This site update comes to you live from the Costa Del Sol in Southern Spain, where I’m on vacation and planning out the next year. Each month I look back at what’s happened with AONC in the previous month (or two, in this case). If you’ve missed some articles, you can catch up here ...
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I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving (fellow U.S. citizens) and enjoyed the quiet internet (everyone else) while the folks over here ate birds and went shopping. This morning I completed my final long run in Oregon until the end of the year. I made it about 15 miles and thought about all the things that have happened in 2009. It’s a long list, and I could have kept thinking, but 15 miles is about my limit these days in terms of running. Afterwards I came home and started packing a bag, also for the last time this year ...
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Friends and readers, I’ve returned home to Portland, Oregon just in time for Thanksgiving. I try to live a life of gratitude every day, so I don’t have much to say about the Thanksgiving holiday in general ...
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Greetings from the only coffee shop with WiFi I could find in Baku, Azerbaijan. Not speaking Azeri, Russian, or Turkish doesn’t help with getting directions, but I’m holding up OK. More on the trip next week as I continue to Georgia via overnight train, assuming I can figure out how to get to the train station.
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Friends and readers, greetings from AA flight 84, en route to the Dallas Ft-Worth airport. I’ve been there several times recently, and am thinking of setting up a tent around A-20. Thanks so much to everyone who came out to our meetup in Washington, D.C. on Thursday night. I had a great time and was humbled as usual by all the fun and interesting people who showed up.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said this in response to questions about civil rights and the law. The point was that morality and the law are not always on the same side. I often think about this as I ponder the social and political issues of our time. The question that comes to mind is: What about now?
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This site update comes to you live from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to Autumn! If all goes well, I expect to turn in the manuscript of my first book to the publisher by the end of the month ...
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In 2005, U.N. Secretary General Koffi Annan was struggling with a series of scandals and other challenges in his administration. I read this short quote in a magazine interview with him and wrote it down in my notebook:
Question: Senator Coleman says you are 'damaged goods.' What do you say to him?Answer: Watch and see.
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Friends in Portland, if you’ll be around on Friday, October 23rd, I’d like to invite you to a benefit dinner and auction for a cause I am proud to support. The Short Version:
What: Dinner and auction for Sisters of the Road, a local non-profit that serves the homeless population in Portland.
When: Friday, October 23rd, 6-10pm (includes dinner, drinks, auction, and something called a “hoedown”)
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Happy Labor Day to everyone in the U.S., and Happy Labour Day to my friends further north. Everyone else in the world, Labor/Labour Day is a U.S. and Canadian holiday when the internet slows down.
Being self-employed, most minor holidays aren't much different from other Mondays for me. The only difference is I get less email because so many other people are away.
Because much of North America is taking the day off, I decided this would be a good time for a new AONC survey.
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After a month at home with no travel, I’m heading back out on the road this week. This time I’m going to Nepal and Bhutan, two countries in South Asia that have eluded me until now. Trip Logistics I used 50,000 American Airlines miles to book a one-way awards trip on Cathay Pacific to Hong…
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While on summer vacation in Utah, I set up an Unconventional Writing Contest with great prizes and the chance to publish here on the hub of World Domination. I’m happy to announce that the results are now in! It was a fierce competition, but by the end, it was also clear who the winners should…
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When 2% of the world's population joined FaceBook a few years ago, I decided to sit it out because I am secretly a luddite. I still don't completely understand it, but I know there are lots of people who don't understand Twitter, so that's OK. Might as well get on the train and see where it leads, right?
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On Thursday night, about 50% of Portland, Oregon descended upon the Pied Cow, a local beer garden to talk about travel, entrepreneurship, blogging, and all kinds of other topics.
At one point a waitress came over to ask what our group was working on, and someone said "World Domination." Nice one. Later on, the same waitress told me we were "the most polite group of non-conformists" she had ever met, which I also appreciated.
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I'm home! What a great trip – I had a nice swing throu South America, successfully avoided deportation in Saudi Arabia, and met with friends and readers at five stops along the way. On the last leg of the trip I picked up what I call "swine flu lite" – I'm not dying, but I haven't been able to do much of anything over the past couple of days. Since I don't get sick very often, I figure I might as well go all the way when it happens. Who needs moderation?
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