AlmostFearless.com

Belize If You Please

Christine — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:01:59 +0000

Today, I’m flying to Belize courtesy of Belize Tourism. I’ll be joining four other bloggers for a six day Fam Trip, where they’ve arranged a packed itinerary of jungle tours, cave tubing, zip line canopy tours, snorkeling, parasailing, Mayan ruins and more. Oh and they’re putting up us in some lovely hotels and hosting all the meals at some great restaurants. Sounds pretty good, no?

This is the first time I’ve traveled on someone else’s dime (excluding all the business travel I did in my corporate days). The trip comes at an interesting time for me. First, because I’ll be 24 weeks pregnant and while I feel great, it has been interesting to see people’s reactions when I tell them that I’ll be spending a week in Belize. Second, it seems like October and November 2009 have been deemed “The Battle of Travel Writing Ethics” online. There’s been a lot of noise lately about a certain NY Times writer who got fired for taking a comped trip (NY Times has a strict code of ethics that forbids their writer’s from taking freebies– past or present). There has been even more talk on Twitter about whether it’s possible to be objective when traveling for free. It’ll be interesting to experience it for myself and see how my coverage differs from any of my other trips (if I start listing “must sees”, describe my hotel location as “nestled” or use the expression “veritable” anything, you have permission to revoke my blogging license).

While I haven’t been specifically asked or required to write about the trip, I will be writing about it this week, posting pictures or whatever else seems interesting and/or worthwhile. I’ll also be hanging out with these fine folks:

Kara Williams, The Vacation Gals

Kerrin Feldman, Mykugelhopf

Melanie Waldman, Travels With Two

Gennaro Salamone, Enduring Wanderlust

What do you want to see?

We’ll be starting in Placencia and then heading north to San Pedro (with stops in between). If you have any questions about Belize, let me know. This week I’ll have the ears of folks who are just dying to telling you more about this Central American nation on the Caribbean sea.

You can also follow the tweets of all the bloggers on Twitter with hashtag #belizetrip.

Pic by: WisDoc

Get your free copy of Twitter for Travelers. It's a 49 page ebook filled with tips and tricks on using Twitter for your travels. Right now, it's available only for Almostfearless.com subscribers. (That's you.) Thanks!

Free Book Friday: Imagine - A Vagabond Story

Christine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:13:00 +0000

When Grant Lingel finds out in his fifth year of college that he wouldn’t be graduating that winter because of some non-transferable credits, he decides to avoid the prospect of finishing school alone by heading to Mexico instead. It’s with this impetus that the travelogue Imagine - A Vagabond Story begins, which unbeknownst to our 23 year old narrator, will be the driving force behind his travels. He flys to Mexico because his friend lives there. He later travels to Belize and Guatemala because some kids are going. He returns to Mexico City to visit his crush. He decides to skip across the Atlantic to Barcelona to tag along on someone else’s adventure. He seems unable to be alone, defining himself completely by the company he keeps. Without realizing it, Grant has written a story about the great nothing of one’s early 20s– the booze, the casual drug use, the hormone-driven sex, the waiting. If he had written this when he was 10 years older, there would be some humor in the retelling. Instead we get an unflinching view of the searcher– the boy before he finds his cause, the hero without courage, the kid trying everything because he’s too scared not too.

To be clear, this is not a well written book. In fact, there are writing and story telling errors that quickly become distracting to the reader. He overwrites (”it was a rather smooth flight”). He uses hyperbole to describe common images (”It was a turquoise so vivid and so clear, as if not a single toe had ever plunged into the water”.) He is consistently vague in his descriptions (”The scenery was picturesque”). He writes cliches on top of cliches (”The afternoon sun was beating down, and it was again hot as hell.”) There are no well defined characters in this book except Grant, and I don’t really get a sense of what makes him tick. There is no story arc, no opposing force, no character development. I could go on, but that’s not why I wrote this review. It’s an amateur book written by an extremely earnest young writer who obviously put a lot of effort into polishing his prose. Despite all it’s short-comings, this book does have an audience.

Full disclosure: I like to read travel non-fiction that I can relate to and that matches my stage of life. As a married 32-year old, full time traveler expecting my first child, I couldn’t be farther away from where Grant was in 2006. But that’s not to say this isn’t the perfect book for someone else. I have traveled in hostels, and specifically to all of the areas he mentions in his book. While he misses the opportunity to offer keen observations, he does accurately portray a style of travel. In fact, it’s probably the way many kids travel around Central America. Hanging out in hostels, partying every night, vaguely remembering where they’ve been and only exploring between hangovers and benders. It’s a real part of travel and if you want to know what it would be like to just hang out on the gringo trail, this book does a good job at describing it.

