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Jun 16, 2008 Cover Story: Stand Up Guy -  Paddle Surfing Could be the Biggest Thing to Come Out of Hawaii Since "Tiny Bubbles." I am at a stage in life where an absence of time and stamina advises against taking up certain activities with any hope for proficiency.  More ... May 01, 2008 Great Dane: Falsled Kro - Robb Report In Karen Blixen’s 1950s short story “Babette’s Feast,” a French woman prepares a life-altering, 10,000-franc dinner for a group of puritan villagers on Denmark’s west coast.  More ... Apr 25, 2008 Dominican Republic - Forbes   Dominican Republic Punta Cana: Yes, you can leave New York after the closing bell and still make landfall in time for dinner and a stogie at this beachside jungle getaway. What is even more remarkable is that, despite the sprawl, there are still places in Punta Cana to get away from it all in luxurious privacy.  More ... Apr 01, 2008 The Skylodge: Park City's New Gathering Spot - Robb Report Since opening last December, The Skylodge (888-876-2525 www.skylodge.com) has become the one thing Park City has always lacked: An elegant central gathering place as glamorous as Park City itself. Located in the midst of the “Sundance Zone” adjoining Park City’s silver era Victorian Main Street and one block from the main chairlift, the Skylodge eschews the usual ski town motifs in favor of ultra-modern loft design perfect for roomy mountain comforts, including a virtual private water park of hot tub, bathtub, and double showers in most of its 33 sleek glass-lined residences.  More ... Mar 01, 2008 Crockery Hunter - Forbes  One morning last November, in a special private skybox overlooking Sotheby’s New York main auction gallery, Richard Baron Cohen, 50, was growing despondent. “This is a collector’s worst nightmare,” he said.  More ... Feb 19, 2008 Mammoth Mountain Ski Guide - The New York Times Mammoth Mountain Ski Area   Mammoth Mountain is as funky, innovative and fun-loving as its state, and it has been that way ever since 1955 when Dave McCoy defied all naysayers by getting the National Forest Service to let him sink a ski lift into this remote mountain where he had found consistently superior snow and great weather.  More ... Jan 11, 2008 For Many a Follower, Sacred Ground in Colorado - The New York Times “TRUST an unknown future with a known God,” urges the sign in front of the Sangre de Cristo Christian Church on the outskirts of Crestone, Colo., which is close to a four-hour drive south of Denver off Highway 17.  More ... Jan 06, 2008 36 Hours in Melbourne, Australia - The New York Times IT’S hard not to feel some sympathy for Melbourne. Often overlooked by travelers as they sprint their way through Australia’s Big Three tourist attractions — the dazzling metropolis of Sydney, the startlingly beautiful Great Barrier Reef and the historic Aboriginal site of Uluru — this laid-back city is a place that takes some time to appreciate.  More ... Dec 28, 2007 The Spirit Moved Them - The New York Times THE SPIRIT MOVED THEM - Finn-Olaf Jones WHEN he was a sophomore at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Fla., Martin Birrittella experienced something that changed how he would spend his free time for the rest of his life — and possibly longer.  More ... Dec 23, 2007 Next Stop: Adelaide A City of Churches Emerges as a Culinary Hub - The New York Times “WE searched all over the world for where we could start the kind of restaurant I always wanted to go to,” said Jim Carreker, who left his job as a chief executive in Silicon Valley to start the much-lauded gastronome hotel, the Louise, in the Barossa Valley in Australia last year.  More ... Dec 11, 2007 Poster Boy - Forbes Dwight Cleveland, a 48-year-old Chicago real estate developer, stares intently as a dry-cleaning squeegee steams the outermost poster from an old movie theater display board he picked up from an antiques dealer in Duluth, Minnesota.  More ... Nov 25, 2007 Pacific Palisade: A Scenic Los Angeles Enclave Without Glitter - The New York Times “Is this really still Los Angeles?” asked Hélène Rottier, a friend from Tahiti, peering across the Santa Monica Mountains obscured in the Wagnerian carpet of mist rising from the Pacific 2,000 feet below.  