Resurrecting the Jetrosexual

Five years ago, Virgin Atlantic Airways came up with an inspired and inspiring marketing campaign as a way to put the glamour and excitement back into air travel—to spawn a new Jet Age, populated by a group of "high fliers" whose mission is "to achieve greatness" and "raise the bar in their industry or simply succeed where no one else could." These go-getters who get around were dubbed jetrosexuals. Can't get any flier than that.

Along with the designation came a list of eleven commandments to which Fly Brother tries his darnedest to adhere, and in order to advance to the level of a true jetrosexual, grasshoppers, you must not only commit these to memory (in theory, at least), but you must live by the mantras espoused here in your everyday actions as well:

11. Thou shall have thine passport ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Fly Brother says: Naturally.

10. Thou shalt have a favorite airport and be prepared to explain why it is thine fave.

Fly Brother says: Hong Kong International. A triumph of glass, steel, and light, HKG at Chek Lap Kok is a monumental yet supremely user-friendly temple to transcontinental air travel. You could get lost, but there’s plenty of English around to make sure you don’t wander onto the runway. If only they could keep the new terminal but bring back that classic Kai Tak landing.

9. Thou shalt not be a Chatty Cathy with thine seatmate.

Fly Brother says: Never. In fact, the eyes are lowered into a vintage Toni Morrison before the seatbelt light goes on.

8. Thou shalt never hold up the security line.

Fly Brother says: Even though it is ridiculous that only United States security personnel require shoes to be removed, it’s even more ridiculous to continually set off the alarm with the Herringbone you got last weekend at Flea Market USA.

7. Thou shalt be able to order a beer in at least six different languages.

Fly Brother says: Let’s up the ante a little on this one, shall we?
Vodka martini. Shaken, not stirred.
Martini de vodka. Sacudarido, no revuelto.
Vodka martini. Secoué, non remué.
Vodka martini. Ristet, ikke rørt.
Martini, που τινάζεται βότκα μην ανακατωμένος.
揺れるウォッカマルティーニかき混ぜられない。

6. Thou shalt respect the five minute rule when using thine lavatory.

Fly Brother says: This is a tough one on those 17-hour New York to Bangkok flights. Just try to go before you leave home. And don't eat too much.

5. Thou shalt be able to pack a week’s worth of clothes into a single carry-on bag.

Fly Brother says: A good laundry service at your destination and appropriate clothing selection can stretch that week to a month if necessary.

4. Thou shalt not own one of those inflatable neck pillows.

Fly Brother says: While they may be comfortable, they look horrid. Style and comfort must be balanced.

3. Thou shalt have at least one passport stamp from a country that now goes by a different name.

Fly Brother says: This may be difficult for some of the less-seasoned jetrosexuals. A stamp from a country on the US State Department's travel advisory list will do.

2. Thou shalt travel Economy class, on rare occasions, just to keep thine self humble.

Fly Brother says: This is relatively easy when thou payeth for thine own ticket.

1. Thou shalt leave terra firma behind in order to move business and culture forward.

Fly Brother says: Done.

Now, copy and paste this handy pocket-sized list of jetrosexual commandments to print for quick reference in the event of kidnapping or memory loss.


Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

United to the East, AA f/Fly Bro, FB Winter Tour

United joins Delta in Africa

Photo by AV8NLVR
Last week, United Airlines announced service from Washington-Dulles to Accra, Ghana, continuing on to Lagos, Nigeria. When the flights start in May, UA will become the second major American carrier to serve the Motherland, giving the large Nigerian population in the DC area nonstop access to the country's largest business center and former capital. Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines already flies to Accra and Lagos, as well as Abuja, Nigeria; Dakar, Senegal; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Cairo, Egypt, though they've announced several routes to other African destinations in the past year that either have been terminated or never took off for various reasons. It's nice to see other airlines taking the (lucrative) chance of serving Africa, but I can't imagine the in-flight service even approaching that of the European airlines already flying from the US to the continent via their hubs.

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AA's new black travel website, featuring Fly Brother

Photo by caribb

In October, American Airlines started a travel website centered around the black travel experience called Black Atlas. Headlined by writer and "travel expert-at-large" Nelson George, the site highlights 27 domestic and 15 international destinations sure to resonate with affluent African-American travelers. Readers can submit blog posts detailing their experiences on the road, as well as search for airfares with a special interactive map. They've also been kind enough to feature ya boy, Fly Brother, and his scribblings on Salvador da Bahia, Paris, and Mexico City. Now, that's fly.

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Fly Brother Winter Tour 2009

LOS ANGELES, November 18-23
NEW YORK, December 11-20
ORLANDO, December 20-26
MIAMI, December 29-January 6

If I'm headed your way, shout me!

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Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment and/or click.

Three Months, Six Continents, Three-Point-Five Grand

Through a combination of one-time tip-offs and dogged research, the universe (and the economy) conspired in my favor to send me traipsing round the Urf this fall with the following ticket prices:

Jacksonville → Baltimore - $88
New York → Dublin - $234
Dublin → London - $48
London → Stockholm - $90
Stockholm → Berlin - $13
Berlin → Istanbul - $68
Istanbul → Cairo - $248
Cairo → Abu Dhabi → Mumbai - $370
Delhi → Kuala Lumpur - $197
Kuala Lumpur ↔ Macau - $85
Kuala Lumpur → Los Angeles - $630 (business class)
Los Angeles ↔ Sydney - $651
Los Angeles → São Paulo → Orlando - $740

Plus several other bus and train trips and short flights = US$3500

Actually, you can get a cheaper round-the-world ticket from specialized agencies like Airtreks or Air Brokers, which allow changes in routing and scheduling for a year, or you could pay a bit more and have a slew of stops on multiple continents with an airline alliance such as oneworld, but a) I ain't have all the money at one time, b) I needed to add a wide-open Brazil flight to the end of the trip (I arrive in Sampa on November 20 and head back to Florida for my brother's wedding next April), and c) what got me on my way was that business class trans-Pacific flight.

