Travel | Kelsey Timmerman

Invoking the Great Touron King

By Kelsey

Cartoon by Geoff Hassing

So this fella Matt Long wrote this piece titled, “Don’t be a Touron.”

Gasp!

Hand me my backpack, scepter, and crown. You might want to back up a little.

(adjusts crown, raises scepter which is really just a stick that happened to be nearby)

“By the power of Grayskull, I am the Great Touron King!”

The flashes of dozens of disposable cameras fill the sky.

That glow that you see radiating from me isn’t my aura of power. That’s just the sun reflecting off of my SPF 80 sunscreen.

My first published sentence was, “In the Land of Tourons I am the Great Touron King.” It appeared in the Key West City Paper in 2002. Each week for the following three years, I recounted my experiences in places that weren’t home; places that I didn’t always know how to act or where to go; places that I found new and creative ways to make myself look like a jackass.

Here’s Matt on Tourons:

The Urban Dictionary defines a Touron as “The derogatory term combines the words “Tourist” with “Moron” to describe any person who, while on vacation, commits an act of pure stupidity.”

Ultimately, a touron is a person who apparently hates to leave home, but for some reason has decided to spend coin and time to do just that. After a recent trip to New York, I was reminded of how awful these individuals can be and as a public service want to provide some tips on how not to be a touron, in the classical sense.

When traveling, it is vital to have at least a modicum of self-awareness. You are a visitor and you should comport yourself as a guest, not an invading army. Pay attention to what local people are doing, and then do that! Also be a smart traveler. No matter how much you try to blend in, you usually won’t.

Here is my definition of Touron:

1) A touron is one part eager tourist and one part well-meaning moron.

2) Faced with a deluge of new sites, smells, sounds, and behaviors, a tourist turns touron because of an enhanced curiosity and innocent unawareness. The farther behind we leave the familiar, the more touronic we become.

3) Matt Long

4) You

In his “Don’t be a Touron” piece Matt says he came across the term “Touron” when he was “a college student in Williamsburg, Virginia, which is inundated with millions of tourists every year. Of these millions, there is a not-so-insignificant percentage which may be described as being tourons.”

I came across the term in Key West while working as a dive instructor and taking thousands of tourists into an environment where they found new and creative ways to try to kill themselves. I would give the dive briefing, “Whatever you do, don’t swim over there where you see the waves breaking onto the reef,” and five minutes later a diver would emerge waving his arms as he was slowly pulverized into bloody coral powder. Then I would swim like hell over to him, keep him from dying, and drag his sorry scraped up butt off the reef.

Although I cussed at these people through my regulator on a regular basis, I never looked down on them. They were my people. I respected the fact that they were brave enough to enter a world in which they didn’t belong. And some of them REALLY didn’t belong there. But I didn’t belong either. You can’t travel through a more foreign environment than swimming along a reef at 60’ beneath the Atlantic with hammerheads, puffer fish, and spotted eagle rays.

This is how I feel about traveling in general. Whether you want to label yourself a tourist or a traveler, I could give a flying flipper about, but if you pack your bags and head out the door to somewhere in which you are a foreigner, you are my people. You are a Touron.

Like a SCUBA diver, you’ll likely stick out like a sore thumb. You won’t lug your tank around, but you’ll be hefting plenty of cultural baggage. You’ll do your best not to kick the coral or cultural norms, but no matter how much you try, you will on occasion.

This is the beauty of the word Touron. It tears downs all these “my traveling is better than your traveling arguments.” It embraces all our inherent faults as travelers and unites us in our love for travel.

I love that Matt travels the world. I’ve never met him, but I’m guessing he has loads of tales of how he’s looked like a jackass around the world.

I do. It’s pretty much required to be the Great Touron King.

And as the GTK I hereby dub Matt Long (adjusts crown – these Burger King crowns just don’t fit like they once did. Places stick on Matt’s left shoulder and then his right) Sir Matt Long, an honorary knight of the knights of the Touron Table.

(If you want to read my first published piece “The Land of Tourons” it’s below the cut)
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Travel

Friday the 13th, let the adventure begin

By Kelsey

I was once held hostage by monks in Nepal. (old column from the experience below the cut)

When I finally convinced them to let me go, they consulted some scrolls to see if the date was a good one to release a hostage. It wasn’t but the next day was.