More ... Oct 29, 2007 Cover Story: Hawaiian Dynasty--The Parker Ranch - Forbes Cover StoryHawaiian Dynasty For 160 years the Parker family ruled Hawaii's Big Island. Today their 150,000-acre ranch is a slice of paradise open to all. The Big Island of Hawaii is one of the strongest drugs you can buy without a prescription.  More ... Oct 29, 2007 The Great Walk of China: Q&A with First People to Walk the Whole Wall - Forbes Life   In March 2007, Tarka L'Herpiniere, 25, and Katie-Jane Cooper, 27, of Devon, England, became the first people on record to have walked the entire Great Wall of China. Their six-month, 3,000-mile trek from Yumenguan Pass in central China to the North Korean border took them over snowcapped mountains, across the Gobi Desert and to a lot of places in between where local delicacies such as cooked dog head were just another way of saying "Howdy, stranger"--a good thing, as the duo spoke little Mandarin.  More ... Oct 29, 2007 The Alisal: Horse for the Holidays - Forbes Santa Ynez Valley: There are few things more worth getting out of bed for thana horse waiting to carry you over the oak-etched Santa Ynez mountains before the morning sun has yanked the Alisal Guest Ranch out of the shadows.  More ... Sep 23, 2007 Forget the Vespa: Making Your 2 Wheels a Bike in Rome - The New York Times CAESAR, clad in a bedsheet toga, lighted a morning cigarette next to a centurion wearing a plastic helmet. Both were leaning against a railing on the slope above the Colosseum. But before anyone snapped their photo, I had coasted 300 yards to the Colosseum’s deserted eastern plaza, where it was easier to conjure the lions’ roars and cheering Romans across 16 centuries.  More ... Sep 17, 2007 Solar Flair - ForbesLife Bertrand Piccard is one of our era's greatest aviators. In 1992 he won the first transatlantic balloon race and then topped himself in 1999 by captaining the first non-stop balloon flight around the world.  More ... Sep 17, 2007 The Starchitect: Frank Gehry - ForbesLife Gehry HouseAs he nears his 80th birthday, Frank Gehry shows no signs of slowing down.They don't hire me to do boxes.-- Frank GehryPrepare for big shiny, curvy buildings coming to a city near you. Cranes will rise in Barcelona, New York, Jerusalem, Las Vegas, Abu Dhabi, Paris and other world centers to construct glass sails, wavy monoliths, bristly multiheaded towers and other alter-the-skyline-forever structures designed by a spectacled, white-haired 78-year-old working out of a bullpen with cardboard furniture in West Los Angeles.  More ... Sep 17, 2007 Chris Buckley: Give me 10 Finn Joneses and I could rule the world! - ForbesLife From the Editor's DeskStyle FileChristopher Buckley Some years ago, a writer with the intriguing name of Finn-Olaf Jones wrote to us, saying that he would like to contribute to the magazine. Executive Editor Patrick Cooke, who has a hound's nose for this sort of thing, announced that it was obviously a nom de plume of some gin-stained wretch seeking to hide money from an ex-wife or the IRS.  More ... Sep 16, 2007 36 Hours in Geneva - The New York Times 36 Hours in Geneva Christophe Margot for The New York Times The United Nations office at the Palais des Nations. By FINN-OLAF JONES Geneva, the political and transportation hub of Europe, is one of those seemingly unavoidable cities.  More ... Jul 29, 2007 On the Edge of Copenhagen, a Place to Unwind - The New York Times "Are you nuts?" The Royal Shooting Club's ancient caretaker was furious with me. Wandering the club's secluded public gardens above the beach three miles north of Copenhagen I had stumbled onto a well-manicured range whose target was hidden in a hedge some 200 feet from a high-powered rifle mounted in the club's dining veranda.  More ... Jul 01, 2007 Bayreuth Without a Ticket; Opera-less in the Realm of Wagner - The New York Times "WHAT'S your favorite Wagner opera?” I jokingly asked the 11-year-old boy wearing a black T-shirt and reversed baseball cap in the back seat of a car in which I'd hitched a ride. “ ‘Siegfried,' ” he answered immediately.  More ... Jun 18, 2007 Monza; the Cathedral of Speed - ForbesLife ITALY Monza: The hordes of Italian Ferrari fans, also known as tifosi, swarmed the tarmac, waving flags with the Ferrari prancing-horse battle standard and greeting the victor of the 2006 Italian Grand Prix with the same hysterical energy their ancestors used in greeting invading Visigoths.  