Even if you don't have a month off from work or three grand to spend on some grandiose neo-Grand Tour, the ridiculous cost of airplane tickets these days prove that international travel is not a millionaire's game; there's no reason not to pop over for a weekend somewhere that requires a passport.

Check the websites I mentioned here and get packing.

Fly Brother's Revised RTW Itinerary and Confession

First, the itinerary:

The initial flight schedule I posted last month included some pre-round-the-world flights and some planned, but at that time unpurchased, segments. The current itinerary includes all but a couple of connections within India and Australia. New: Two days in Abu Dhabi!

Shout me if our paths will cross anytime this summer/fall:

And now the confession:

I'm an airline geek.

I read Today in the Sky, Airline Route Updates, and The Cranky Flier religiously. I know all the world's major airline hubs (and their three-letter codes) and can guess which airline someone took based on routing. I know which airline is in what alliance and play favorites like any sports fanatic. I get geet when Delta announces a new international route from the world's largest airline hub in that great Southern city of Atlanta, and I honestly wish American Airlines would shrivel up and die and release us all from its figure-four grip on Latin America. I track my own stats at FlightMemory.com (I've flown 0.0019 times the distance to the Sun) and I play around relentlessly with the Great Circle Mapper. I stare for hours at the photos on Airliners.net, sometimes saving them as my computer wallpaper, and sit on airplanes with the in-flight magazine opened devotedly to the route map. And in my dorky nerd solitude, I even created my own fictitious carrier (contingent, of course, upon me being the benevolent dictator of Venezuela and developing the place smartly as a Latin American emirate): Solair—Fly the New Fiesta Route from Europe to Australia, with a free stopover in (fictionally) fabulous Caracas or Tahiti! Naturally, Solair is a member of the SkyTeam alliance.

I've always been this way, inexplicably. In elementary school, I began to collect airline timetables, often holding on toll-free numbers for hours to get exotic-looking flight schedules from Sabena, Saudia, and Singapore (this was totally me). I would get my folks* to take me downtown to the main library to study the airport terminal maps in the phone book-sized OAG (international version, of course). I created my own version of Monopoly called Airopoly, in which players would purchase major airports and try to establish hubs. I collected die-cast and plastic snap-together model airplanes at only $20 a pop. I decorated my room with travel posters I ordered from airline marketing departments. I got a special tour of the airport that I arranged myself in the ninth grade, incidentally the year of my very first plane ride. I applied to the airport management undergraduate program at the Florida Institute of Technology (the very inadequate partial scholarship I received called for a major shift in plans).

*These same folks forced me to throw away all of my timetables and not-so-well-maintained model planes when I finished high school. They claim they had no idea any of it would be worth anything nowadays. Ain't that some shit? Parents.

At college, though, my interests swiveled more towards culture, history, and politics, and the one and only time I seriously applied for an airline job—as a US Airways gate agent in Tallahassee—was thwarted by my ridiculous adolescent driving record ("Heeeeellll naw, you ain't gettin near our planes," I'm sure the guy was thinking). Stupidly, it never occurred to me during the four years I lived in Washington to apply for some part-time gig at United for the flight benefits; my driving record had hardly improved. A couple years ago, I saw an opening with Delta for a corporate communications manager based in Buenos Aires, handling the media in fifteen Latin American and Caribbean countries; I would have been espectacular in that position. But in order to secure the interview that would have secured me the job, I had to first apply through the website, and there ain't nothing on my official CV that would give an airline head hunter pause to consider my professorial self (Shameless plug: I'm great at written/verbal communications, speak Spanish and Portuguese, love aviation, and I'm cute...hire me, somebody!!! American, I didn't mean what I said about dying, eheheh.).

So now, I'm a run-o-the-mill airline aficionado with no real ties to the industry and no big collection of paraphernalia to speak of. Just my mental flights of fancy on Solair, a crapload of aviation trivia in my head, a love of retro airline imagery, an appreciation for the theoretical (if not always financial) ability to jet in a single day from one major population center to another on the opposite side of the globe, and a hankering to lift off the Earth's surface every chance I get.

I've confessed.

Stupid Cheap Summer Airfares That You Would Be Stupid to Ignore

Photo by Gun Sydney

These are some of the deals I've found for round-trip international travel in June, July, and August (some even extend into the fall, when the weather's heating up Down Under). Dust off the passport (or apply for one) and get them bags packed:

Chicago to Dublin*, Ireland - $498 on Delta

Chicago to San Jose, Costa Rica - $277 on TACA

Los Angeles to Buenos Aires, Argentina - $598 on United

Los Angeles to Frankfurt*, Germany - $517 on Delta

Los Angeles to Manila, Philippines - $588 on Delta

Los Angeles to Panama City, Panama - $297 on American

New York-JFK to Santo Domingo, Dominican Rep. - $341 on JetBlue

New York-LaGuardia to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - $513 on United ($541 on Delta)

Newark to Berlin*, Germany - $519 on Continental/KLM

Newark to Cartagena, Colombia - $393 on Continental/Copa

Newark to Sydney, Australia - $712 on United ($573 from LA!!!!!!)

San Francisco to Tokyo, Japan - $454 on Air Canada (early-mid June only)

Washington to Frankfurt*, Germany - $526 on Lufthansa

*Once in Germany or Ireland, you can hop over to almost any other major European city for as little as $40 each way.

And right now, round trips from the East Coast out West and vice-versa are also stupid cheap, often $200 or less, so not living in San Fran or LA is no excuse; DC people, hit that Chinatown Bus to The City. I found these fares by first checking the forums on frequent traveler website FlyerTalk, then verifying on the individual airline sites, or on Farecast, Orbitz, Expedia, Farecompare, or Airfare Watchdog (which is especially handy by alerting you of fare sales from any airport you desire). If you can, play around with the dates or destinations; I'm sure you'll find something worth salivating over.

Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment below and/or click .

