Malcolm Shabazz — a cautionary traveler’s tale

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© William Perry | Dreamstime.com

© William Perry | Dreamstime.com

The grandson of a civil rights legend lost his life because he was targeted as a foreigner in one of the oldest scams around. Could this have happened to you? Don’t let it.

When word first surfaced that Malcolm Shabazz, the 29-year-old grandson of civil rights icon Malcolm X, had been killed in Mexico City, more than a few jumped to the conclusion that he had been “assassinated” by nameless sinister forces associated with “the government.”

It does indeed appear that the unfortunate young Mr. Shabazz was targeted. Not by some nefarious all-seeing spy agency, but by a couple of bar girls from one of Mexico City’s more notorious neighborhoods.

They apparently lured him and a Mexican friend to a dive called the Palace Bar, not far from Plaza Garibaldi, a popular tourist spot famed for its strolling mariachi musicians. There, they hung out with the girls until about 3 a.m., when the waiters presented them with their bill: an outrageous $1,200.

When they refused to pay up, things turned deadly.

This scam as old as alcohol itself, and you don’t have to be in Mexico to run afoul of it.

There’s not a thing wrong with hitting the clubs and partying when you travel. If you let yourself get too relaxed, however, you very easily could walk face-first into trouble you never saw coming.

In Mexico City, the Palace Bar is in a neighborhood called Tepito, whose reputation for crime predates the arrival of Cortez and the Spanish conquistadores. When tourists wander into areas like this, it’s like dropping Charlie the Tuna in front of Jaws. The results are predictable.

But you don’t have to be a tourist.

A good friend of mine, a professional photographer from Britain who had worked in some of the most dangerous settings in the world, decided to live in Mexico City and work as a freelancer. Smart and streetwise as he was, though, even he wandered into places with his cameras where he shouldn’t have gone.

He ended up being mugged, twice, losing his gear and some of his teeth.

As a traveler, you don’t have home-field advantage. You always need to know where you are — and where you shouldn’t be.

How do you find that out?

Do a little research before you leave home. Consult a good guide, such as those published in book form or online by Frommer’s or Lonely Planet. Tap into Trip Advisor on the Web.

Once you’re “in country,” ask around. You can always find someone knowledgable willing to steer you away from trouble. And always be aware of your surroundings. Neighborhoods can go from pristine to problematic in as little as one block.

Some guys will all the warning signs. They think they’re invulnerable, too smart, too “badass,” too something. They do their deepest thinking somewhere south of their beltlines.

You know what I’m talking about.

As a mainstream journalist, I saw a lot of guys like that over the years. Mostly, I saw their names, on police reports…or death certificates.

The death of Malcolm Shabazz is a cautionary tale of what can befall travelers who let their guards down.

Whenever you go in the world, you’re free to throw caution to the wind. Just know that the wind may not return it.

Reposition yourself, Part 1

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First of a two-part series

Cruise ships Zuiderdam and Celebrity Solstice docked in San Diego.

Cruise ships Zuiderdam, foreground, and Celebrity Solstice in San Diego. — ©IBIT/G. Gross

There are bargains to be had on cruises and airline flights that don’t fit the regular schedules. In Part 1, we look at repositioning cruises.

Whether for maintenance, the change of seasons or a shift in marketing strategy, cruise lines occasionally have to relocate their vessels. The travel industry calls this “repositioning.”

And it can work out to be a good deal for you.

From the industry side of things, the logic behind selling repositioning trips is easy to grasp. If they have to move the ship or the plane, anyway, why not make some money from it, even if it’s less than what they’d make on a regular round-trip

That’s the thing about repositioning trips, you see: They’re nearly always one-way.

The cruise industry in particular has been doing this for decades, shifting vessels from frigid European waters in the winter months to warmer Caribbean climes, and vice versa. These position changes occur in the spring and fall.

In recent years, the cruise industry has found a different reason to move their ships around, shifting them to hot new non-traditional markets around the globe. Fifteen years ago, it was Europe. Now, it’s Asia and the Middle East.

For cruise travelers, repositioning makes for a very different kind of cruise.

Most cruises typically last from three to five days. You start from Port A, visit Ports B through E in short order, depending on the number of days the cruise lasts, then return to the port from which you first departed.

Repositioning cruises can be as short as three nights or as long as four months.

At first, these were strictly “deadhead” trips, starting in one port and ending in another, with several consecutive days at sea in between. Nowadays, many repositioning cruises manage to work in several port calls on their one-way sailings.

