I had an interesting conversation last week.  A friend of mine told me that he always wanted to travel, but could never decide where he wanted to go.  He explained that he was overwhelmed by all the possibilities.  As a result, his vacations tended to be very repetitive, and had become so boring that it […]

This is the third in a series of articles about the transformative power of traveling.  No one really knows the impact a trip is going to have on their life.  It can be a restorative escape, educational, or thought provoking – often all at the same time.  Sometimes the experiences a person has while traveling, […]

This is the third in a series of stories about my trip to Russia shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 1990s.  The first two entries can be found here and here. As part of my month long, teenage journey to the very “new” Russia, it was deemed that each person in […]

It’s interesting to me that when most people consider a vacation in the southern United States, certain cities tend to come up again and again.  Nashville, New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston regularly make the cut, yet Atlanta always seems to come up short.  In recent years this has begun to change, though.  For a decade […]

If you haven’t watched the international news this week, or kept up with events coming out of China over the last year, you might not be aware of the path of politician and businessman, Bo Xilai.  Bo is on trial for extensive corruption as both a local and a national politician.  Despite only claiming to […]

This weekend I hit the road for a big family reunion.  My grandmother’s maiden name was Dick.  Seriously.  Every year or so we all get together and have the “Big Dick Reunion.”  I want to make t-shirts one year, but fear that they might be indecent. It was an interesting trip for me, because for […]

I’ve been to a lot of museums.  I’ve been to art museums, car museums, natural history museums, and even a couple of sex museums.  This weekend, though, I ended up in one of the strangest museums I have ever experienced. My friend Ben and I traveled to Warm Springs, Georgia.  As history teachers, our goal […]

When you’re on the road it’s hard to keep up an exercise routine of any sort.  Simply put, your body is out of whack.  You probably aren’t eating the same way you do at home, alcohol consumption tends to increase when people are on vacation, and fatty foods become the norm.  What’s a person to […]

I was recently asked about my experiences flying, and if I had any horror stories.  I’ve been on a lot of planes over the years, and all of them have been great. All of them, that is, except for one.  I had the honor/horror of flying on Aeroflot, the Russian National Airline nine months after […]

Ok, in full disclosure there isn’t anything really French about this pizza or any other pizza, but it is a great, light summer dinner, and it goes very, very well with white wine.  I speak from experience here.  This recipe is easy and looks like something out of a gourmet kitchen.  It’s currently one of […]