Fly Brother's Fly-By-Night Dime-Store Travel Philosophy

Photo by barb 11

Lately, I've been reading through traveler extraordinaire Chris Guillebeau's The Art of Nonconformity, an inspiring multipurpose blog encouraging people to live, work, and travel outside the box. With posts like "Why You Should Quit Your Job and Travel Around the World" and the downloadable "A Brief Guide to World Domination," Guillebeau seems to have found that elusive je ne sais quoi that allows him to jaunt off to far-flung destinations at a moment's notice (being debt-free and having operated several successful small businesses being a part of that je ne sais quoi), and he's willing to share the knowledge of being your own boss, traveling the world, and improving our planet to anyone who's open to non-conventional wisdom. Each one, teach one.

Anyway, I recently read a post titled "Developing Your Own Philosophy of Travel," in which Guillebeau describes his motivation for and styles of travel. His current goal is to visit every country on Earth (nearly 200 sovereign nations) before his 35th birthday, and he's well on his way to accomplishing that goal via round-the-world plane tickets, finagled stop-overs, and a rainbow of sleeping arrangements - from airport floors in Texas to fleabags in Ulaan Bataar (that's Mongolia, folk) to the overpriced Le Meridian in Malta. And he got me thinking about my own travel philosophies, those objectives, habits, rules, and stimuli that drive me incessantly to the nearest international airport whenever time and income allow.

• As I've mentioned countless times on this blog, I'm drawn most strongly to Latin American cultures with a very visible African element, particularly in terms of music and dance: the Spanish Caribbean and Brazil most notably. I also like cities with large Afro-Diasporic populations - London, Paris, Toronto, Montreal, and the States-side stalwarts NYC, DC, ATL, and MIA. Basically, I like to see myself reflected in the people when I travel. And I like to travel under the radar, where if I don't speak, people don't know I'm not from there.
  

• That doesn't mean I limit myself to the lands of salsa and samba. Within the next five years, I'm trying to hit Mozambique, South Africa, Ethiopia, Libya, Morocco, Nigeria, and Tanzania in the Motherland. Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Croatia, and Turkey. Hong Kong. Australia. Papua New Guinea. India! And, of course, wherever a cheap last-minute plane ticket takes me.
  

• I'm a true urbanist: the bigger the city, the better. Give me a week in Sydney over a week in the Outback any day. Not that I'm averse to hiking or outdoor activities (I quite enjoy rafting), but the humthumpbuzz of an urban center stimulates more of my senses than the whistletweetshush of the campo. I enjoy museums and mass transit and people watching at the mall. I would, however, make exceptions for natural wonders like Ayers Rock, Victoria Falls, and Antarctica.

• I like to spend an entire week or ten days in a city (more, if possible). It's a great way to see sights and stake your claim on a neighborhood or local routine for a short while. I like getting lost among the crowds and making my way "home" or getting to know the waitstaff at my corner breakfast nook. After a few days, I start to notice commuting patterns, discover hidden delicacies, and sometimes even get to indulge in a nice romantic fling (I have, in Paris, Havana, and London).
  

• I don't like hostels. I'd rather stay in a 1-star matchbox that's reasonably clean than at party-central for a gaggle of 20-something, boozy backpackers. No thanks. There's also CouchSurfing.

• I haven't done my first round-the-world trek yet, but I'm planning one soon. I could be an airline network loyalist, racking up the frequent flier miles with SkyTeam or Star Alliance, or I could go with Airtreks or Air Brokers to get the cheapest deal (as low as US$1700, taxes included). Either way, I get geet (as they say in Atlanta) whenever I think about jetting ahead of or against the rotation of the Earth.
  

• I try never to check a bag. My size-13 tennis shoes often hinder that little plan, especially on smaller planes in South America.

• On trips to developing countries, I try not to take photographs of people, especially folk doing heavy lifting or unpleasant drudge-work. I mean, I'd be pissed if somebody snapped a Polaroid of me struggling to balance a 50-pound basket of trout on my head. Don't take a picture, you bastid...help me carry this!
  

• I am a travel crackhead: I've been known to spend my rent money on a plane ticket. Not recommended (but I don't regret it).

• I'm usually a loner; I like to do what I want to do when I want to do it. I do enjoy trips with my friends or other travel companions, but mostly when they're also experienced travelers and are keen on doing their own thing for part of the trip. We don't have to be together every waking minute: we can spend our afternoons making independent memories that we can share with each other later at dinner. Besides, there's too much inadvertent cock-blocking that can happen when you travel with other people.

My travel philosophy, in two words: Do you. Cuz I'm damn sure gon do me.

What's your travel philosophy?



Fly Brother welcomes your views. If this post hit the spot, please comment below and/or click .

Get Fly

A few years ago, edgy London-based airline Virgin Atlantic came up with a kitschy but cool marketing campaign aimed at Jetrosexuals, the breed of international traveler who "leaves terra firma behind each day to move business and culture forward." Though that particular campaign with its snazzy Bond-like mini-movies showcasing the amenities of each US-UK flight has run its course, I'm still enthralled by the idea of being a part of the new jet set, a group that isn't constrained by social norms or even financial limitations. Going global, being worldly, getting fly truly is all about the mindset - allowing a fleeting desire to taste the unknown manifest into a visceral, sensory, life-changing experience.

I'm a high school teacher, which is hardly a job that entails jetting up-front between Ny-Lon-and-Kong every week, crashing at this Hilton or that. But I move culture forward every day by virtue of just living abroad. Like it or not, in the classroom and in the street, I represent Americans in general, Black Americans in particular, Floridians who aren't from Miami, Southerners, English-speakers, people from the "First World" (hate that term), and just about any other category that can be identified one way or another by my birth, upbringing, or experience. I constantly challenge or confirm stereotypes and every moment is educational - for me, the person I encounter, or both. And having the power to shape and change perceptions positively and on an international level, to me, is fly.

Consider the impact you have on other people and whether or not you're influencing them positively. Even if, at this point, it's only on a local level with your feet planted squarely on terra firma, if what you do makes people feel good or brings a smile to their faces or inspires them to be better, then that's fly. But what's supa-dupa-fly is taking the show on the road (or to the skies, rather), flexing that passport, and accepting your role as lay ambassador with verve and aplomb.

