On the Written Road

The Written Road is a blog started by travel maven/mogul-in-the-making Jen Leo. The blog focuses on travel writing and features useful tips and market leads.

Jen still has the occasional posts but most of the daily heavy lifting is left to Abha and Nicholas. They manage to carry on the quality writing about writing about traveling. Any aspiring travel writers would be well served to check in on the site now and again. Plus, Nicholas is from Ohio, which, as you may know, is a hotbed for emerging travel writers. Ohio: It’s a great place to leave!

I’ve followed the Written Road blog for the past 3 years. It’s helped clear the muddy waters of exactly how one might make it as a traveling writer. While the site has been a useful tool for me in the past, I’m beginning to think their editorial standards are slipping.

Why? Because today I’m featured on the Written Road. Here’s a little what they have to say about WAIW? :

It’s a great idea for a blog and hopefully will inspire a few others to search out where their toaster was made or the birthplace of egg salad.

Egg Salad - I never thought about that. Really, the amount of Where Quests are limitless…egg salad, toasters, singing ninja hamsters, etch and sketch…you name it. It was made somewhere by someone.

Live from Bangladesh…It’s ME!

Not really. Not yet.

I talked with the producer of the World Vision Report radio program today. It looks like I’ll be filing two reports during the trip.

One before I leave Bangladesh for Cambodia in which I’ll introduce my idea and talk about the Bangladeshi factory that I visit.

And the other once I’m home, which will cover my experiences in Cambodia, China, and a summation of the adventure as a whole.

Of course all of this is subject to change. Will the experience at the Bangladeshi factory be the same as the experience at the Cambodian? If so, that’s one story not two. I expect they will be much different (other than the fact everyone I meet will think I’ve lost it when I tell them I came all the way to their place of work because my britches were made there). Will the logistics work out allowing me to contribute from the road?

However things go down, it should be fun. It was exciting to talk about it today and even more exciting to learn that the interviews with Peggy, the host, won’t be live. At least that will give the editors of the program a chance to make me look smart. Best of luck to them.

MeTube

One of my pre-trip goals is to have the know-how to create audio-slideshows. Mission accomplished!

Windows XP comes with a nifty program called Windows Movie Maker that makes the entire process really easy. The audio is from an old podcast that many of you have heard already recorded using Audacity. I expect the quality of future recordings to be better because I have had more practice reading for the radio and I purchased a nice mic and minidisk recorder.

For the record, I find this recording to be a bit corny. My fiance does to. She really thought the “Kill it! Kill it!” portion of the adventure could use some work. I think I sound like a stoned Mr. Rogers.

I’m hoping to be able to post audio slideshows during the trip.

Where I’m writing to

As years go, 2007 is shaping up to be a big one for me personally and professionally.

Personally

* I’m getting married. Does it get any bigger than that? Mark your calendars for 09/08/07 (It’s like a countdown, but a countdown to what. Blast off? Hugs? The Bomb? Self-Destruct? My doing the coffee grinder in the middle of a circle of adoring wedding goers chanting, “Go Kelsey, it’s your wedding. Go Kelsey, it’s your wedding.”?)

* Annie, my wife-to-be, and I just bought a house (more on that in future posts). Yeah, so I’m growing up, but that doesn’t mean the travel writing gig goes.

Professionally

* This blog sponsored by BootsnAll about my travels to Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, and other places in between.

* I hope to be an extra in a Bangladeshi movie. Honestly, how many blond hair blue-eyed extras do they have? ZERO, that’s how many. Enter ME.

* My first contribution to Radio aired in January on the World Vision Report. You can listen to it HERE. The WV has commissioned another story from me and I’ll also be calling into their program as a sort of roaming reporter.

* I’ve got loads of story pitching to do before I leave. Radio, magazines, newspapers. If you’re an editor, expect to hear from me in the near future.

* A book is in the works. I feel naughty.

