Travel | Kelsey Timmerman

I smuggled Anti-flatulence Underwear Past TSA

By Kelsey

I take out my laptop and set it in a bin. I slip my shoes off and smile at the TSA agent as if I have nothing to hide. As if I’m just another normal passenger. As if I’m not wearing anti-flatulence underwear.

My brow grows moist as I fight the urge to adjust my Gas Eaters while at the same time not letting my eye wander to the full-body scanner. No doubt a man wearing unisex, airtight underwear with a quarter-inch pad of activated carbon sewn in the butt would throw up a few flags. The “Underwear Bomber” really ruined it for the rest of us.

I try to walk normal. It’s not easy. I feel like I’m sitting on a bicycle seat. In fact, that’s one of the excuses I’ve decided to give if my underwear are called into question, “They’re just bike shorts.”

But that wouldn’t explain the placement of the padding.

I could go with the bike-short excuse or just tell the truth.

I’ve brought the packaging along as proof. There’s a drawing of the Gas Eaters with arrows pointing to the airtight fabric, the filter, and the “porous pocket material for escaping gas.”

Unfortunately, the Gas-Eater diagram looks like it was designed by a high school student and printed out on the latest $99 printer. At best it looks like a gag gift that you would buy at Spencer’s Gifts for that hard-to-buy-for uncle who lives in his sweatpants and claims to be able to fart the alphabet. At worst, it looks like I’m a terrorist harboring explosives in my drawers.

If I got caught, who knows what unspeakable pat-downs the TSA agents would perform on me.

I’m waved through the metal detector. I put my laptop in my bag, slip back into my shoes, and waddle off to my gate.

I’m relieved. But no one can tell.

—

Before I slipped out the door to catch my flight, I slipped on a pair of Gas Eaters. They go over your regular underwear because the material isn’t all that comfortable. Their air-tightness makes them a bit hot. In fact, they are kind of like those vinyl sweat jackets that wrestlers wear to make weight except they are underwear and they eat farts.

I don’t care if you are a 95-pound beauty queen, a prim and proper grandma, or a guy wearing a “Farting is just another way to say I love you” T-shirt, at some point in time you’ve been on a plane and felt the urge to off-gas a bit.

You considered those sitting around you: Will they know it’s me? Can I blame it on the guy in the fart T-shirt?

You considered your health: I am feeling really bloated from that airport burrito.

According to gastroenterologist Dr. Michael Levitt there are dangerous side effects from holding in farts, including headaches, dizziness, and becoming bloated.

We all face the decision: let it out or hold it in?

The decision is made easier if you are wearing Gas Eaters.

Fifteen minutes after takeoff, I feel the urge. There is a seat between me and the casually dressed businessman in my row. In front of me is a baby, behind me a toddler. Any of the three could share the blame if the Gas Eaters don’t work. Reluctantly, I test them.

Consider this. On average homo sapiens flatulate a half-liter of gas per day, dispersed over ten individual periods of relief. Each fart is about half-a-cup in volume. As a pressure decreases, say like when a plane ascends, gas expands. A flight to Hawaii can take half-a-day. A 747 seats around 400 passengers. This means that on a flight to Hawaii there are about 119 2-liter bottles worth of farts floating around.

Unless they are held in, which mine was not.

A few moments pass. I wait to see what happens. Okay, maybe see isn’t quite the right sense. Regardless, none of my senses picked up anything new.

The Gas Eaters worked!

It’s a sort of freedom. No longer do I have to weigh the biological effects of “holding it in” with the undesirable social effects of “letting it out.”

In 2006 a woman on a flight from Washington D.C. to Ft. Worth, Texas farted and forced the plane to land. Well, it wasn’t exactly the fart, it was the match she lit to hide the fart that forced the landing. She has been banned from flying with American Airlines for a long time. And all because she farted and tried to hide it. If she would have been wearing a pair of Gas Eaters she wouldn’t have delayed the travel plans of her 99 fellow passengers.

In his essay, “Fart Proudly” Benjamin Franklin (yes, that Benjamin Franklin) wrote, “Were it not for the odiously offensive smell accompanying such escapes, polite people would probably be under no more restraint in discharging such wind in company, than they are in spitting or in blowing their noses.”

More than 200 hundred years later, thanks to Gas Eaters, we can fart proudly, even on a plane…if we get by TSA.

Travel

1 of 35 Million living with AIDS

By Kelsey

Yesterday was World AIDS Day. I couldn’t get this voice out of my head so I thought I would share it. Susan is a single mother of six. I met her this past spring in Kampala, Uganda. She lost her husband to AIDS and later tested positive herself. Because of funding cuts at her clinic, she doesn’t receive the proper ARV treatment and no longer receives food for her and her children. She’s 1 of 35 million living with AIDS.

Mad World, Travel

Travelers Give A Shit

By Kelsey

I give a shit about the Great (shrinking) Barrier Reef because I’ve chased a turtle around it.

I give a shit about melting glaciers because I’ve climbed on one in New Zealand.

I give a shit about the persisting tension in Kosovo because I’ve played PlayStation and shared countless cups of tea with college students in Pristina.

I give a shit about hurricanes hammering Honduras because I’ve played baseball there.

I give a shit about garment workers in Bangladesh because I’ve taught them how to throw a Frisbee and been to an amusement park with them.

I give a shit about orphans in Guatemala and Nepal because I’ve played Hacky Sack with them.

I give a shit about those displaced by the Three Gorges Dam in China because I’ve eaten in their restaurant.

I give a shit about scavengers at Phnom Penh’s city dump because I’ve smelled what they smell every day.

I give a shit about teens who live in Africa’s slums because I talked about Ruben Studdard with them.

I give a shit about Kenyans having access to clean drinking water because I’ve witnessed kids fetching water in streams next to cow patties.

I give a shit about flooding in Bangladesh because I’ve had dinner in the flooded homes.

I give a shit about Ireland’s economy because I’ve had a pint with graduates who can’t find work.

I give a shit about HIV-treatment in Uganda because I’ve met a fella who dropped out of college to get a job because his dad died and he has to support his brothers and sisters.

I give a shit about the lobster divers of Nicaragua because I spent the better part of an afternoon stranded in the rain with a few of them.

I give a shit about sharks being de-finned because I’ve had my day made by the slightest glimpse of a shark in the open ocean.

I give a shit about all of these things and all of these places because I have traveled there. I give a shit about all of the places I haven’t been and all the people I haven’t met because I know if I went there and met them I would give a shit about them even more.

I give a shit because I’m a traveler.

And I’m not alone.

Every Tuesday I give away $10. This Tuesday I’m giving $20 (I missed last Tuesday) to Passports with Purpose, a group of travelers who give a shit by doing cool things. Last year they built a school in rural Cambodia and this year they are building a village in India. Yes, that’s right, a village! Join me in donating. Every $10 donation enters you to win prizes from an iPad, to plane tickets, to Norwegian cruises.

Travel

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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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.

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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!

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