I was buying some tea with my flatmates, and we ended up buying the flavours “wanderlust” and “adventure”. It’s like a bad habit, wherever I go I just can’t help but take the option that sounds like roaming around and having fun. Even if it is just a bunch of dried leaves given a silly name.

I love fudge, but for some reason it’s a food that I only eat while I’m travelling. On roadtrips as a kid, the family would always stop for a chunk of fudge in Clines Corners. The couple of times that I’ve been in Philadelphia’s Penn Station, the Ben and Jerry’s fudge stand satisfied my need for travel fudge. And this last weekend in Scotland, wandering down Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, we couldn’t resist ducking into a fudge shop and grabbing a slice.

I’m fairly convinced, that like beef jerky, fudge relies on tourists and travellers for it’s continued existence. Does anyone eat these these foods in their regular life? Are there others you can think of that fall into this category?

This is a bit of a personal post, but about an adventure so I think it’s fitting here. About a week ago I started what may be the biggest adventure of my life: my girlfriend Ilana moved across an ocean and into my flat in London. So from here forward you can probably assume that “we” in one of my posts refers to Ilana and I. And hopefully there will be many of these posts as we plan on having plenty of little adventures within the grand adventure of our life together.

These little notes from America’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA) show up in my hold baggage every time I fly back home from the states. I don’t get it. They put my bag though a giant X-ray machine (I see that part), but then once the bag is out of my sight they open it up and mess around with my packing job? I’ve never had anything go missing or break, but certainly scared me when a laptop nestled between clothes showed up at the top of the bag wide open for damage. If they are going to poke through my stuff, when can’t they do it with me there? The anonymity of having a stranger dig through my personal belongings is just so invasive. Does that make anyone feel safer?

Also, I’d wager that the folks that are paying up to £259 a year to use airport lounges aren’t super concerned with public transit access to the airport. With the tube and Heathrow express running to Heathrow, it is undoubtedly the most accessible airport in London. If you compare that to something like DC’s Dulles you realise just how nice we have it:

That’s a map of the 30 mile drive to Dulles. Or you can take a train and change to a bus. Any way you slice it, it’s a hard airport to. And once you’re there you have to deal the ridiculous security and the strange vehicles that drive you from the terminal to the gates.

So for us mere mortals that don’t have town cars that take us too and from the airport or a lounge to relax in before the flight, I’d say there are far worse airports than Heathrow. I’d put Luton near the top of that list. What’s your least favourite airport?

International carriers including Air France, British Airways and Qantas allow pilots to nap, but sleeping while flying is prohibited at U.S. airlines by the Federal Aviation Administration. Just last month, the Air Transport Association again pressed the FAA to allow controlled cockpit napping, citing NASA research that found a mid-flight snooze significantly reduces the risks of overall pilot fatigue.
…
The NASA study begun in 1989 allowed one group of pilots flying across the Pacific to take a 25-minute nap while their co-pilots flew the planes, while a control group was required to remain awake for the entire flight. Those without the naps nodded off five times as much — including while on the approach to the airport — as those who got some sleep.

This seems a bit silly. While I don’t like the thought of my pilot sleeping while were in the air, it only makes sense that on long flights in a dark, quiet cockpit, there is a good chance that someone will doze off. You might as well plan it so that sleep when the plane is cruising along just fine rather than when it should be landing.

The whole incident leaves me wondering just how many times my pilots have fallen asleep on a flight. It is a bit unnerving to think about.

This weekend I was back in Amsterdam for the fourth time in a year to run the Amsterdam Marathon. The only problem was that I hadn’t trained. At all. I ran a lot in June, but then I spent the summer on the road. And though I wore out a pair of running shoes walking around stadiums, I hadn’t run more than 5-6 times with friends or just to see some of the towns. I am reasonably active though, so with a little help from my friend willpower (though he abandoned me for a stretch between 35 and 40 km) I pulled it off in a bit under five hours. Not an impressive time, but something I’m happy with considering the amount of preparation I put in.

Returning to work on Monday I was told just how foolhardy I was since three people had dropped dead running the Detroit Marathon the same day that I was pounding the pavement in Amsterdam. Of course at that fatality rate, the last 15 years of the Detroit Marathon has a lower fatality rate than commuting in the UK. The point is that much like you need to commute, you need to go out and enjoy life – which will always come with some risk. And personally, I’d much rather take that small risk than the risk of having a dull life. So if you’re thinking of doing something fairly ridiculous, might I recommend a major physical challenge. That’s adventure.

Image: Amsterdam Marathon 2009 by PjotrP.

The world’s best current comment (Far Side RIP), XKCD, uses humour to make a good point about airline security: it’s a farce. As the Atlantic clearly demonstrated, with a little level of effort, you can get around security measures. Sometimes it wouldn’t even take effort – once this year I even cruised through and airport without a single person looking at my photo ID. But even more basic than that is that what security measures there are (take off shoes, liquids in a little bag) are simply in place because there were major news stories around people using either liquids or shoes to cause trouble. It seems that if airport security were actually interested in safety, the world would follow Isreal’s controversial model. But in the mean time, can you knock it off with the shoe thing and preventing us from carrying our own water. It’s just silly.

Ode to you mini-bar at the James Hotel in Chicago. If you be called ‘mini’ then I can only wonder what a ‘grand’ bar in a hotel room would look like. You were stocked with five bottles of high quality spirits, a fridge full of mixers and other liquors, and all the equipment necessary to mix and enjoy any cocktail imaginable. Yes, your prices were high, but you’re a “mini-bar”. But comedians need fall back jokes, and if you weren’t expensive and airlines didn’t serve peanuts, then what would they joke about? The greatest shame was that I couldn’t take advantage of your bounty. I was in Chicago for work, and lacked the opportunity to imbibe you delicious nectar. Next time James mini-bar. Next time.

I’m pretty excited that Rio is hosting the Olympics, if only because their pitch video really made me want to go explore Brazil. Of course the video doesn’t show the crushing poverty that encircles Rio, but if you’re going to make an idyllic video I suppose you can’t tell the whole story of a place. Though maybe the real reason that I wanted them to win was it was the only finalist city that I’ve never visited, and was looking for another excuse. Guess I’ve got it now!