What’s more, cabin prices on repositioning cruises can see some major markdowns — sometimes in excess of 75 percent.

Do I have your attention now?

If the only cruising you’ve ever done has been on Carnival or Royal Caribbean vessels, the bargains you can find on repositioning cruises might give you a chance to check out some of the high-end luxury lines that otherwise would be financially well out of reach.

Even with discounts that big, repositioning cruises aren’t necessarily dirt-cheap. So how do you know if you’re getting a good deal?

The traditional way to calculate the answer — not just for repositioning cruises, but any cruise — is to divide the total price per person for the entire cruise by the number of days.

If it comes in under $100 a day, that’s not bad.

If it works out to less than $75 a day, it’s may be a steal.

If it adds up to $50 a day or less…what are you waiting for?

Here’s one example of a repositioning cruise I pulled off the Web:
Royal Caribbean Splendour of the Seas
Barcelona, Spain – Sao Paulo, Brasil
15 nights
$799
That works out to $53 a day.

Some repo cruises have gone as low as $35 per day. You’d be hard-pressed to do that well on a land-based vacation.

You will have an added expense on these cruises, namely your return flight home. But with the money you can save on the cruise itself, that might not be such a hardship.

Repositioning cruises are not for everybody. Even on those that make multiple port calls, you’ll spend the vast majority of your time at sea, aboard ship. If you need a lot of on-board activities and hype to keep you distracted, this kind of cruising may not be for you.

But if you love the idea of being at sea for days at a time, away from the cell phone and the cable TV, able to read, exercise or just chill to your heart’s content, a repo cruise is worth a look.

Any good travel agent, especially those specializing in cruise travel, can hook you up with a repositioning cruise. So too can the various individual cruise lines.

If you’d rather do it yourself, VacationsToGo.com and its spinoff, RepositioningCruise.com always have lists of repo cruises on sale.

About.com offers a bare-bones listing of the cruise ships being featured on repositioning runs this spring and fall.

Next time, we’ll look at the airlines’ version of repositioning and how to make it work for you.

Traffic, San Diego style

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SD cruise ships
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Images by ©IBIT/G. Gross. All rights reserved.

“America’s Finest City” is both cruise port and destination in one.

As you can see, our traffic jams are not like your traffic jams. Especially down along the Embarcadero, San Diego’s waterfront on San Diego Bay.

I was reminded of that recently when three cruise ships — the Zuiderdam from Holland America, the Celebrity Solstice and the Oceania Regatta — all tied up here on the same morning.

The pier can handle as many as four at a time. I haven’t seen that yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

By today’s standards, both the Zuiderdam and Celebrity Solstice would be considered mid-sized cruise ships, but these are two big, hulking mothers when viewed up close, especially 2,850-passenger Solstice, which looks as if it could swallow Regatta and her 600 passengers whole…and ask for seconds.

But what Regatta lacks in size, she more than makes up in 5-star luxury. A cruise on this baby, even in one of her cheapest inside cabins, will set you back thousands of dollars.

Where other debarking cruise tourists have to make their way past industrial-grunge docks and warehouses, when you leave the ship in San Diego, you get to stroll by hotels, a couple of high-end restaurants…and the Maritime Museum of San Diego.

This museum isn’t overlooking the water; it’s on the water, a collection of historic and replica vessels from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, everything from sailing ships to submarines.

But it’s not about novelty as much as it is about convenience. Cruise ships dock at the Broadway Pier, so named because it’s at the foot of Broadway, downtown San Diego’s main drag.

In other cities that welcome cruise ships, you may need a taxi or shuttle bus to take you from the pier to your hotel. Here, you can just cross the street.

Like its airport, Lindbergh Field, San Diego’s cruise ship terminal is practically downtown. The moment you arrive, you’ve arrived.

The Santa Fe train station, from which Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner train takes passengers between San Diego and Los Angeles, is a one-block walk from the pier. You could fly into LAX, take a comfortable, scenic two-hour train ride down to SAN, then hop on your cruise ship.

It’s all good for cruise travelers in a place like San Diego, which is not only a major jump-off point for cruise vacations, but a destination in its own right.

It means that, if you time and plan it right, you can enjoy two vacations more or less for the price of one. Arrive a day or two before your San Diego cruise departs, or stay a day or two after it returns. The ocean. The mountains. The desert. Sea World, Seaport Village, the Gaslamp Quarter, Horton Plaza. Catch a baseball game at Petco Park.