And you don't have to be all slick and flashy in Trump-wear at the airport, but it does help if you're rolling with the fly carry-on.

11 Commandments of a Jetrosexual

¡Feliz Día de Acción de Gracias!

Other than Christmas, Easter, and New Years' Day, Colombia and the United States do not share holidays. So for the last three years, I've spent the very American celebration of Thanksgiving Day with other expats eating turkey imported from Peru (which, incidentally, is the word for turkey in Portuguese). We have sweet potato pie and pumpkin cheesecake made by folks who've been scavenging the country for months to get the appropriate ingredients. Thanksgiving with friends isn't new to me - I haven't been home to Florida for the holiday in about seven years, opting for the less expensive and longer Christmas season to head south. And here, we drink wine and laugh and never have much time to get really nostalgic, considering it's a regular workday.

But for me, there's a slight strangeness at the fact that, back in the States, I would have probably never interacted with most of these people. When you live overseas, you form bonds with people in a way that never would have happened back home: my best friends in Washington were other young, upwardly-mobile, semi-bourgeois Black Americans with a sprinkling of three or four white classmates from my graduate program. In Bogotá, my best friends were (are) an actor from Ecuador, an Irish attorney steeped in hip-hop lore and Black American literature, a seventy-year-old Irish-American New Yorker who rode down to Alabama during Freedom Summer and has lived in Colombia for 40 years, a gay ex-Mormon missionary from Seattle who was sent to Colombia twelve years ago and never went back, and a stout Frenchman born in Malta to a British father who (the Frenchman) formerly ran an art gallery in Paris and now runs a Mexican restaurant in Bogotá.

Amazing who you meet on the outside. I'm thankful to the cosmos for these relationships and these experiences, which never would have happened had I never left the comfort of familiar surroundings. And I'm thankful for having been born in the United States, which issues a pretty strong passport that allows me to have these relationships and experiences.

Happy Thanksgiving, to all my fellow expats and to all my peeps stateside.

Prayers to all those affected by yesterday's terrorist attacks in Mumbai and by continued attacks and instability in the Middle East.

"Points of Departure": A Little Inspiration

Just as there are destinations you “must visit before you die,” there are also must-do travel experiences. High on the list: traveling luggage-free.

“Will you be checking bags or just carrying on?”

The next time you respond to that question with a proud “neither” you’ll be embarking on one of the most enjoyable journeys of your life. Leave the house with nothing more than the clothes on your back. Arrive at the airport stopping only to grab a stack of new glossies, newspapers, and a bottle of water. Yes, it’ll feel like you’re doing something unnatural. Because everything is easier. Your fingers aren’t raw from carrying a bag. Your shoulders don’t ache. The security line seems almost tolerable! Sure, you still have to take off your shoes, but provided you didn’t wear lace-up boots (few people should) that should be easy enough to survive. And more than just enjoying the sense of luggage-free travel, you’ll be savoring that most crucial of all pleasure-travel emotions: impulsiveness.

We’ve all looked up at the itinerary board, rested our eyes on our destination and flight number, and then scanned up and down the flight list: Hong Kong, Cape Town, Dubai. What if I had chosen another destination? Is it too late to change my flight? What if I could just change my ticket to…Paris? Savor those urges, and promise yourself that sometime soon, you’ll just drive to the airport as is, and board a plane.

Safe travels.

John F. McDonald
Editorial Director & Publisher
CITY Magazine

Doing the Math

Itau 19:06
Originally uploaded by anselmoportes

If you hate math, traveling overseas might be somewhat of a headache. You knew the balmy reputation of Jamaica before you booked the ticket, yet you packed a couple of sweaters, just in case, when you read the average temperature was 25 degrees. And you had to do a double-take when you noticed the flight departed at 18 o’clock. What the hell is 18 o’clock, anyway?

The United States is pretty much the oddball when it comes to numerical representations—still using weights and measures descended from the British imperial system (pounds, miles, feet and inches), Fahrenheit for temperature, and a twelve-hour am-pm clock instead of the metric system, centigrade temps, and “military time” used all over the rest of the world.

So to keep you on top of the numbers game when traveling abroad, I’ve provided a couple of handy equations that will give you equivalents for the most commonly required measurements. Yes, this involves addition, subtraction, and sometimes, multiplication and division. You might find a calculator to be especially nifty if you haven’t studied any of these operations since the sixth grade.

· Time: The 12 versus 24-hour clock
This one is easy. Most digital clocks outside of the United States (have you ever seen a traditional clock go past 12?) run on a continuous 24-hour time scheme, as does the US military. This means there’s no 6pm. There’s 18:00. The time between 1:00 and 11:59 is automatically considered morning, just as 12:00 until 12:59 is automatically considered afternoon. Once the clock strikes 13:00, the math part comes in. From every hour until 23:59, you’ll have to subtract 12 from the hour slot (18:00 – 12 = 6:00pm). The midnight hour goes from 0:00 to 0:59. Neat, right?

· Temp: Fahrenheit versus Centigrade
A Uruguayan math teacher taught me this trick. If you’re already overseas and the temperature is something like 32 degrees Centigrade, you simply multiply by two, then add 32 for an approximate temperature in Fahrenheit. So, 32 × 2 = 64 + 32 = 96. Don’t be fooled—water don’t freeze at 32°C. For the reverse, maybe 32 degrees Fahrenheit, you have to subtract 32, then divide by two. So, 32 – 32 = 0 ÷ 0 = 0°C. Brrrrr. (For the exact temperature, use 1.8 instead of 2 to multiply or divide).

· Distance: Miles versus Kilometers
Get your calculators out for this one. One mile equals 1.61 kilometers. That means, if the distance between the airport and the nearest Hilton is 100 miles, it is 161 kilometers away. 100 × 1.61 = 161 (I know, I did an easy one). For the reverse, if a distance is 145 kilometers, then you multiply by 0.62 to get the mileage. 145km × 0.62 = 89.9 miles.