I also have to give Grant a lot of credit for his approach to travel. While most people his age would save up or borrow money from Mom and Dad, he did it literally with a one way ticket and $300 in pocket. He got a job working at the resorts. He learned a lot of Spanish. He traveled largely without a plan. And by the second half of the story the writing improves as he gets out of his own way and starts showing more than telling.

Ultimately, I’d recommend this book for the would-be backpacker of a younger mindset. It’s a little slice of voyeurism into the lifestyle without all that bothersome plot and character development.

Want a Free Copy?

Leave a comment below and tell me your best drunk story. Don’t have one? Well it’s Friday night. Go get a bottle and report back tomorrow. I’ll choose the winner on next week’s Free Book Friday.

Announcing Last Week’s Winner of Crush It!

Shannon OD who wrote, “I found Gary about a month ago and his message is just so passionate! I love his enthusiasm and follow him closely to keep me motivated as I try to get my site off the ground! I need more of Gary in my life!” Ok Shannon, you’ve got it.

This Place Exists: The Amazing Wild Buffalo in the Yukon

Christine — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:06:18 +0000

Driving through Canada to Alaska was a shock for me. I had heard that it was amazing, that the natural beauty would knock you out, but you simply can’t do the 365 degree views justice in a little picture. My favorite part was the wildlife, which becomes more frequent and bold the further north you get. We ran into a herd of buffalo and I got some footage as we drove by. There were maybe 60 of these massive animals along a half mile stretch, plus the loners we’d run into randomly over the week we camped out. Sometimes I could reach out and touch them. I didn’t, because I like my fingers. My husband was a little more brave.

If you can’t see this video, get it here.

Twitter for Travelers Ebook

Christine — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:01:35 +0000

I’m very pleased to announce that my new ebook Twitter for Travelers is available for download. There’s only one catch: you have to be a subscriber to this site. If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or via an email subscription the link to the ebook is on the bottom of this post. For the rest of you, go, subscribe! It’ll totally be worth it.

About the Ebook

As a traveler, my tweets are often aligned with where I’m going next, where I should go, or how I’m getting there. However it wasn’t until I put out a tweet last fall about taking a bus from Cancun, Mexico to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala that I suddenly got it. Within moments, six other travelers who had taken a similar route were advising me. They looked up schedules and helped me decipher the bus terminal codes. The directed me to a tiny website that specialized in the exact bus route I would need to take. The owner of that site contacted me. In the end I got the answer I needed. What had taken me hours of research online was completed in less than 20 minutes on Twitter. I knew this was a new way to travel.

This ebook is really just a compilation of every bookmark, trick, tip and solution I’ve ever found, used or just sounded cool to me—related to travel. I certainly don’t expect anyone would try to use everything in this book all at once. That’s not how I use Twitter. Instead, read through; pick out those things that sound the most useful. Hopefully I’ve included things that even the most experienced Twitterati might not have seen before. For those just starting out, I’ve included an extended appendix section with step by step instructions on everything from setting up your first Twitter account to using your phone to tweet to a cheat sheet for all those short cuts and abbreviations.

This ebook is for travelers, regardless of your destination. I have included tips for everyone, including:

• Business Traveler (check out the expense reporting and hotel sections)
• Backpacker (lots of resources to make things even cheaper)
• High Tech Travelers (yes, you can water your plants with a tweet)
• Two Week Vacationer (super easy to find those deals)
• The Expat (connect with folks where you are)
• And Everyone Else (now you can talk directly to travel experts)

Twitter for Travelers, 49 pages. Adobe PDF (5 mb)

So go, subscribe and get your free copy!

If you use an RSS reader like Bloglines or Google reader, you can subscribe, or if you prefer you can sign up for email updates. The link to the ebook will be on the bottom of the latest post (or email). If you have problems getting it, send me a tweet or email.

Free Book Friday: Crush It!

Christine — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:56:15 +0000

I can just picture Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crush It! and member of the online elite, sitting around trying to think of a synonym for working really hard. Knock it out of the park! No, not quite. Kick ass! No, too vulgar. Show me what your mama gave ya! Wait, what was I doing? I know! Crush it!

Then he ran a marathon, did his taxes and gave his wife a pedicure.