When you add it all up, San Diego is really value-added vacationing at its best.

Going long? Get in Travel Shape!

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© Baz777 | Dreamstime.com

© Baz777 | Dreamstime.com

New airliners with longer range mean more hours in the air for travelers. Your best chance of reducing the misery? Get yourself ready.

It was the 19th century American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson who first declared that “life is a journey, not a destination.”

Love your work, Ralph, but you never spent 16 hours in an airline Coach seat.

Hammered by high fuel prices like the rest of us, the airlines are clamoring for passenger jets to fly ever farther on one load of fuel — and Boeing and Airbus have designs in the works to give them exactly what they want.

That means the next generation of passenger jets will be spending more time in the air, which means you will be spending more time in the air.

If you have enough cash or frequent-flier miles, seriously consider buying your way out of Coach — or as I like to call it, Sardine Class. And for those really long international flights, you’d do well to go with a 5-star airline like Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific or Emirates.

(NOTE: When you need to find a 5-star airline, go to the airline review Web site Skytrax. Don’t worry; there aren’t that many.)

But spending double-digit hours in an aluminum tube at 35,000 feet isn’t much fun, no matter where you sit on the airplane.

So what can we do about all this? Actually, more than you think. Preparation is the key.

Prepare your body
Use the time before your trip to get in shape. Walk. Ride a bike. Swim. Go the gym. Tighten up your diet. You don’t have to train for the Olympics, but being more fit will leave you better equipped to handle all the stresses of travel — not just the flight.

But it’s not just your body that needs some prep.

Know your airplane
Before you book your flight, get to know your airplane. Using the Internet, you can find out:

  • What type of aircraft the airline uses on your specific flight.
  • Get seat information for that plane on that flight — a seat map, leg room (measured in inches and called “seat pitch”), hip room, amenities (electric outlets, etc.), and other factors (whether your seat has storage space underneath, whether your armrests are movable or fixed).
  • In-flight entertainment options. What movies will be shown, what kinds of music and/or games are available.
  • Meal information, including special meals you can order in advance.

Choose your seat according what’s most important to you. Don’t let the airline sit you just anywhere if you can avoid it.

Use the info about the entertainment options on board to determine whether you need to bring your own music and/or reading material, or whether you can get by with what the airline offers.

Eat, drink and be merry
The same is true of meals. In-flight magazines published by airlines sometimes contain menus for your flight, broken down by seat class. Check the online version of the magazine, or ask the airline to mail you a copy.

Also, consider ordering one of the airline’s special meals. They don’t cost extra, are often better than the standard airline fare and you’ll probably be served ahead of your seatmates.

The only catch: The airlines need at least three days’ advance notice if you want a special meal.

Keep yourself hydrated. That means water or juices. Go easy on the alcohol — or better yet, avoid it completely.

Pack wisely, and sparingly
There’s a delicate balancing act when packing for a long flight. The trick is to bring just what you need, and no more. And that’s not something you can work out at the last minute.

Shoes that you can easily slip on and off without laces not only will help speed you through airport security, but make you a lot more comfortable if your feet and ankles swell in flight, which happens often.

Those horseshoe-shaped neck pillows you see some travelers using maybe look bizarre, but they do make it easier to sleep on the plane. The tradeoff: They’re bulky and hard to carry…unless you get a good inflatable kind, which you can find from travel suppliers like REI, Magellans, Travelsmith, Travel Essentials or Le Travel Store here in San Diego.

A lightweight, easily packable jacket or sweater can help for those hours when the cabin’s air conditioning system becomes a little too efficient.

If you can’t afford those pricey noise-canceling headphones, try in-ear headphones to help block out the engine noise. Plain earplugs will help you sleep better.

Do your ears hurt because of pressure changes during takeoffs or landings? There are pressure-equalizing earplugs that can help you with that.

Mind games
While waiting to board your marathon flight, change your watch to the time zone at your destination. The sooner you get your mind and body in synch with the time over there, the less trouble you will have with jet lag when you arrive.

Once you’re airborne, trying dividing your flight hours into manageable chunks of time — say, two to four hours — and plan what you want to do with each segment. Read. Listen to music. Watch a movie. Get up and stretch. Sleep.

Breaking that double-digit flight time into single-digit segments will make you feel a little more in control and a bit less of a prisoner. And if you end up sleeping through a planned segment or two, so much the better.