That trip, my first around the world, began on a Friday the 13th. I traveled for 6 months in Hawaii, Australia, Thailand, Nepal, and Western Europe. Those first experiences traveling led to my writing a travel column. I wrote about 200 columns about that first trip and other trips that followed. The column was my grad school. It was where I found my voice and started to do what I do today.

Friday the 13th was the first day of the rest of my life and a great time to hit the road.

Tornado Tourism: It’s the journey not the destination…trust me

By Kelsey

I can understand most acts of God.

If you live somewhere as beautiful as Key West or any other Caribbean island you might have to pay the price of dealing with a hurricane now and again.

If you live in Hawaii, there’s the occasional volcano.

If you live in the rugged outdoorsness of the West, there’s the occasional forest fire.

If you live in Santa Carla, there’s the “damn vampires” that need dealt with now and again.

But explain tornadoes to me.

What are the peaceful folks of the Midwest paying for? The majestical flatness? Sweeping fields of corn? Low cost of living? It doesn’t make sense. Until now.

Enter Silver lining Tours: Are you ready for the atmospheric adventure of a lifetime?

Do you get giddy at the thought of hunting down nature’s most awesome storms in the heart of Tornado Alley?

Do you want to view amazing tornadoes, jaw-dropping storm structures and dazzling lightning displays from safe vantage points while learning all about these spectacles?

Do you want to be guided on a severe weather intercept expedition by some of the world’s best storm chasers?

If the answer to these questions is a resounding “yes”, visit our Tour Schedule page and begin planning your Atmospheric Adventure of a Lifetime today!

Maybe Tornadoes aren’t the risk of the “reward” of living in the Midwest. Maybe they aren’t Acts of God, but, in fact, Gifts of God that bring tourists from around the world for a glimpse of mother nature’s cruel irony.

The tourists have to suffer long car rides and perhaps the scariest thing of all, a diet of fast food. That’s right, Tornado tourism is like going on a summer road trip with your father who won’t stop the car for you to pee because he’s making great time on the way to the Giant Wheel of Cheese in Wisconsin and wants to get the disappointment over as quickly as possible so he can get home and back to work.

It’s like that except you might be killed. On second thought…they are pretty much the same.

When I was a teenager with too little homework, a driver’s license, and a head full of stupid ideas, I went storm chasing.

My cousin Brice was visiting from Illinois. The Tornado warning interrupted a rerun of ALF.

“Hey, man,” I said, “Do you know what we should do?”

If that phrase is uttered by a male under the age of 21, run the other way.

“Dude, be quiet,” Brice said. “I think ALF might get the cat this time.”

“We should totally see if we can chase down the tornado,” I said. “I’ve never seen one before.”

Brice tore himself away from ALF, I grabbed the keys and hollered, “Brice and I are going tornado chasing” to my mom as we walked out the door.

“Okay,” Mom said, apparently not paying attention, just like the time she gave me permission to eat an entire stick of butter like a candy bar when I was five. “Be back for dinner.”

We scanned the radio for weather reports and drove in the direction of the action. When we arrived where the action was supposed to be there was no action. It was a major let down. The skies were clear enough for a game of croquet.

“Bummer,” Brice said.

“Yep, let’s turn around.”

And that’s when we drove into the heart of the storm.

Gusts of wind pushed us back and forth over the center line. The rain came down so hard it was like we were underwater and the black Blazer we rode in was a submarine.

The hail was hell.

I pulled over because the world was invisible. The truck shook. The gusts penetrated the cracks in the rusty Blazer and ruffled our hair. We didn’t say anything because it was pointless. We sat in a raging river of white noise. I never told Brice this, but I wanted to be held. I wanted my mommy. I wanted to be sitting in a recliner at home seeing if ALF finally ate Lucky the cat.

If there was a tornado, we weren’t able to see it.

When the storm passed, I put the truck into gear and we rode home in silence.

There’s a big difference between storm chasing and storm finding.

You won’t see me on a Tornado Tour anytime soon. Instead, enjoy this clip…

Travel

I want a shark bite

By Kelsey

In honor of shark week, I’m dusting off an old piece from my column writing days. It’s from 2006 so the stats might be a bit out of whack.