This book is like liquid motivation. It’s small, quick to read and when you’re done you might finding yourself starting an online business, or getting super serious about the one you already have. The best part? It’s all good advice.

Have passion for what you do
Build a personal brand
Use the internet
Great content matters
Be yourself
Build a community

But the number one thing Gary preaches over and over again: Work hard. Hustle. Be your brand.

If you’ve been thinking about building an online business, this book is definitely for you. Or if you need a little motivation boost, a quick read of this book will have your head on straight in no time.

However, if you’re already working your butt off and love what you do, you probably don’t need this book. Gary’s enthusiasm might come across like a panting puppy that won’t stop orbiting around the room, barking out random catch phrases. If you’re looking for tips on how to take it to the next level, it might not be specific enough. If you’re already using Facebook and Twitter, creating the best content you can, using email lists to contact your community and generally promoting the heck out of yourself, then this book has nothing new (not really anyway).

Is that a bad thing? No. It’s the perfect book to get you off your butt. That’s completely enough. Consumer warning: when you’re done you might want to insert [crush it!] into way too many of your conversations. And your exclamation usage might go up! Just sayin’.

Want a free copy?

Leave a comment below and tell me why you need this book. I’ll announce the winner next week (11/06/09), when we have our next Free Book Friday.

The Great American Road Trip: Digital Nomad Style

Christine — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 03:24:47 +0000

In 2000, I packed up everything, said my goodbyes and drove cross country with my then boyfriend (now husband). We made the trip from Massachusetts to Seattle in early December, so we decided to take the southern route, and still got caught in an ice storm that stranded us in Tennessee for three days. There was a guy in our Motel Six lobby wearing overalls, buckled on one shoulder, no shirt and no shoes. He was muddied up like he just came back from an afternoon wrestling pigs. It was my first time in the south. It was awesome.

Driving across the US is one of those epic trips that everyone has to take at least once. This summer we decided to make that twice. This time we upped the ante a bit and made the drive from Massachusetts to Seattle, then north through British Columbia, Canada, all the way up and across to Alaska.

In nine years, a lot has changed.

Now we’re traveling nomads, working as we go. In 2000, I didn’t have a laptop, never mind a wireless card. Back then a trip like ours meant quitting your job and having a fat savings account. This time we worked and traveled for over two months, taking client calls outside of Yellowstone, checking email in the Yukon.

The New American Road Trip:

Cell phone coverage hasn’t surpassed Wifi availability. Even in the most remote areas, where my cell phone had lost coverage days earlier, we were still able to find free wifi.

Camping and RVing is still better than budget motels. At $25-$40/night it’s hard to beat some of these luxury campgrounds that offer cabins, game rooms, swimming pools, and free golf carts to drive around their property. We visited over 20 of them and the internet was always free.

Throw out your maps. We spent a good amount of our pre-trip time planning our stops because we were concerned about always having access to wifi. It was never an issue. There were plenty of options, signs from the highways and sometimes even ‘free internet’ flashing in neon.

We’re not alone. You’d be surprised how many travelers stick stateside to enjoy the vast empty spaces. There will always be the weekender, but on this trip we found many more long term travelers.

It’s still amazing. If you ever get the chance to take a long road trip, take it! It’s the only way to truly understand the size and magnitude of North America. Driving through BC, the Canadian Rockies and the Yukon goes down as one of my top five travel experiences… ever.

The barrier to becoming a digital nomad is shrinking everyday.

pic: wolfgang staudt

Online Detective Work: A Trick Anyone Can Use

Christine — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:53:42 +0000

How often have you been looking for a travel deal, but you’ve been unsure at how trustworthy the site is? Is it some fly by night or one of the most popular destinations online? What if there was an easy way to tell? There is a way, but mostly just bloggers and tech folks use it. I love it so much though, I’m sharing it with you, even if that means you can now see my score (eek!).

No More Trying to Guess

Last spring, I had a PR person email me about a story that seemed too good to be true. Her client had 12 million copies of their electronic travel guides downloaded that year. And they expected a huge jump in 2010. Were online travel guides becoming so popular that some titles were beating out their print counterparts? I checked out the site, a company that was new to me and the first thing I did was look at their Alexa and Compete rankings on my toolbar.

Instantly, I knew the answer.

What the Toolbar Tells You

Most of the bloggers I know already have this installed. It’s a little toolbar that gives you the website ratings of the site you’re visiting, on the right hand bottom corner of your screen. Alexa ratings go up with #1 being the best. The higher the number the lower your traffic. Compete gives you the number of people who visit per month (higher is better) and a ranking (same as Alexa). Between these two numbers, it’s quickly tell approximately how popular a site is.