Whatever you choose to do in those chunks of time, focus on it, concentrate, engross yourself in it — to the point that you don’t think to check your watch or the time on your cell phone. Use the alarm in your watch or cell phone to alert you when you’ve finished one of your segments.

The clock that knows it’s being watched can bring Time to a standstill, on an airplane.

For the same reason, try not to look at that moving map on the in-flight monitor that shows your plane’s position, at least until after you complete a segment.

When you want to sleep for awhile, put your seatbelt on, even if the overhead seatbelt light is off. If the plane hits a little turbulence while you’re snoozing, the flight attendant won’t have to wake you up to have you put your belt on.

There’s not much that’s going to make transoceanic or transcontinental flights a good time, but with a little preparation and a few tricks, you can make it bearable.

Can you help document some history?

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A documentary film crew needs donations to help fund a feature-length program on the first all-black American team of climbers to take on North America’s tallest mountain.

Yeah, I know. Your mailbox and your email get flooded daily with people pitching you for money — charities, politicians, you name it.

This one’s more than a little different.

Next month, a team of nine mountaineers will attempt to climb Denali, aka Mount McKinley, the highest peak on the North American continent.

Nine young black American mountaineers, the first such team ever to make this attempt.

The National Outdoor Leadership School helped train them for the climb. Now, NOLS wants to take a crew from Distill Productions in Montana to record it for a documentary, but they need $107,500 to do it.

They’re trying to raise the money online via Kickstarter, which has agreed to finance the project…IF they raise the money before the deadline, which is less than 48 hours from now.

So far, they’ve raised about $79,000 in pledges, which puts them $28,500 short, with two days left.

Kickstarter won’t fund the documentary for anything less than the whole amount, so getting close won’t cut it here. It’s the $107,500…or nothing.

Can we help these folks out a little bit? You can donate as little as $1, and there are rewards for donors at levels above a buck.

As for the climbers themselves, Denali isn’t the end of anything. They’re out to bag each of the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each of the world’s seven continents.

And yes, that includes Mount Everest.

It also includes Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, which actually has a higher failure rate among climbers than Everest.

These mountains are no joke. Somebody dies on these peaks nearly every year.

This is an inspirational story of nine black Americans who have worked and trained hard to take on one of the world’s toughest climbs. And seriously, couldn’t we all use a little inspiration right now?

Wouldn’t you love, just one time, to turn on your television or log on to YouTube and see something other than the usual mass media force-feeding of stories about crime, drugs, single mothers, deadbeat fathers, kids with sagging pants and which rapper got arrested today?

How cool would it be to turn on the box and see something to show us that we can do anything — and that in fact, we already do everything?

This is not strictly a black thing, however. The Denali climbers want to inspire all of us who live strictly urban lives to re-connect to the natural world, something we need for our physical and mental well-being.

It doesn’t have to be anything as daunting as climbing towering mountains. There are beaches, hiking trails, bike-riding trails in or near our own communities. How many of us live within a four-hour drive of one of America’s great national parks, but have never been to one?

That needs to change, and these six brothers and three sisters are part of a small but growing movement to lead that change.

A click on this link will take you to the Kickstarter campaign where you can make your contribution.

Honestly, it shouldn’t even be necessary to do this. CNN, National Geographic, even BET and AspireTV should be all over this event. But that’s a conversation for another time.

How many times have we heard friends and family complain that there aren’t enough positive programs about black Americans on TV? How many times have you made that same lament yourself? Well, here’s a chance to help get one on the air.

How about it? Can we climb this mountain? Let’s go!

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Climb every mountain

The death of Black Atlas

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American Airlines’ online attempt to reach out to the black travel market quietly fades away. Was it just a casualty of the airline’s merger with US Airways — or its own scattered focus?

Four years ago, American Airlines brought forth on the Internet Black Atlas, a social media site that boldly proclaimed itself to be “your passport to the black experience.”

That passport has been revoked.

When you try to log onto BlackAtlas.com today, what you will see instead is this:

“Thanks for visiting BlackAtas.com. We’ve got a new flight path…aa.com”

“aa.com” is the default Web site for American Airlines. The message goes on to say that “BlackAtlas.com will become a part of the larger American Airlines travel community, and we hope you will continue to visit.”

Which is fine, except that you can’t visit Black Atlas…at all. It’s gone, history, past tense.

According to American Airlines spokeswoman Dori Alvarez, Black Atlas shut down April 29, but AA execs made the decision to pull the plug on the site late last year.

Ms. Alvarez also said the decision came entirely from within American’s management, not US Airways, American’s new senior airline partner.