Sharks Bite?

The waters don’t feel sharky, but I’ve been wrong before.

I’m 85 miles off the coast of Cuba, 40-feet beneath the ocean’s surface. The water is murky and I am tooling along a lengthy coral finger. People dive in these waters to see all of the bright colors and unique fish. All I can see are shadows.

The coral finger is the big unmoving shadow to my right. The small shadows floating around it vary in size and shape; they are fish such as parrot, squirrel, snapper, and angel fish. The large shadow ahead, coming right at me is…oh, wait. It’s bulky. It travels in smooth horizontal movements. Dorsal fin – check. Odd-shaped head with two malevolent eyes unnaturally separated – CHECK! It is a hammerhead SHARK!

The chase begins, but I don’t stand a chance. 400 million years of evolution are against me.

It would be a lot cooler if the shark had moved in for an attack and I eluded it by ducking behind a coral head and then fought it off by wrestling it with its jaws snapping wildly inches from my mask, but this is not the case.

The hammerhead and I are both surprised. I don’t move or breathe. It changes course. I can see the tip of its snout, the end of its powerful tail, and the eight-feet of streamlined predator in between. Quickly, and with little effort, it disappears into the murk. The chase that ensues is my trying to get a better look at the magnificent creature.

Despite what movies like JAWS, Open Water, and The Deep Blue Sea would lead you to believe, being attacked by a shark is very, very rare. There is a long list of improbable things that you are more likely to be harmed by including, earthworms, banana slugs, and toasters.

If you are like me and you are not into tattoos, but do get some strange enjoyment out of scars, which are life’s tattoos, you may be disappointed at the rarity of a shark bite. After all, what cooler life tattoo is there? I am not talking a big bite where flesh is missing or left hanging. A small one, just big enough to be manly, which requires way less than 100 stitches and no physical therapy, would do. What’s cooler? A flaming skull inked on your flabby bicep or a few spaced out scars left by the teeth of a shark?

Acquaintances at the gym would point to your arm in envy. You could say, “Oh that…it’s just a shark bite.” Congratulations, “Shark Bite”, you just got yourself a new nickname.

Most shark attacks on humans are cases of a mistaken identity: surfers look like seals; a white foot in the silt of the shallows looks like a fish. I am not saying sharks are big puppy dogs that you should grab by the tail and give kisses to, although I have seen this being done on shark feeds in the Bahamas, but you are not the one who should be most afraid in a shark-human encounter.

Each year 100 million sharks are killed by humans. We hack off their fins, essential for swimming, and throw their wriggling, bloody torsos back into the water to die slowly, all for a nice bowl of shark fin soup. According to Julia Brown of Halifax University, worldwide shark populations are falling at an alarming rate. In the past 50 years there has been a 61% decrease in the population of large species. The population of white tip sharks, once thought to be the most abundant large animal on earth, has decreased by an alarming 99%.

It is no wonder that the hammerhead saw me and swam swiftly away. We humans are scary.

Seeing a shark while diving is a lot like seeing a police car while driving; you slow down and take stock, “Do I have anything to be worried about?” Once you realize that you are well within the limits of the laws of nature or of the highway patrol, you continue on your way, occasionally, checking your rearview mirror to see if you are being followed.

Sharks are not to be feared, but to be respected. I have taken over 700 SCUBA dives in the ocean and have yet to have a scary encounter with a shark.

The only fish that ever attacked me was a three-inch blue gill protecting her eggs in a freshwater quarry in Ohio. Unfortunately, I don’t have any scars to show for it. It’s probably a good thing; the nickname “Blue Gill Bite” just doesn’t have the same ring.

A pic I took in the Bahamas on a shark dive.

Travel

Breathless

By Kelsey

Because I’m up to my ears in an audio project and being a dad and because I wish I was underwater…

Travel

How I travel

By Kelsey

I’ve got a lot of love for the BootsnAll Travel Network. Their community of travelers is great. I often turn to fellow travelers on their message boards for on-the-ground advice. Plus, they played an important part in my story.

Outside of my family, they were the first people I told about my wacky idea to go all the places my clothes were made. They liked the idea, hosted the original Where Am I Wearing blog, and then gave me some love in their newsletter.