So when I visited the site, which supposedly had 12 million downloads but an Alexa and Compete ranking higher than my blog (higher ranking = lower traffic), I was able to do that math pretty quickly. I know I don’t get 1 million people to my site per month. Instead of a 250,000 ranking they should of had something under 25,000. This instantly raised a red flag for me, and I was able to ask the right questions before going further.

Installing the Toolbar

If you know me personally, I’ve probably already made you install it. My husband uses it. I tried to get my mom to install it last year. I’m generally not a big user of blogging tools that come out, but this one is truly so simple. You go to Alexa and Compete and download the toolbar. That’s it.

How to Use It

I’ll give you an example from this morning. I got an email from Roofswap.com about a new study they did on the most popular locations. Interesting. Maybe there’s an article in there or at least I could pass on the URL to folks looking to do the whole home exchange vacation thing. So I go to their site and immediately I look at my little toolbar on the bottom right hand side. This is what I see:

The first number is the Alexa rank. It’s over a million, which might be fine for a blog, but for a commercial site, tells me right away that the traffic is either extremely low or they are very new. The second area “People Count” is from Compete and they have no numbers for this site. That can mean they are too small to be picked up by Compete or again, they are new.

If I want more detail (and I did), I can just right click on the Alexa score and look at the Traffic tab for this site. This is what I see:

1. The rank is over 1 million

2. There is only one website linking in.

3. There is no data for beyond three months, meaning the site is very new.

Would all this make me ignore a potential site? Maybe not. But I’ll definitely look a little harder at what they are claiming. Would a study from the biggest home exchange website be worth more? Absolutely! They might have millions of users and that data can be very useful. For a brand new site with a trickle of traffic, I’m not sure where they get their data, but that’s the first question I’d ask.

What’s a Good Ranking?

At first the numbers might not mean much, I mean, who cares if you’re 100,000 or 1,000,000? Here are some popular sites, that might give you an idea of the relative weight.

Google

Kayak

Lonely Planet

World Hum

Brave New Traveler

Is it Accurate?

Nope. You can see even from the examples above that there big disagreements between Alexa and Compete. For example World Hum and Brave New Traveler both rank at about 50,000 for Alexa. But for Compete World Hum is much higher at 15,000 and Brave New Traveler is at 50,000. Why the difference? Both Alexa and Compete only count visits if you have the toolbar installed. This can skew the numbers wildly. But in general, if you have a site at 1 million, there isn’t much chance that they are actually a site as big as World Hum. (Note: tech sites tend to skew higher traffic, so if the subject is anything techie, adjust your expectations).

Other Tools

I asked Chris Brogan about this when last spring when I had that suspicious press release. He uses:

Website Grader - http://www.websitegrader.com
Technorati - http://www.technorati.com
Compete - http://www.compete.com

I’m sure if you asked 100 different bloggers, there would be 100 different tools. I like these because I don’t have to leave Firefox to see the scores. If you’ve got a better tool, feel free to post it in the comments.

Download:

3,043 Miles in 28 Photos

Christine — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:03:50 +0000

I’ve been so busy writing about how to travel, there haven’t had any posts recently about my travels. Over the past few months we’ve been camping, driving and working our way across the US, through British Columbia, into the Yukon and finally Alaska. This post covers the US leg of the trip from Northampton, MA to Port Angeles, WA. My favorite places were driving through North Dakota and Montana and later the islands off of Washington state. I won’t go into too much detail about the road trip, it’s an easy one to recreate, but here’s a little peek at our life on the road.

Take a Breath, This is Happening: Day 30 of 30w30d

Christine — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 04:05:30 +0000

This post is part of 30 Ways in 30 days to Redesign Your Life and Travel the World. This series seeks to give you the practical, real world steps you need to take to get from wherever you are, to exactly where you want to be– traveling the world and living the lifestyle you want.

Everything is arranged. You’re ready to go. After so much planning, saving, compromise, research, and imaging what will be, it’s finally here. The big fat leap.

It’ll never be the same as the first time. You’ll be giddy. You’ll get sick from the change in food and schedule. You’ll be frustrated and tired. You’ll feel like you’re floating above yourself, aware of the moment. You’ll be overwhelmed and amazed. You’ll be intimidated by customs you don’t know and navigating a language you don’t speak.

You’ll be freaking traveling the world. Holy crap.

