How to Travel the World

Matt of Nomadic Matt has launched a new website: How To Travel the World.

The site’s tagline is “Get informed. Get Going,” which is opposite to how I often travel, “Show up. Scratch head.” So, I definitely could use a little of what this site has. Here’s the site in their own words:

Looking to take a gap year or another round the world adventure but not sure where to start? Look no further. This website is here to answer all your questions about how to travel around the world, gap years, backpacking, and the nomad way. We have suggested routes, advice on how to travel cheaply, meet other travelers, and much more.

I gotta try this

Introducing The Water jetpack!

Via Neatorama

Meet the people who made my flip-flops

I wrote a piece for RelevantMagazine.com about Dewan and Zhu Chun who I feature in WAIW?

Relevant Magazine is doing some cool things. Their next issue promises to be a good one. No I’m not contributing, but the issue’s theme is “Reject Apathy” which is a theme I can get behind.

Books & Co recap

The Beavercreek Books & Co. is one of the coolest bookstores I’ve been to. New bookstores tend to sacrifice personality for space and efficiency, but Books & Co. managed to pull off all of these things – lots of books, two marble-like staircases, a fireplace.

One of the many things the store has going for it is public relations director Sharon Kelly Roth. She brings in big time authors like, most recently, Greg Mortensen, and makes the not-so big time authors (ME) feel big time. I spoke at a podium using a mic. There was a projector showing photos from my quest. She introduced me using an introduction she had written. There were several posters of the book and me around the store.

I asked Sharon how many people came for Mortensen’s talk and she told me it was around 800. Twenty came to my talk, which was pretty good considering the weather. In many counties around Dayton it was actually illegal to be on the roads. During a level III winter storm warning, if a cop sees you on the road, you can get a ticket. While 780 more people attended Mortenson’s talk, I doubt there was one of them who thumbed their nose at the law to be there.

Thanks to all who came!

Below is a pic of me and Christine Martinello, author of Momager. I first met Christine at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference in Dayton. The last time I saw her, WAIW? was an idea.

The weather sucks…

….So please spread the word about my reading tomorrow at Books & Co at the Greene Shopping Center in Dayton. If you know anyone that lives in or around Dayton, demand that they come and ask lots of questions and buy lots of books.

I’ve got this sneaking suspicion that the snow and ice is really going to hurt the turnout. And that would be bad for my ego.

Book Events

I had a great book signing in Union City this weekend. I got to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in a long time, which was awesome, plus they bought a lot of books - 33!

Tomorrow I’ll be at Indiana University speaking to a composition class in the morning and to the Global Village community from 6-8 PM at Collins Hall.

On Thursday, I’ll at Books & Co. in Dayton at the Greene Mall. Here’s the flyer they sent me promoting the event:

My ignorance occasionally amuses the Financial Times

Britain’s Financial Times pretty much disembowels WAIW? and its author, yours truly, in today’s paper.

Reviewer Emma Jacobs doesn’t waste any time or, for that matter, the first two sentences before telling us what she thinks:

Kelsey Timmerman’s investigation into the underbelly of globalisation is moronic. I am not being unkind.

My favorite part is how she begins one paragraph, “His ignorance is occasionally amusing.” (Wait, is that a compliment? Did I charm her with my ignorance?) And then begins another paragraph, “Ultimately his ignorance is maddening…” (Darn! I thought I had her.)

I expected bad reviews (maybe not to this extent) and I’ve received one. No big deal. I don’t expect to be the first author ever to not receive a far less than glowing review. However, I do think the review lacked in a few areas.

The facts being one of them…

She writes that I’m a self-proclaimed beach bum. That’s wrong. I write about bumping into a former classmate who was working at Wal-Mart before beginning my quest and how he called me a beach bum. A self-proclaimed beach bum, I’m not.

Ms. Jacobs is dazzled by my ignorance when I ask a “twenty something” (her words not mine) Bangladeshi woman if she knew Gandhi. The woman is not a “twenty something” woman; she is, in fact, UN Special Envoy/Former supermodel/designer/sixty-something Bibi Russell. Still, I’m somewhat ignorant thinking that Bibi may have met Gandhi (Bibi was born a decade after Gandhi’s death), but not so ignorant that I thought anyone in their twenties would have met him.

I checked and both of these facts are quite clear in the book.

And speaking of the Bibi Russell/Gandhi mix-up…that’s called self-deprecation. If a reviewer doesn’t like the book, I’d expect them to use examples other than the author’s self deprecations. That seems kind of lazy.

Bowels or no bowels, I’m happy to have been reviewed in the Financial Times.

Signing in Union City, IN

I’ll be doing a signing at the Union City, IN, Hallmark store this weekend. I expect a fairly decent turnout since Union City is my hometown, as much as a country bumpkin has a hometown. I even mention UC in Where Am I Wearing?:

I didn’t get my first pair of new underwear until I was five. I was a younger brother and younger brothers wear hand-me-downs, even underwear. I never had a pair I could call my own until Mom decided that I deserved a pair of Scooby-Doo Underoos for being good while she shopped in The Boston Store, a small family clothing store where everybody knew everybody and the store clerks knew how to measure and make adjustments. The Boston Store has since gone out of business along with the other department stores in Union City, Ohio, including Kirshbaum’s, Kaufman’s, and McClurg’s Five and Dime. They went under in the mid-1980s when all of the local factories started to shut down. Westinghouse moved their factory to Mexico, Sheller Globe downsized their production of plastic moldings for vehicles under the pressure of foreign competition, and the Body Company, which made chassis for step vans, was bought and lost the majority of their work to cheaper labor in the South.

Globalization came to Union City, a small town that straddles the Ohio and Indiana border. It took jobs. It took stores. Today, I’m not sure if it’s even possible to purchase a pair of underwear anywhere in town. You might be able to at Rite Aid, but they likely wouldn’t be comfortable or funny.

Cambodian Leaders asking Obama to help catch murdere of union leader

As if President Obama didn’t have enough on his plate…

“I beg US President Barack Obama to help Cambodian people find the criminals to bring them to justice,” opposition leader Sam Rainsy told a crowd Thursday at the spot where Chea Vichea was shot.

Read the whole story

Indiana Kelsey

I’ve documented my obsessions with Indiana Jones here before. Richard Squires, a reader of WAIW? who is now a facebook friend, hooked me up with a great piece of photoshoppery. I plan on using this as my new bio photo everywhere. Maybe Wiley will let me use it on the WAIW? paperback…How awesome would that be?

Thanks Richard!