So, when Steve Bramucci asked me to participate in the wonderful “How I travel” series he edits, I was thrilled.

You should go read it now if you are interested in having longer-lasting, spine-tingling…travel.

Warning: It’s hard to stop with just one interview. Before you know it you’ll be reading the archives and learning how Mark Twain, Rolf Potts, and Steve himself travel.

Travel

So You Think You Can Dance?: Ethiopian Edition

By Kelsey

There is no better way to feel culturally superior than to go to a country, turn on the TV, and watch their music videos.

The guesthouse I’m at in Addis Ababa has two channels. One of them is usually featuring videos. The videos often show a wide range of folks from ultra-modern slick-haired BluBlocker-wearing studs to happy-go lucky, frolicking farm folk. They are either stepping off their motorcycle or herding goats when spontaneously bust into dance.

My first reaction is to make fun of this. My next is to think about MC Hammer, Kriss Kross, and the chicken dance.

Last night I went to the Ethiopian Cultural Restaurant for dinner. While I ate some great food, six dancers performed traditional dances from all over Ethiopia. It was amazing. They were popping, they were funny, they were all energy all the time. I’ve watched a season or two of So You Think You Can Dance so I know a thing or two about dancing. Saying they were “bunk” might be going to far, but “nasty” might be appropriate.

I was sitting there wishing I was a good dancer and I could do a guest appearance on stage. (Note: I wish I had some redeemable skill – musical, dance, magic – to impress folks from other cultures, but my greatest skill seems to be self-deprecation; that’s how much I suck.)

In the afternoon I made a video making fun of the Ethiopian videos, and at night I was wishing I could dance like that.

I’ll leave you with this: If an Ethiopian comes to America, turns on the TV, they aren’t going to see any music videos. We don’t air them anymore. And for that we should be made fun of.

–

Back to Kenya tomorrow to visit Nuru’s project in Kuria on Sunday.

Note: I tried to post videos to go with this, but I’m on dial-up. Come on Ethiopia!

Travel

Faith in the poor

By Kelsey

photo by Justin Ahrens of Rule29

I covet your faith. I’m not sure if that breaks any of the commandments or not. It probably breaks several. Still, I do.

My time with Life in Abudance was awesome for several reasons. One of them is that I had a chance to be around people with such strong faith.

I’m surely surrounded by others with such faith, but there is a separation of church and day-to-day life. I appreciate the separation. I don’t want others telling me what I should believe and I don’t want others telling others what they should believe. Religion and politics are in the “don’t go there” category for me. Unless I know someone is up for an honest and open discussion, I avoid them at all costs.

The last time I prayed, I think I was praying for a puppy dog. It’s been awhile.

Going into this trip with a Christian NGO, I knew that faith would be front and center. And at some point mine would be called into question. I wasn’t sure what to do. Do I stay in the closet and hope that I’m not called on to bless the food or share some spiritual insight? Or do I step off the plane, drop my bags and say, “The heathen has arrived” while making little devil horns with my fingers and flicking my tongue? Of course, I’m joking about the latter one, but honestly was I supposed to walk in and say, “I don’t have faith in Jesus like you do?” To me that’s like walking in to a room full of strangers and declaring who I voted for, or where I stand on abortion and gun rights.

Each night the group sat down and talked about the day’s events. These were deeply personal conversations. We talked about the children in the slums and when we thought of our own children it broke our hearts. Grown men were brought to tears (I’m looking at you Tonan).

But then they would talk about God and Jesus and about how what we had seen challenged and strengthened their own faith. That’s when I would go silent.

Gradually I was outted. Maybe it was when I dropped the quote: “To the hungry, food is God.” One of the team members pulled me aside and asked me, “Where do you stand on the whole faith thing?”

I answered honestly. I suck at being anyone else. And I was accepted. One of the team members said that he thought I was brave for coming on the trip. It really didn’t concern me that much. I’ve lived with and traveled with folks whose cultural and religious traditions were far more greater than my own, including Buddhists and Muslims. I was raised catholic – an altar boy in fact – and like to think that I shared the values and concern for the poor that all the others in the group did. We just had this one thing that we didn’t share. I relate to Jimmy Buffett, a former altar boy too, who now claims to be an altered boy.