More ... Jun 01, 2007 Minnesota's "Freshwater Ocean" Attracts a New Generation - The New York Times THE Shore,” for most Minnesotans, is the North Shore of Lake Superior. Before Highway 61 — which is more than just a road in Bob Dylan’s mythology — was extended from Duluth to the Canadian border in the 1920s, local Scandinavian fisherman took in summer guests who traveled from the railhead in Duluth north on the postal boat.  More ... May 18, 2007 Not for Kids Only: Seeking Buccaneer Bliss - NY Times BLUE BAYOU, Anaheim, Calif.: Caroline Treadwell, 34, stepped gingerly into a boat, then was launched into the bayou darkness to the soothing sounds of crickets, bullfrogs and the distant strumming of a banjo.  More ... Apr 23, 2007 Lenin Slept Here: St. Pete's Hotel Astoria - Forbes RUSSIA St. Petersburg: For those who expect the Hotel Astoria, St. Petersburg's most glamorous hotel, to be anything like its newer, glitzier competitors on the nearby Nevsky Prospekt, the first sight of the stark, even forbidding building across from St.  More ... Apr 23, 2007 Trekker - Forbes Science-fiction legend Ray Bradbury's idea of exotic travel has always been a little bit...different. Few people have covered more intellectual and physical territory than Ray Bradbury, author of 58 books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man and other required reading for modern civilization, both domestic and extraterrestrial.  More ... Mar 16, 2007 Big Changes at Big Sur - NY Times Like anyone who builds in Big Sur, Zachary and Langka Treadwell had to satisfy a lot of California and local environmental regulations. Their hillside home, a cube of glass and rock, has a sod roof.  More ... Mar 12, 2007 Fashion House - Forbes There have been milestones in the 16 years of this magazine's life span. In 1991, we announced that the Soviet government was going to auction off the embalmed corpse of Lenin. In 1995, we were credited with forcing NATO's intervention during the Balkan crisis.  More ... Mar 12, 2007 A Room of Our Own - ForbesLife Enter the ForbesLife Penthouse at the Beverly Wilshire and slip into something a little more comfortable. When the bold, beautiful and well-read need a place to unwind above the klieg-light glare of Los Angeles, they have a brand-new option: the ForbesLife Penthouse at the Beverly Wilshire at the foot of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.  More ... Feb 09, 2007 Sea Change for a Dad - The New York Times Richard Patterson for The New York Times An adults-only area, during a Caribbean cruise DISNEY theme parks, with their perpetually long lines and aggressive merchandising, have always seemed about as enticing to me as getting mugged by the Seven Dwarfs.  More ... Jan 12, 2007 In Obliging Waco, Dr Pepper Is the King - NYTimes American Journeys In Obliging Waco, Dr Pepper Is the King The Texas Ranger museum preserves the mystique of the famous law enforcers of the Old West days. YOU step off the plane, rent a car and notice a gun club off the side of the airport access road.  More ... Dec 11, 2006 Heritage Books - ForbesLife LOS ANGELES Hollywood: Ben Weinstein and his assistant gingerly pull an ancient, atlas-sized French book off the shelf and lay it on their oak library table. The copper clasps unfasten and the stiff covers open to reveal not vellum pages but an antique toilet seat on a hinge.  More ... Dec 01, 2006 Back to Nature in Estes Park, Colo., Off Season in the Shadow of the Rockies - NYTimes THE large bull elk was calmly walking down the main street of Estes Park, Colo., turning his head this way and that, his five-foot antlers waving in the night air. A lone car approached him and slowed to a crawl, but the elk just kept to his window-shopping pace until he reached his goal: a dozen elk cows huddled like truants in front of the closed Dairy Queen.  More ... Oct 30, 2006 The 2007 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano grips the road like a slot car. - ForbesLife The 2007 Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano grips the road like a slot car.   It's sometimes said that Ferraris are for egomaniacs.  More ... Oct 30, 2006 Sport School for Skids - Forbes   MotoVentures students are requested to bring an exceptional sense of balance, flawless timing and ball-bearings of steel.  