· Altitude: Feet versus Meters
This one’s also for the big brains. One foot equals 0.3 meters. Damn. So someone six feet tall is only 1.8 meters (or 180 centimeters). 1 × 0.3 = 1.8. A meter, however, is 3.28 feet. That means if the altitude of a place is 3,000 meters, you’re actually 9,840 feet into the air. 3,000m × 3.28 = 9,840’.

· Weight: Pounds versus Kilos
For the muscleheads, most gyms overseas have weights in both pounds and kilos, and many of your fellow gym rats can give you approximate conversions. But in Brazil, for instance, the gyms feel like they’re far enough away from the United States that they don’t have to use pounds, and you may end up learning the hard way that 20 kilograms absolutely does not equal 20 pounds. The rough conversion is that one pound is almost half a kilo (actually 0.45), while one kilo is a little more than two pounds (2.21 to be exact). Anyone on a structured workout plan, which can be difficult to maintain while on the road, might need exact conversions, as rough approximations can grow rougher rather quickly. A 20-kilo dumbbell equals 44.2 pounds (20kg × 2.21 = 44.2lb), while a 20-pound dumbbell weighs 9 kilos (20lb × 0.45 = 9kg). Gastronomists can also use this equation for buying rice, grains, vegetables and such at super- and flea markets.

Happy measuring.

Extended Routes

In an update to my post about Delta Air Lines' new expanded service in Africa last month, just three days ago, the airline announced weekly and biweekly routes starting next June from Atlanta to Abuja, Nigeria; Luanda, Angola; and Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, all via Ilha do Sal, Cape Verde. The Atlanta-Johannesburg route will become nonstop and ATL-Nairobi will finally take off, as will the JFK-to-Lagos run.

I'm geet! Here's an updated map:

Routes to Our Roots

Yesterday, my favorite US airline, Delta, announced a new weekly flight from their hub in Atlanta to Monrovia, Liberia, with a stop in fabulous Cape Verde. Not sure how much business travel there is between the States and either Cape Verde or Liberia, but I'm definitely hoping this route takes off. Now, Delta hasn't paid me anything to talk about this, but I'm compelled to because I appreciate their expansion efforts into Sub-Saharan Africa since 2007, the only major US airline to do so. Granted, there's eight months of uncertainty between now and the scheduled start date for the flights next summer, and Delta already canceled a planned route from New York to Lagos and postponed another to Nairobi, but I'm sure those are business decisions in the face of economic challenges instead of the airline reneging on its move to offer extensive service between the States and Africa (something not done since the '70s). The company seems to be testing the waters for lucrative destinations on the continent, which means there might be some wishy-washiness, but I'm still excited about the idea of flying nonstop from the cultural capital of Black America to the source of that culture.

Currently, Delta flies daily or several times a week from Atlanta nonstop to Lagos, Nigeria and to Johannesburg, South Africa via Dakar, Senegal. New York-JFK has more offerings, with nonstops to Cairo, Egypt and Accra, Ghana, as well as a flight to Cape Town, South Africa, with a stop in Dakar to allow passengers from the Atlanta flight to board or folks flying in from NYC to switch to the Jo-burg flight. Book here.

In other news, with the approval of a new bilateral aviation agreement between Brazil and the US that has finally opened up direct routes beyond the megacities of Rio and São Paulo, Delta (along with another airline that I shall not name because my experiences with them have been exceedingly horrible each and every time I've been forced onto one of their unpainted, AA-initialed transport tubes from hell) is offering nonstops from Atlanta to Northeast Brazil, historically and culturally the South American equivalent of the American South.

I'm awarding Delta a strong Black Power fist for attempting to connect the folk in the Diaspora via their route network. One-time, Delta!


(Yes, I'm an airline geek.)

Get in a Travelin' Mood

A true Fly Brother or Sister is restless. He or she cannot stay put in one place for very long, lest neurosis set in. But many aspirants are not yet in the habit of stepping out the front door for anything other than work, personal errands, or picking up the Sunday paper.

With Netflix, broadband, and on-demand cable, there's no reason to leave home. For many people, being home is comfortable, as it should be. But for many of those same people, the idea of travel, of experiencing something different, is an actual desire that they may not yet know how to turn into a reality. And it's much easier (and cheaper) to catch an episode of Wild On: Panama than to actually get crunk in Panama (Panamá, that is, not Florida).

Well, I'm here to change all that. You've already ordered your passport, but while you're waiting the six weeks for it to arrive, you can get your minds right and get out of the house!

Honestly, it's as simple as gassing up the car, breaking out the Rand McNally, and hitting the road.

(This may be a little difficult for car-less folk, but we'll make the assumption that most of that group lives in the Northeast and has rail and bus access to other cities.)

Day trips are a great way to ease yourself into more extensive travel. There's much of America to be explored within a couple-hours' drive of wherever you are. And if the mood strikes and the finances are right, weekend road-trips can always be arranged. Though the more the merrier, even solo soldiers can discover their surroundings and catch the adventure bug.

For day trips, fuel is usually the primary cost factor ("costly" being an understatement these days). But to compensate, stop by a grocery store and stock up on fruit and snacks, or maybe pack a cooler with some lunchmeat and a loaf of bread. It sounds collegiate, but college is where you should have learned how to live lean but still live. You can be grand and get the deli-sliced imported turkey from France to go with your Grey Poupon, but it's still more fun and less time consuming than wasting hours waiting for food in a restaurant when you should be enjoying the journey (unless, of course, that particular restaurant is a focus of the trip...some folks drive hours just for some Jenkins' Barbecue in Jacksonville, Florida).

