Travel Tips

I have decided to be magnanimous this morning and provide you, the reading audience with a few travel tips. Treasure this knowledge, it has been acquired through long sleepless hours traveling the globe.

This one's for all of you intellectuals that only own black clothing except for the odd white reflective T shirt to aid in easy roadside identification and accident prevention while walking or jogging. You may have noticed that once your bag is packed and you're on the road, identifying clean from dirty can be an issue. All the beautiful black clothing tends to meld together into a homogeneous blob in your bag. Here's a simple tip. Once worn, turn each item inside out. This distinguishes the worn from the clean clothes. This doesn't work so well for plain black socks, mind.

My second tip is relevant to all you overseas travelers. People are always going off about what to do about a cell phone in the US. We tried all sorts of ridiculous schemes in the past including some Russian company that called you back automatically (press "Da" or "Neut" to continue). None were satisfactory. The best move is to buy a $14 "ATT go phone" at Walmart. These come with a "pay as you go" SIM. Mine was preloaded with $10 of calls, so the phone only actually costs $4. You need to keep it topped up, but at 10c a minute and free calls to other ATT phones, its a bargain. It's a pity it does not work all that well up here in the hills.

Finally, make sure you time your trip to miss KQED's pledge drives. KQED is the excellent Public Radio station here in Northern California. Unfortunately they seem to have a pledge drive each quarter, and I have hit "pledge week" the last two times I came out here. It's so annoying, every interesting program is cut short and you are subjected to this annoying pair grovelling for money. Come on guys, I realize you are publicly funded, but can't you arrange for this to happen when I am back home.