More ... Oct 20, 2006 A Pour. A Staredown. A Civilized Bonding. - NYTimes I WAS a colicky and fussy baby. During a visit to my grandparents’ farm in Denmark, my grandmother found the antidote to my fidgeting; two or three drops of aquavit — a vodka-like elixir beloved by Scandinavians — into the baby bottle, and I would calm down.  More ... Sep 22, 2006 36 Hours in College Station, Tex - NYTimes THE college in College Station is the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, a k a Texas A&M, home of the Aggies. Beyond the sprawling, oak-lined lawns of the university, alumni Aggies have established vineyards, restaurants, hotels and enough bars and honky-tonks to claim plausibly that College Station and the neighboring town of Bryan have more drinking establishments per capita than anywhere else in the United States.  More ... Sep 18, 2006 Danish Designer Invades Beverly Hills - Forbes Life The phrase "pregnant duck pitcher" said aloud in L.A. inevitably will have locals asking if there's a role in it for them. But perish such showbizzy thoughts now that Georg Jensen, the Danish company, has opened its first West Coast jewelry boutique in Beverly Hills.  More ... Sep 18, 2006 Falsled Kro brings flavor to Denmark - Forbes Life Denmark   Falsled: During a recent visit to Denmark, having endured endless meals of porridge, boiled potatoes and other unflavored items that my Old World relatives somehow believe will build character, I realized I might never get my wife to return to Scandinavia.  More ... Sep 18, 2006 The Right Touch - Forbes       Peter Westbrook is discovering future Olympic fencing champions in New York's inner city.   Scanning the team photos cluttering the walls of the venerable New York Fencers Club on West 25th Street, it would be a cinch to presume that the "Sport of Princes" was the exclusive domain of Waspish-looking men with upper lips as stiff as a Park Avenue cocktail.  More ... Aug 29, 2006 Tourism Stripping Everest Bare - National Geographic When I first visited the Khumbu in 1951 the forests were superb—big trees up to an altitude of 13,000 feet (3,900 meters) and extensive areas of azaleas and juniper shrubs…up to 16,000 feet [4,900 meters]," recalls Edmund Hillary in his book, View From the Summit.  More ... Jul 14, 2006 An Impala's-Eye View of Highway History - NY Times CROSS COUNTRY Fifteen Years and Ninety Thousand Miles on the Roads and Interstates of America with Lewis and Clark, a Lot of Bad Motels, a Moving Van, Emily Post, Jack Kerouac, My Wife, My Mother-in-Law, Two Kids, and Enough Coffee to Kill an Elephant.  More ... Jun 19, 2006 Mixed Media - Forbes WHERE MEN HIDE, by James B. Twitchell, photographs by Ken Ross; Columbia University Press; $25 Who knew that reaching for another “tall boy” in the Barcalounger could be so fraught with ancient, ritualistic meaning? James Twitchell does, and after reading this provocative book, you will, too.  More ... Jun 04, 2006 The Danish Soul of That Town in 'Sideways - NYTimes DRIVE along Highway 246 in California which rolls through the hilly ranch country 36 miles north of Santa Barbara, and you will suddenly find yourself in the middle of — Gud i Himlen! — 18th-century Denmark.  More ... May 18, 2006 A Hideout of His Own - New York Times A Hideout of His Own Ben Garvin for The New York Times Fuller Cowles tracks weather from his cupola, 24 feet from his living room, straight up.  By FINN-OLAF JONES Published: May 18, 2006 ALL those flowers and designs," said Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington.  More ... May 08, 2006 Houdini in the Desert - Forbes Copperfield has grossed $1 billion.   HOUDINI IN THE DESERT The greatest collection of magic in the world lies hidden inside a nondescript Las Vegas warehouse.  More ... May 04, 2006 Presto: Your Own Collection - Forbes New York - Collecting magic memorabilia is a complicated business. Not only are there many different collectibles subsets--from magician’s throw cards to large scale illusions--but the prices can be affected by movies and books.  More ... Apr 24, 2006 On the Top: San Francisco's Mandarin Oriental Hotel - ForbesLife Travel San Francisco: Guests heading to their rooms in San Francisco’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel can look forward to an unusually long elevator ride: All the accommodations are on the top 11 floors of the city’s third-tallest building.  