Don't know where to go? Most large cities in coastal states, even if they aren't located on beaches themselves, are within a two hour drive of a beach or waterfront area. National and state parks are always excellent bets for nature lovers (the National Park Foundation offers a great $80 twelve-month pass to all US national parks that require an entrance fee...more incentive to get outdoors). Alternative newspapers like the Village Voice, Washington City Paper, or Creative Loafing are loaded with info about places to go in and more importantly out of the immediate vicinity (usually just the print versions, though). Also, most cities and regions of the country have ready-made Internet guides with insight on where to go, where to eat, where to shop, and where to stay. Use an Internet seach engine to find local city guides and tourism websites, as well as other independent sources. Among some of the day tripping websites that caught our eye:

USAToday offers a great article on "seven fabulous escapes" from New York City.

AllAcrossTexas.com has a section that features day trips from all the major Texas cities like Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

Day trips around the nation's capital, Washington DC, are even outlined on the US Senate website in a comprehensive, if not graphically appealing way.

ATLiens are blessed with both urban and rural excursions nearby, as covered by the Journal-Constitution's day trip page, while Viator serves up info (and prices) for South Floridians needing a break from the 305.

Chicagoans can hit up Metra's "day trips by train" page and not have to shovel their car out until Monday morning.

And when it's not raining in Southern California (they tell me never), check out Travels.com's LA page.

In fact, Viator and Travels.com have the most comprehensive listing of interesting excursions that I've found, covering almost the entire US.

Lastly, if you still need advice on where to go for a day or quick weekend escape, ask around. Surely your friends, neighbors, co-workers, or even strangers might have an idea of something, anything to do that doesn't involve a remote control.

Generation Fly - For Fly Students

LUFTHANSA
Originally uploaded by Payuta Louro

A few months ago, über-chic German airline Lufthansa unveiled its plucky, student-oriented travel website, Generation Fly, which offers special student (and faculty) fares out of New York and other gateways on their expansive global route system. Now, they've upped the ante and are offering the chance to meet and interact with fellow young and nubile collegiate travelers via their slick new social networking site, GenFly Lounge. To keep random dirty old men from defiling the co-eds, an email address with the suffix .edu is required to become a member. Any of my university-affiliated readers willing to join and review the site? The panoramic photos on the homepage make me want to dive through the computer screen. Why didn't these bastids have this thing up and running back when I was in school?

"Why Should White Guys Have All The Fun?"

According to the short bio in the back of his best-selling "self-help" tome, The Four-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Tim Ferriss "speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a world-record holder in tango, a national champion in Chinese kickboxing, and an actor on a hit television series in Hong Kong." Dude is my age. Damn.

Fundamentally, Ferriss is all about "lifestyle design," which includes personal outsourcing, information management, and mini-retirements that maximize personal free time (to be filled with things you want to do, not have to do). On his blog this week, Ferriss interviews one of his own inspirations, Rolf Potts, writer and professional vagabond who just released his second book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There, "a philosophical book about seeing time as wealth and using travel to actualize that wealth." Now, many folks might not be all that into philosophy, but picking up and traveling, leaving our comfort zones, experiencing the unfamiliar all require a philosophic leap of faith that both Ferriss and Potts try to encourage through their books and websites.

Granted, looking at them - young, Abercrombie-esque, "affluent" white guys - a person of color with a possible interest in international travel might not exactly see themselves reflected in the life experiences of these guys. In fact, the dearth of recorded, comparable experiences by colored folks is the reason for this blog. But these two gentlemen have inspired me to take their advice, borrow some of their techniques, and use their knowledge and experience, plus the seemingly-inexhaustable positive energy reflected in their writing, in planning my life journey.

I've certainly encountered racism in my travels and would never assume that the same open arms extended to Nordic-looking Tim Ferriss by the TV producers in Hong Kong would be extended to Caribbean-looking me. But that doesn't mean I couldn't get on a show in Germany. It doesn't mean I couldn't write my own show and have it produced in Venezuela (or Hong Kong, for that matter). I also know that there are streets I can walk down in Latin America and not get a second look as an easy tourist target, while Tim Ferriss wouldn't last ten seconds without being swarmed by screaming multitudes hawking native trinkets, blood emeralds, overpriced designer knock-offs, or underaged girls. But it's not about comparing myself to these guys with an attitude of disdain or jealousy. On the contrary; right now, I'm trying to do what they're doing - traveling and writing professionally - and damn if I'm not going to learn a thing or two from these intrepid lads. As deceased black muti-billionaire Reginald Lewis once asked, "why should white guys have all the fun?"

There's plenty of fun to go around.

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Two more short but excellent interviews with Rolf Potts about his new book and the art of long-term travel can be found on World Hum and Vagabondish.

What I Appreciate About the USA

When I left the states for South America in 2005, I was definitely not a patriotic person. I mean, 200 years of slavery, a hundred years of legal segregation, and another forty of trigger-happy police incursions and a societal fear of black men do not exactly compel me to sing "God Bless America." Still, living abroad has instilled in me what I'd call a passive sense of nationalism, manifested as a nostalgia for certain uniquely American cultural attributes that can't be found anywhere else. The United States is absolutely not "the best country in the world." No place is. But the US definitely has a lot of cool stuff going for it. This is my list of ten things I appreciate about the States:

10) Magazines. I mean, damn, one whole wall at Barnes & Noble (or Books-A-Million) is dedicated to the glossy, shiny alternate universe of magazines. There's one for every geek boner you could imagine, from crocheting to dirt biking to porn. And besides the staples of every black household (Ebony, Essence, and the ubiquitous Jet), I get to see gorgeous people of color smiling back at me from the covers of Vanity Fair and Men's Health and Time as if we've actually overcome!

9) Healthy Foods. Here in Colombia, a small, 10-slice pack of turkey breast costs $6. At Winn-Dixie, a pound of sliced turkey breast costs $4. Tropical and temperate fruits. Peanut butter. Protein bars and granola bars and low-carb bars and cereal bars. Yeah, lots of it might be processed and/or preserved, but dammit...we grow tall and big and strong in the USA!