* The Travelin’ Light column is currently on sabbatical. I’d much rather be writing my 800 word tales than reading books on globalization, but time dictates that I take a break from the column. I expect it’ll pop up somewhere before the year is over.

* I’ll continue to work 30 hrs a week with the family business, Timmerman Truss, until I get fired or land too many writing assignments to keep up.

In the past I’ve chalked up covering the expense of my trips to a sort of grad school – an investment in my future. But now after six years of traveling and writing, school is over. I’ve got my PhD in whatever it is that I do and it’s high time I start making PhD $$.

At first, I traveled for traveling’s sake. To experience the freedom of the open road and all that jazz. I was a bum. It was pure. It was beautiful. And then, the writing bug bit me and now travel plays second fiddle to writing. I can no longer bum. If I’m not working on a story, or what could become a story, I’ve got to move on to one or I’ll go nuts.

Damned writing anyhow. It had to go a screw with the bum gig. Annie is probably a little to blame for this too.

Writing: Where I’m coming from

‘06 was a good year all around. My writing continued to snowball towards bigger and better markets. Overall, not too shabby even though I only left the country once for less than a week.

In March at the Erma Bombeck conference in Dayton I made the contact that would eventually lead to my being published in the Christian Science Monitor. The great thing about having been published in the CSM is that everybody has heard of it. Now when I send a query letter to an editor it doesn’t look like I’m making up publications. The Key West City Paper, the Daily Advocate, The Hub, yeah - no one had ever heard of ‘em.

The CSM experience also led to a staff writing position at Glucose that lasted 3 months until the magazine went under.

From ‘05 to ‘06 I tripled my writing work and pay. I’m hoping to have the same thing happen in ‘07.

I also met Dave Barry, sailed on a Tall Ship, hiked 30 miles in 100 degree temperatures, contributed to Transitions Abroad, caught 3 grapes in my mouth at one time, hugged my dogs 19,234 times, helped my parents with the headaches that come with building a new truss plant, gave one commencement speech to fifth graders and one keynote speech at a National Honor Society induction, and, I better not forget this one… got engaged!

2006 won’t be easily forgotten

Fantasy Kingdom

My whole “Where am I wearing?” idea stems from the disparity between Us and Them. What’s really strange is when you find out that all of the Them’s are not so different than all of us Us’s.

Over half of Bangladesh’s 130 million people live in poverty. But that didn’t stop the Them’s that aren’t so different than us Us’s from spending $65 million to build the amusement park Fantasy Kingdom. It has all of the things we We’s, and you know who you We’s are, love about amusement parks – greasy food, semi-maintained roller coasters manned by people who really don’t give a crap. And the entrance fee is only $3!

I’m so there.

If this sounds like an experience in which the real cultural of Bangladesh may be under-represented. It probably is.

The storyline of Fantasy Kingdom, as told by Fantasy Kingdom’s website:

“Once upon a time, there was a magical kingdom of fun and excitement where Prince Ashu and Princess Lia along with their four extraordinary friends, Zipper, Zuzu, Bangasaur and Bobo, spent their days in fun and frolic, dancing and playing with the people of their kingdom. But with time, this mysterious kingdom disappreared because the people in Prince Ashu’s land had forgotten how to smile and became busy with their day to day lives. Then many years later, Prince Ashu recreated his lost kingdom here in Ashulia, Dhaka, so that people would forget their worries and again learn to smile and have fun.”

In a 2002 BBC report:

“Located on a greenfield site more than an hour’s drive from Dhaka, the Disney-style theme park sits a little incongruously alongside paddy fields and villages that have no running water or electricity.”

The villages with no lights or plumbing can be seen from the roller coasters. What more cultural experience do you need?

I’m the Great Touron King

“In the land of tourons, I am the Great Touron King.” These were the first of my very own words to make it to print. What follows is the rest of the column, a sort of Touron Manifesto, if you will. This is the common thread that I like to think that runs through all of my writings and all of my travels.