More ... Apr 24, 2006 It's De Limit, It's Deluxe, It's De-Lovely - Forbes Jazz Age architects Schultze and Weaver ushered in the era of luxury hotels with masterpieces like the Waldorf-Astoria, The Breakers and the Los Angeles Biltmore. Eighty-five years later, their work is getting a second look.  More ... Apr 09, 2006 Into the Wild With Ted Nugent, the Oprah of Hunting - Chicago Tribune   Into the wild with Ted Nugent, the Oprah of hunting By Finn-Olaf Jones - Special to the TribuneSPIRITWILD RANCH, WACO, Texas -- The fox prowled the edge of a line of trees, seeking a wild turkey or some other snack before sunset.  More ... Mar 19, 2006 Death Valley, Calif.: These Ghost Towns Have Clean Sheets - NYTimes The ghost town of Cerro Gordo, Calif. Journeys Death Valley, Calif.: These Ghost Towns Have Clean Sheets IN the moonlight 8,200 feet up on the ridgeline of the Inyo Mountains, one can make out the remains of a dozen miners' shacks slung across a ravine almost eight miles up a steep dirt road twisting up from the desert plains of Owens Valley.  More ... Dec 12, 2005 My Father's Library - Forbes One man spent a lifetime collecting the books that would teach his son about life--even after they started disappearing. During the months after my father's debilitating stroke, his second wife divorced him, his bank accounts were emptied, his furniture disappeared, the cat ran away and a trio of booksellers purchased his book collection.  More ... Nov 29, 2005 Yamaha's Roadliner purrs like a mistress at Tiffany's - Forbes FYI Twenty years ago, the Harley fanatics at Sturgis used to drop Japanese motorcycles from a 100-foot crane. Today they aren't so smug. Consider the 2006 Roadliner S, the vanguard of Yamaha's stand-alone premium brand, Star Motorcycles.  More ... Nov 04, 2005 Einstein on the Beach: The Ph.D.'s of Culebra - NYTimes SOMETIMES, a place is a paradise because nothing ever happens there. On the island of Culebra, 17 miles off the east coast of Puerto Rico, the thing not happening for Marcus P. Knowlton, a Princeton University lecturer in aerospace engineering, and his wife, Merry, a stockbroker, was nuclear fallout.  More ... Oct 31, 2005 Hotel National, Moscow - Forbes   Moscow: The formidable Hotel National, within easy rifle range of Red Square, is one of the 20th century's great survivors. Now being run to five-star standards by Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts, this 1903 eclectic art nouveau jewel is reclaiming its czarist-era prominence as Moscow's most elegant hotel.  More ... Aug 28, 2005 In Moscow, the Old Party Is Gone and a New One Beckons - NYTimes ENTER into the cavernous nightclub where three middle-aged men are playing industrial music on homemade electric instruments while young men in black and young women with bared midriffs gyrate on the dance floor.  More ... Jul 17, 2005 On Water's Edge, a Land Where Art Flowered - NYTimes WHEN most people think of Denmark, they imagine the Baltic version: Lilliputian towns rising out of compact fields, flat landscapes and narrow beaches overlooking close horizons where boats never sail out of sight.  More ... Apr 25, 2005 Landlord's Fantasy: Henry Darger's Nonrefundable Deposit - Forbes Your mysterious tenant dies, leaving behind $2 million in odd art. Talk about nonrefundable deposits.What was he up to all those years in that cold and shabby room? Other tenants could hear him shouting late at night, arguing--though Henry Darger lived alone.  More ... Apr 07, 2005 Iron Giants - Forbes L.A.'s Petersen Automotive Museum has gathered the classic muscle cars of the '60s and '70s. Their brawny beauty hasn't changed, but the price tags have. Long before airbags, headrests, cup holders and other such clutter, there were muscle cars.  More ... Mar 04, 2005 In Death Valley, a Technicolor Season - NYTimes In Death Valley, a Technicolor Season J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times A NEW VISTA Desert gold sunflowers are among the wildflowers that are thriving already near Jubilee Pass in Desert Valley.  More ... Feb 27, 2005 Books in Los Angeles - NYTimes FORAGING Books in Los Angeles Jamie Rector for The Mew York Times Given that the career of many a great author (think Fitzgerald or Faulkner) died in Los Angeles, it seems appropriate that one of the city's finest literary institutions - the Heritage Book Shop on Melrose Avenue, with thousands of rare books and manuscripts - is housed in a former mortuary.  