8) Concerts. Mavis Staples. Kid Sister. Seu Jorge. Bebel Gilberto. Afrika Bambaataa. Julieta Vanegas. Dave Hollister. Santogold. Crosby, Stills & Nash. Los Lonely Boys. Black Dice. Naomi Shelton & the Gospel Queens. All free this summer in New York. That's just one venue in one city for one season.

7) American Cinema. Citizen Kane. Gone With the Wind. Imitation of Life. All About Eve. Blazing Saddles. Young Frankenstein. The Wiz. Jo-Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling. Jungle Fever. New Jack City. Juice. Lean On Me. Krush Groove. Love Jones. Eve's Bayou. I Like It Like That. Casino. Heat. The Shawshank Redemption. American Beauty. Fargo. Requiem for a Dream. Any Given Sunday. A Christmas Story. The Hours. Bring It On (just playin'). And absolutely everything in between. (I couldn't even begin to wrap my mind around a "comprehensive" list.)

6) Landscapes. The amber waves of grain on the Great Plains. Purple mountain majesties of the Rockies. The rocky cliffs of California. The infinite flatness of the Everglades. Volcanoes and pine forests and glaciers and beaches with black and white and beige and coral sands. America is beautiful.

5) Black American and Southern culture. Of course, these often overlap. Grits and eggs and grits and bacon and grits and fish and grits and corned beef hash and grits and fried bologna and cornbread and collard greens and barbecue and boiled crabs (with potatoes and corn and Roger Wood sausages) and, yes, chitlins and music at parties and games of spades and tonk (or "tunk") and drawls and twangs and shit-talkin and rankin' on somebody's mama til somebody gets mad and breakin out movie lines like "You ain't got-ta lie, Craig!" and breakin out old dances like the Reebok and the Cabbage Patch and the Running Man and the Roger Rabbit (and the Squirrel and the Tawlet Bowl and the Woop and the Tootsie Roll) and HBCU football games and step shows and dropped r's (pahk the cah, nah!) and words like chuch and mm-hmm and well! and my-my-my and Jesus Lawd and the odd-count grunt that generations of black women have perfected when receiving bad/interesting/surprising news: mmm. Mmm-mmm-mmm. Mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm. Thems my peoples.

4) Diversity. There is no other country on Earth with more than two truly international cities. There's always been the gateways - New York, LA, Miami, San Fran. The capital - Washington. The classics - Philly and Boston. The magnet - Chicago. But now, even bastions of regionalized Americana are noticeably microcosmic - Atlanta, Seattle, Dallas, Houston. On any given weekend, you can leave your Mandarin Chinese class to fill-up on some pad Thai before hitting a salsa spot and then an afterparty with a Brazilian DJ. Or you could just go straight to Magic City right after that pad Thai.

3) Comparative success of Black Americans. Nowhere else in the hemisphere do the descendants of African slaves have as many opportunities to develop socioeconomically than in the US, in spite of foolishness from both mainstream society (of which we're less than 14% of the population) and amongst ourselves. Black immigrants from the Caribbean might do well in Canada, but not too many of them do that well back in their home countries. Colombia's cool and I love Brazil, but we still got a long way to go in those places, too, which is disheartening since half of Brazil's 200 million people are of African descent, as well as 40% of Colombia's. And there are no Latin American Obamas, Oprahs, Colins, Condis, Kenneth Chenaults, or Richard Parsonses. In many places, like where I live, they still Driving Miss Daisy.

2) Freedom of speech and political discourse. "BUCK FUSH!" There, I said it.
Try saying "Puck Futin," "Chuck Favez," "Ruck Ufibe," or "Cuck Fastro" in their respective countries, and thas yo ass.

1) English. I love languages, especially those of the Romance variety (Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian son mis favoritos). Still, much useful information about the world in which we live is only available in the home language of the country that produces that information, and in English. I haven't seen any Spanish-language publication or broadcast news source that gives as complete coverage to global issues as the Economist. If I get lost at the airport in Dapango, Togo, I guarantee you somebody's gon speak a lil English. It's the lingua franca of the new millenium, y'all, and I'm glad I got to learn it growing up so I wouldn't have to be bothered with learning its ridiculous spelling and pronunciation system as an adult.

What do my fellow expats appreciate about the States?

(Very specific honorable mentions: Marshalls, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and driving on a freeway at dusk with some hot lounge or chill house setting the tempo)

Getting Your Walking Papers

By age thirty, most everyone should have a passport. If you are over thirty and don't have one, I won't waste any time criticizing (triflin...). I'll just say that there's no better time than now to start the process, and I've tried to make the process a little easier by sifting through the US State Department's travel site - travel.state.gov - for information on obtaining a US passport. I'll also say that the folks thinking they can pop down to Mexico or the Bahamas with their driver's licenses these days are in for a rude awakening at the border.

The State Department operates several passport agencies, located in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York, Norwalk (CT), Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington (click the city name for info on that particular agency). Lastly, passport applications can be picked up and submitted at almost all US Post Offices.

You can also download and print a first-time passport application: here.

The total cost (in United States Dollars) for a first-time passport is $100 for anyone aged 16 and over and $85 for anyone under 16. The charge is broken down into the passport fee ($75 for 16 and over/$60 for under 16) and the execution fee ($25 for both). If you apply for your passport directly through the State Department at a passport agency, the total cost may be made in one payment and in several methods. If applying through the post office, the application fee must be made payable to the US Department of State, while the execution fee must be made payable to the US Postal Service (check or money order only).

Additional requirements include a copy of your birth certificate as proof of United States citizenship and a state- or federal government-issued photo ID for proof of identity, along with two 2x2-inch passport photos that can be taken at any FedEx-Kinko's or certain stores and pharmacies like Walgreens, CVS, or Wal-Mart. A list of other acceptable documents and forms of ID can be found here.

Passports can take up to 6 weeks to arrive, but can be expedited by visiting a passport agency, or requesting rush service with the application at the post office, for an additional $60. More information on an expedited passport can be found here.

You can also check on the status of your passport application here.

Passports for adults are usually valid for 10 years. Passports for children are valid for less time and require a different application procedure (check here).