Later, you might look back at this as best time of your life. But as you travel, you’ll learn what most travelers conclude: the experience is almost as much about your attitude as where you are. You’ll only change as much as you let yourself. Those things back home that made you a little shy or easily frustrated or quick to make friends– you packed those with you too.

There’s a lot of advice out there about how best to travel or how to blend in or get the most from each day. However I’m a strong believer that there is no best way to travel. My best advice is to try everything, until you don’t want to. Push yourself, but don’t make it torture. Have fun. Laugh. Be yourself.

If you don’t love it, what’s the point?

If that means changing plans, skipping destinations, splurging on a bed with high-thread-count sheets from time to time– don’t worry that you’re not doing it right. Sure there are travelers who live on $4 a day or spend six months learning a language spoken only by 200 people. There are travelers who have seen more or are better read or have a distinct ability to make everything they’ve done sound way more cool. But are they better travelers? I don’t buy it. We’re all out there. Any distinctions are the constructs of travelers trying to elevate themselves above the rabble. We’re all tourists. Even the most experienced traveler is just another clumsy foreigner in a new land.

The only thing you have to worry about right now is enjoying it.

Sometimes that will be hard. Traveling can be exhausting. Getting lost annoying. Strange food disgusting. But if you can laugh it off and chalk it up as part of the big adventure, you can officially call yourself a traveler.

Don’t forget to send me a postcard.

Author’s Note: This concludes the 30 Days series. If you have a question or problem that wasn’t addressed by the series, I still want to hear about it. Feel free to leave a comment or email me directly at christine.gilbert@gmail.com. In the next few weeks I’ll be putting this series into an ebook, along with some bonus materials and answers to any other questions you may have. (And if I don’t have the answer, I’m very good at connecting people with those who do). I hope this series was helpful! And I’m not joking about those postcards.

pic: untitled blue

Getting a Job When You Return: Day 29 of 30w30d

Christine — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:58:38 +0000

For most travelers intending to return to the workforce, it won’t be possible to secure future employment before you leave. However, that’s not to say you should do nothing. If you’re planning on rejoining the 9-5 there are some things you can do now, to make your job search easier when you return.

Get personal with your coworkers. If you don’t already, try to get as many of your coworker’s personal emails (rather than just their work email). The benefit is that in a year or two when you return from traveling, those coworkers may have moved on too and you can still contact them. Keeping in touch with former coworkers is a great way to scope out potential jobs in your industry, especially as they move to new companies.

Update your resume now. Chances are the last time you updated your resume was when you got your current job. Now is the time to get it absolutely up-to-date. In a year from now it’ll be tough (if not impossible) to remember all of the details of your current projects. If you typically go after several types of jobs and tweak your resume to fit for each one, you might want to create detailed notes so you can do that when you return or write a few versions before you go. For instance you may go for a senior staff position if the pay is right, but you’d really like to be a the management level. You’ll need versions of your resume that show off your staff skills as well as your management skills.

Create or update your profile on the job boards. Should you have an active Monster account while you’re away? Absolutely. If you work in a field or at a level where headhunters will contact you, it’s a good way to have a base of contacts for when you return. If they email you, it’s okay to say, “Hey, I’m not looking now, but check in with me again in X months.” (If the emails are too much, you can set up a new gmail account for your job search and leave the emails unread until you return).

Create or update your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a great tool for keeping in touch with everyone you know on the job front. It’s particularly useful for job search networking, because you can see where former coworkers are working just by checking their profile. Go ahead and connect LinkedIn with your work email before you leave, so that you can link to those people who are currently using the site. Some people get recommendations, but I think this can wait until you return and it’ll be a way to let people know you’re currently looking for work.

Get recommendations and the little details now. Depending on your career level, a written recommendation may help you get your next job. Or they may want to speak directly with those people you’ve worked with before. Most people remember to get recommendations before they leave, but also email yourself the numbers of your HR department, your employer’s address, the general phone line at your company, and your references’ phone numbers (and personal emails in case they change jobs). It may seem obvious now, but in a year you may have completely forgotten some of the routine details you take for granted now.

Say goodbye with grace and humility. I’ve known a few people who have quit dramatically, and believe me, your coworkers will never forget you if you announce your departure with, “See ya later, suckers!” as you flip your desk and run screaming out the door. A quiet exit, performed professionally, will buy you goodwill when you need it most: in your future job hunt. Today’s coworker could be tomorrow’s interviewing manager. Best to play nice.

Pic:Photomish Dan