I prayed more in that week in the slums of Nairobi than I have in any other in my life. The first prayer in the slums was led by Bruce, who is a pastor in Illinois. Along with two other team members we were crammed in a 10X10 shanty with a single mother and a few of her six kids. We bowed our heads, held hands, and Bruce began to pray.

By the time Bruce was done, my eyes were watering. It wasn’t some spiritual revelation that hit me, but it was just how beautiful and important prayer can be as a form of communication. We don’t sit down with strangers and loved ones alike and express how thankful we are for them, how much hope we have for them, and how much we love them. Heck, I don’t even think about those things myself nearly enough. The passion, compassion, and the honesty with which Bruce and later the other team members prayed touched me.

I didn’t mind the team members knowing about my faith, but I really didn’t want the families we visited to know. That’s when I was uncomfortable. Several times during my 24 hours in the slums, I was asked to bless meals. The first time I said, “I hear myself pray all the time. Why don’t we let someone else.” (Lying about praying has to be worse than coveting faith.) Of course, they insisted. Thankfully, I had learned from Bruce, Anna, Amanda, the Justins, Tonan, Von, Brian, Bob, Gus and Earnest how to pray.

I want the poor to have faith that tomorrow will be better and if not tomorrow, then maybe the next day, and if not in this lifetime then the one after. The mother of the family I spent the night with was a “prophetess.” She saw a future that was a better life for her and her family. She was also bulletproof, but that’s beside the point. When I walk around the slums of Nairobi, I hope that others see a tomorrow that is better than their today. No, I pray they do.

I was having a conversation with Justin, the US director of LIA, about some of these things and I mentioned how important I thought faith was for the poor. He misunderstood me and started talking about having faith in the poor. The poor possess ingenuity, a zest for life, a beauty that I can’t put my finger on, and great potential. That’s the saddest part of the slums. There is so much never realized potential.

Von, a member of our group who is an artist, would start drawing and kids would surround him. One day he was armed with a bag full of notepads and gave an impromptu art lesson. One of the kids was amazing. Von saw his potential and slipped him a few extra notepads and pens. He must have told him to keep drawing 30 times. That day Von’s greatest fear was that this kid would stop drawing. Von has faith in the poor as every team member among us now has, if we didn’t have it before.

I’m trying to figure out poverty for myself. I’ve written a book on it and I’m still not sure how I feel about the conditions in the slums, the discrepancy between the haves and have-nots. The other team members turn to God to make sense of it. That must be nice.

I totally covet their faith.

I’m thankful for having shared this experience with them. They taught me that it’s important to have faith in the poor and for the poor to have faith.

Amen.

Featured Story, This Writer’s Life, Travel

“I live in the slums”

By Kelsey

The people in the slums of Nairobi actually use the word “slum” to describe where they live. They say it casually like someone might say that they live on Main Street.

It’s a fact of their life. It is a kick in my gut.

The past two days, I’ve been in Nairobi helping film a documentary in the slums with Life in Abundance. There have been quite a few kicks in the gut. I thought I would share a few of them.

Rosa and I are both parents of a toddler. A few toddles and my toddler Harper can go from the safety of our toy-laden living room to the stairs or the kitty litter box. A few toddles of Rosa’s toddler and she can be out the door into a world of danger, starting with one of Rosa’s biggest fears – a steep dirt slope that fills with running water and could wash her toddler away.

Jackie, a mother in the slum of Mithera, sleeps with one leg in the bed and the other hanging over the edge so that the cold water would wake her.

Starting tomorrow morning thanks to the kind voters at www.heldhostagebyapathy.com, who could’ve voted for me to teach kids how to play ultimate Frisbee, I begin a 24-hour stay in the slums. I’m staying with a Prophetess.

I’m looking forward to it. While there will be plenty of kicks in the gut, there will be a lot of smiles and laughs. Plus, I’ve got a killer blog title. It should be posted this weekend.

Wish me luck.

Travel

Farts on a Plane

By Kelsey

Right this minute I’m on a flight over the Atlantic. And someone on that flight is probably farting.

I recently test-drove a pair of anti-flatulence underwear on a flight out West and wrote about the experience. The piece hasn’t been published yet (where do you pitch such works of art), but I decided to read it during a recent appearance at West Texas A&M.

Travel