More ... Apr 01, 2002 From Russia with Lomo - USAir Attache David Byrne, Fidel Castro, Brian Eno and Yasser Arafat probably don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, but they do share an identical, slightly distorted vision of the world through their personal Lomo Kompakt Automat 35 millimeter cameras—one of the most unlikely hipster products to come out of the Cold War.  More ... Nov 12, 2001 Into Finn Air - Forbes Mayhem erupts on Mt. Everest as an e-mail goes astray. "It's all bullshit on Everest these days."--Sir Edmund Hillary I stood in the sharp sunlight near my tent at Nepal's Everest Base Camp, in May 2000, sipping a mug of tea and scanning the route I was to take for my summit push the next day.  More ... Jun 11, 2001 Austrian Attitude - Forbes A pair of Viennese turned a shoddy Soviet-era camera into a fad item. What makes them think they can do the same for a wireless device? Second acts--even for a marketing whiz like Richard Branson-- are tough to pull off.  More ... May 01, 2001 It's Fun to Stay at the YMCA - Outside The last words in many a climber’s career aren’t, as one might expect, some interesting variation of  “off belaaaaaaaaaaay” but rather something more domestic. “I’m pregnant,” my wife announced four years ago, and suddenly I foresaw long days spent blissfully lost on big mountains being replaced by sterile vacations with Mickey, Donald & Co.  More ... Jan 01, 2001 Base Instinct - Outside Thanks to all the trekkers who came to visit us at Base Camp. Let me tell you, you were the sanest people there."   —Gavin Bate, after leading this year's first successful expedition up the Nepalese side of Mount Everest.  More ... Sep 23, 2000 The Battle of Chancellorsville - The Discovery Channel   Four-day Discovery.com  webcast that ran concurrent with Discovery Channel show on the Civil War DAY I:   On the bank of the Rappahannock Crossing the Rappahannock Into General Lee's TerritoryBy Finn-Olaf Jones Chancellorsville, Virginia--Early this morning, in the chilly moonlight, your correspondent walked across the Rappahannock River on a surprisingly stable pontoon bridge hastily constructed by Union troops.  More ... Mar 03, 2000 The Travel Channel Best Beaches: Cape May, New Jersey - The Travel Channel Some believe that good things come to those who wait, and finding a decent beach in New Jersey may be the best test to that theory. Far down the Jersey Shore, beyond syringe-on-the-beach jokes, beyond thong-thronged boardwalks, beyond the point where anyone says "Joizey" is the Grande Old Dame of the Eastern Shore, Cape May.  More ... Mar 01, 2000 Morocco By Camel: A Tea in the Sahara - National Geographic Traveler I blame it on a Minnesota childhood spent watching  “Lawrence of Arabia” and “Beau Geste” too many times while arctic winds piled snow high against the windowpanes. During these years a seed was firmly planted in my mind that out there, beyond this landscape of icy forests and frozen lakes, was a deliriously exotic sun-bleached terrain which held the promise of adventure without the obligation of a snowmobile suit.  More ... Jul 01, 1999 Climbing Mont Blanc - Adventure Travel I  met Gary and Hamish on the bus from Geneva to Chamonix. They had eyed my climbing gear and I had eyed the row of Scottish peaks tattooed to Gary's forearm and we decided to join forces for a climb up Mont Blanc.  More ... Jan 07, 1999 Longs Peak; America's Matterhon - Adventure Travel A full moon lit up the fresh snow between the thick pines allowing me to save on the batteries in the flashlight I’d taped to my wool hat (somewhere out there, forgotten in some drawer in my home, lies an expensive, state-of-the art headlamp that has yet to be used).  More ... Jan 04, 1999 Mount Roraima: Journey to the Lost World - Adventure Travel After the half day bus ride through the Brazilian jungle on a long pile of rocks that some hard-butted engineer called a "road," after passing through five interminably thorough military checkpoints, after a spine-crushing Landrover  ride through rough savannah and raging streams, and after a two-day hike through a series of steep hills and rivers which were forded by nosing your worldly goods in an inflated plastic bag through chest-high water , Martin, the diminutive Pemón Indian guide whom I had hired in the thatched village fifteen miles behind me told me that, no, he would not take me up Mount Roraima unless I doubled the fee we'd already agreed upon.  