazine, the community-made travel magazine, is ceasing publication.

The publishing company is will continue to produce it’s older sister mag, JPG Magazine. So there is that. And it will remain an online community where you can share photos and stories. But I sure liked the travel version of the publication.

Magazines – will they survive? It’s rough out there in the paper publishing world, kids.

[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.