Most foreign governments require that a US passport be valid for at least another six months after the conclusion of the trip. An adult renewal passport costs $75, and more information can be found here.

For international ballers who are running out of room in their still-valid passports, extra pages can be ordered, or you can get a newer, thicker passport here.

September 11 has, of course, caused a tightening in travel documentation requirements, hence the establishment of the WHTI - Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. Essentially, all the formerly passport-free areas for road trips and cruises - Canada, Mexico, and much of the Caribbean - will by 2009 require either a passport; a newfangled device called a passport card, good for border crossings by land or sea; or other "WHTI-compliant document." The cards cost $45 for a first-time adult applicant, $35 for a first-time child applicant, and $20 for current valid passport holders. All air travel to these regions will continue to require a traditional passport book.

Any other information you might want, need, or forgot to ask...check the website, because, hell, the State Department ain't payin' a brother.

Why I Travel

Blame it on the preacher’s wife. I had to have been ten or eleven when Mrs. Estelle McKissick, wife of Rev. Rudolph W. McKissick of Bethel Baptist Institutional (Missionary Rock of Zion Sermon on the Mount in Christ) Church (Inc.) in my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, gave me a dangerous little book for Christmas titled Free Stuff for Kids. I can’t even remember most of the trinkets and doo-dads you could order in the mail because my attention was always and forever caught-up in the section that had the addresses of the travel bureaus of all fifty states, a bunch of cities, and a whole slew of countries. In exchange for a 19-cent postcard, I got bushels of pamphlets, brochures, and travel posters—among the more memorable materials, a thick, catalogue-sized guide to Austria; an amazingly ornate, oversized, circus-style souvenir booklet from Singapore; and an envelope royally sealed with red wax from the principality of Monaco—to the point of having my mother lug home an old file cabinet from school to house my nascent travel repository. This was waaaaay before the Internet age and country-specific websites. I became the biggest geography nerd in three counties (went to the State Geography Bee in seventh grade to prove it).

Then, one Saturday at the Regency Square Mall, I ran across a table touting high school foreign exchange programs through a non-profit organization called Youth For Understanding. I asked my folks, both high school teachers at the time, about hosting an exchange student and they balked, saying they wouldn’t have had the time to really focus the requisite energy and attention on a foreign guest (which in hindsight, I think they had a point). But that didn’t mean that I couldn’t go! So, during my eleventh grade year, I saved up money from my telephone customer service job to pay for most of the $2,000 program fee for a summer in fabulous Sweden! Why Sweden? For starters, it, along with Finland, was the cheapest country option that didn’t require some prior knowledge of a foreign language. And I deduced that there were marginally more black people in Sweden than in Finland (thank World Book Encyclopedia for that one). So, I spent the summer between my junior and senior years of high school swatting at Nordic mosquitoes, eating reindeer, and watching the sun dip under the horizon for all of an hour in the far, far, far north of Sweden. Yes, that’s me (many, many moons ago) standing next to a sign for the Arctic Circle. I was sixteen, and I haven’t been able to sit my behind still since.

Writer Paul Theroux says that “travel [is] flight and pursuit in equal parts.” For me, that exchange trip was an escape from the mundane nerdiness of my known existence and, yes, social rejection from my classmates at the decidedly hood high school I attended. But it was also the start of my as-of-yet unquenched desire to know people, places, values, emotions, experiences different from those which I am familiar. To see the sun dip below the horizon for only an hour each night, eat reindeer, and take a picture at the Arctic Circle. To straddle the Equator on its hot, dusty run through Ecuador. To parasail over a cow pasture outside of Medellín and ice skate on a Caribbean mountain top outside of Caracas. To see flying fish leap out of the water on a 24-hour ferry ride amongst the islands of Cape Verde, where at least fifty people vomited on the floor during the trip and one crippled old man slipped and fell in it. To have intense, week-long romances in Cuba. To have intense, two-day romances in Rio only to find out my date was a prostitute and to end up getting the price reduced by half and paying for it and realizing, damn…that was some good sex. To have a place to stay on every continent. To see myself in the faces of summer campers in Santo Domingo, New Years revelers in Havana, and Carnavaleiros in Salvador da Bahia. To catch an OutKast video at a flea market in Paris or at a bar in Bogotá. To see and smell and feel and taste the world; good, bad, and indifferent. To know that, by the time I see every place I haven’t been, it’ll be time to revisit the places I haven’t been to in years. To see the possibility of an airport departure board and, a short while later, to be propelled through the sky towards another delicious uncertainty. To fucking live, and to be forever beholden to that pursuit of life.

That is why I travel.

Photo "Departures" by carovald.

Why Fly Brother?

Because people of color - particularly black Americans - are traveling overseas for work, fun, or education more than ever before, but most travel-related magazine, newspaper, and Internet articles speak from a voice and perspective that I just can't relate to.

Because people want culturally-resonant information that offers them insight into the ins-and-outs of traveling under the radar in Havana, but conspicuously in Hong Kong. And people want to know what being black means outside of the US.

Because I don't care bout no damn top ten Irish pubs in New York, and I don't personally think that Copenhagen has a lock on the most attractive people in Europe. I wanna know about the top ten salsa clubs in LA and see all the shades, from coal to cream, that grace the hotties in Paris.

Because I grew up with Southern black marching bands and HBCU homecomings and found the same energy, spirit, rhythm, and soul at a Vai-Vai samba school rehearsal in São Paulo.

Because we ought to see more of the world, and we ought to encourage and help our mamas, sisters, granddaddies, frat brothers, favorite cousins, play cousins, 'cross-the-street neighbors, college classmates, and Shaunda's lil brother who just turned fifteen to do the same.

Because James Weldon did it. And Josephine. And Baldwin. And Du Bois. And Langston. And Zora. And Malcolm. And Barack.

Because the world ought to know more about us than Flava Flav and Diddy.

Because I don't experience the world via a culturally "neutral," "color-blind," "American" matrix. I live life in full color, just like I travel.

Welcome to Fly Brother.