More ... Jan 01, 1999 The Matterhorn on Drugs - Adventure Travel Magazine Everyone on the Matterhorn gets summit fever. Finn-Olaf Jones had a little help. Preparing for an upcoming honeymoon to Africa, I made the mistake of getting yellow fever shots five days before going off for a brief climbing stopover in Switzerland.  More ... Apr 25, 1998 The Legion marches on - Forbes So, are you ready to join?" the recruiting Sergeant glowers at me. "Can I bring my wife?" I gamely counter. The Sergeant looks at me as if calculating where he wants to stick the bayonet.  More ... Mar 09, 1998 Basket Cases - Forbes TO PARAPHRASE TOLSTOY, ALL GOOD HOT-air balloon landings resemble each other. Each bad landing is bad in its own way.The good landings, which occur more than 99.9% of the time, usually go something like this: your chase crew have successfully followed you in their van to the spot where you want to touch down.  More ... Nov 17, 1997 How I Spent My Summit Vacation - Forbes On my first morning approaching Aconcagua, I unzipped my tent and came face-to-face with my pack mule. Unfortunately, he was dead. His eyes were frozen in a determined expression, as if before expiring he had finally made up his mind to approach me and ask for a raise.  More ... Aug 16, 1997 Vive L'Amerique! Vive Budweiser! Vive Mickey! - Forbes I opened my bank account in Paris with a bank representative whose last name was, reassuringly enough, Million. Returning to my office after interminable form filling I was promptly called by Monsieur Million who invited me to his family's home that evening for dinner.  More ... Jul 12, 1997 French Paperwork -- a moveable feast for the 90s - Forbes Hemingway labeled his memories of the years spent savoring Paris' wine, women and Stein "A Moveable Feast." I am fond of this city, too, and thanks to Paris' omnipresent bureaucracy, my favorite souvenirs are almost equally portable; my wallet is bulging with multicolored fiches, tickets, resus, cartes and other numbered, stamped and triplicated delights.  More ... Nov 25, 1996 Hemingway's Apartment: The Price Also Rises - Forbes "Home in the rue Cardinal Lemoine was a two-room flat that had no hot water and no inside toilet facilities except an anti-septic container, not uncomfortable to anyone who was used to a Michigan outhouse.  More ... Nov 30, 1999 Best Vacation Spots to Get Lost - TravelChannel.com Location: Swiss AlpsWhat's Cool: Vacationing on the roof of Europe in an ancient Augustine monastery-----------------------------------------This ancient crossing place 12,000 feet up in the Swiss Alps has hosted Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hemingway, and many a lost wanderer rescued by the famous Saint Bernard dogs.  More ... Nov 30, 1999 Best Vacation Spots to Get Lost - TravelChannel.com 7. Furnace Creek Inn Location: Death Valley, CaliforniaWhat's Cool: Lush desert oasis in the middle of nowhere-----------------------------------------First-time visitors driving amid Death Valley's arid features — with cheery names like Devil's Golf Course, Dante's View or Funeral Peaks — inevitably wonder if it's possible for anyone to survive for long out here.  More ... Nov 30, 1999 Best Vacation Spots to Get Lost - Travel Channel.com 5. Denali West Lodge Location: Lake Minchumina, AlaskaWhat's Cool: Lakeside living in Alaska's roadless forests-----------------------------------------Far out in the roadless wilderness surrounding Alaska's Mt.  More ... Nov 30, 1999 Morocco: Dealing with Street Hustlers - National Geographic.com: Traveler | Learn more | Online Exclusive Savory fare ladens stalls in Marrakech’s Djemaa el-Fna. Photograph by Brooks Walker Turning down the road toward the village of Aït Benhaddou, our car was approached by a young boy frantically waving for us to stop.  More ... Nov 30, 1999 A Tradition to Sip - NYTimes To the Editor: I read ''A Pour. A Staredown. A Civilized Bonding.'' (Oct. 20) by Finn-Olaf Jones with heartfelt interest. As a Norwegian-American I can fondly relate to all the warm and wonderful tales of sharing aquavit on cold nights, special and not-so-special occasions.  More ...