Travelin’ Light: The Land of Tourons
By Kelsey Timmerman

A touron is one part eager tourist and one part well-meaning moron. You yourself have likely been a touron at one time or another.

If you’ve ever…

…set out on a trip over 2 weeks long with 3 pair of underwear…

…thought visiting a nude beach would be a good idea…

…spent an entire flight with your knee jammed into the chair in front of you to keep a six year old from reclining…

… been to a Drag Show with your mother…

…been in a room full of people where You were the only one not staring at YOU…

…stepped out your front door and made a complete fool of yourself…

…you might be a Touron.

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. Read more

The Touron Recording Studio

When I recorded a piece on playing soccer in Honduras for the World Vision Report radio program this past fall, I went to a “professional” recording studio. Now that I have some of my own equipment, I’ve been cut loose to record myself.

Easier said than done.

For the first time ever, a behind the scenes look at the Touron Recording Studio (oh, and if you aren’t sure what a Touron is GO HERE).

10 essential items for your home studio:

1. A tent and enough room to pitch it.

2. An autographed picture of Punky Brewster to hold the story you will be reading, and, of course, for, you know, inspiration. “Every time I turn around…” Gotta love Punky.

3. An empty file holder that you bought one of those days when you were convinced an organized life was in your future.

4. 3 York Peppermint Paddies because after multiple readings you will be encased in a tent of your own breath. Why not have it be minty?

5. A glass of water. But no matter how much you drink, your throat will still itch causing you to cough and interrupting another less than perfect take.

6. A headlamp. Once you cover your tent with a blanket it gets dark.

7. A red pen to underline every “of” so you can try and remember to pronounce them.

8. Scrawled notes from your editor, telling you, a home studio newbie, what to do.

9. A mic (electro-voice RE-50) lashed to your camera tripod by 30’ of cord that you use to hang bear bags while hiking.

10. A minidisc recorder. These things are so cool. (Sony Himd MZRH-1)

But remember, no matter how fancy your setup or how much Punky Power you surround yourself with, you have absolutely zero chance of being able to pronounce the word “indigenous.”

Good luck.

What sex is your text?

Paste some text into the Gender Genie and find out.

I did.

When it comes to writing it just doesn’t get any more manly than this opening paragraph from one of my columns…

The fer-de-lance is the most feared creature in the jungles of Honduras. One bite has enough venom to kill three to five men. There are five of us in the canoe. Six, counting the snake.

The Gender Genie gave it 75 hairy-chest beating man points to 0 female points. Basically, it makes Hemingway look like a ballerina.

But before I go and enter myself into a bullfight feast your eyes on this girly intro:

With a long, toothy smile #2 looks up at me as if to say, “Do it again.” The pilot whale, slightly larger than a dolphin, feels like a giant muscle encased inside a wet, jet black wrestling mat.

Patrick, a Key West fishing mate, is on her right and I am on her left. We start to count as our hands go from pectoral fin to dorsal fin and back again, “One…Two…Three…Ffff…” On her fourth roll she pauses with her belly towards the blue sky.

According the Gender Genie I should have my mancard revoked. It scored 213 female points to only 116 female points.

Transitions Abroad

My piece on volunteering at Casa Guatemala that appeared in the Nov/Dec issue of Transitions Abroad is now available online.

TA is a handsome glossy chalk-a-block full of content. I’m not just saying that. You can go page after page without running into an ad. Good for the reader, not so good for the writer – the pay ain’t great. Even so, I’m happy to be a part of this issue.

The issue is titled the Responsible Travel Issue, which almost makes me feel like I’m something greater than a culture trippin’ Touron. Almost.

Here’s a passage from the Editor’s letter:

Travel has the potential to bring much-needed economic benefits to developing countries and to foster cross-cultural awareness, dialogue, and understanding—all of which make for the conditions of world peace.

I’m just doing my part to promote world peace. I also fight crime, rescue kittens from trees, help old ladies cross the street, and, just today I helped Frank of Elwood, Indiana, with his flat tire.

My Karma cup runneth over.