“The merger itself did not impact this decision,” she said. “Rather, it is part of American’s new global strategy. We are focusing on more actively engaging all of our customers using American’s own communication channels, including aa.com, email and other digital / social media programs.”

That bit about “using American’s own communication channels” is telling because Black Atlas was not an American Airlines creation. It was put together for the airline by what Ms. Alvarez would describe only as “an outside vendor.”

Right from the jump, Black Atlas seemed to be swaggering through a minefield, from the moment it branded itself as “your passport to the black experience.” If you were born black in America, you’re already living the black experience. Do you need an airline to take you to it?

Probably not.

The goal for Black Atlas, as stated on its home page, was to become “the premiere destination for sophisticated African-American travelers.” Such travelers had little real need for such a site. How does digitally preaching to the proverbial choir grow your share of any market?

In strategic terms, the site seemed unfocused. Was Black Atlas trying to bring in new black travelers, or encourage more trips by its existing ones?

I was especially put off by what came across to me as condescension, as I said in my initial look at Black Atlas:

“At the risk of exposing myself as a less-than-sophisticated African-American traveler, why would I be hunting around Moscow for blues music, or jerk chicken in Milan or injera bread in Oslo? That makes about as much sense as Southern rednecks coming up to Harlem to look for tobacco-chewing contests, or German classical music fans looking for Beethoven concerts in Compton.

Are we really so insecure that we need to seek out reflections of ourselves wherever we go in the world? I’ve said it before on this blog and it bears repeating: If I’m that desperate for a taste of “home” when and wherever I travel, I’ll just stay home.”

When you looked at the site, it was hard to tell what it was trying to accomplish. In the end, it didn’t accomplish enough of anything to ensure its own survival.

The “outside vendor” may have made a mess of Black Atlas, but American itself is hardly blameless. A lot of people never even heard of the site until now.

How much effort did American put into marketing and promoting it to prospective black travelers? How much of its advertising budget went into touting Black Atlas in black newspapers, magazines and Web sites around the country?

Few, if any, of America’s cash-strapped black publications would’ve turned down a steady stream of ads for Black Atlas…and Internet users will view even a bad site at least once.

Still, the fact that you miss a shot doesn’t mean the shot wasn’t worth taking. The black travel market in the United States currently is worth between perhaps $40 billion a year.

As large as that figure may sound, it’s chump change when measured against the total estimated purchasing power of black America: $1.1 trillion.

Being in the business of moving people by air, American could hardly be faulted for wanting a piece of that — especially since, as we now know, the airline was treading in deep financial waters.

The travel industry as a whole — not just AA — has been struggling to find an effective way to reach out to black Americans and get them to travel. Thirteen years into the 21st century, the struggle continues.

You could argue that Black Atlas was a bad idea badly executed — and I’d probably agree with you. But American Airlines’ goal of tapping into the black American travel market was and remains perfectly “legit.”

It’s that goal that should remain the focus, because in a nation whose people are among the least traveled in the developed world, we are among the least traveled of all Americans.

And in the 21st century, that needs to change.

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Attention, black folks: American Airlines likes you! No, really!

TRAVEL TECH THURSDAY: Go visual

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Oakland's Jackson London Square staton, a stop for the Amtrak Coast Starlight.

Oakland’s Jack London Square station, a stop for the Amtrak Coast Starlight. — ©IBIT/G. Gross

Smartphone apps that let you do more than just send your pics and videos give you tools to creatively share your travels with family and friends. IBIT is playing with a few of them, but there are lots.

Cellphone cameras have come a long way in a short time. Many now have sensors actually many times superior not only to those of earlier phones but even to the earliest full-fledged, full-sized digital cameras.

Learn a little about how to compose a photography, how to make use of light, shadow and color, and you can produce stunning pics with your iPhone or Android device — and perhaps even the newest Blackberry. Small wonder then that more than a few travelers now bring their smartphones to visually document their trips, and leave their cameras behind.

Even better, smartphone app designers have been busily cranking out applications designed to make the most of these miniaturized digital cameras. Everything from photo and video editing programs stripped down for use in a smartphone to applications designed to enhance the cameras themselves.

Of late, I’ve been dipping my digital toe into this world, and there’s more than enough out there to justify all-out, all-in, head-first plunge.

Let’s start with the smartphone camera itself.

the basic iPhone camera has some nice features, especially the Panorama, which lets you take super-wide-angle shots by slowly panning the phone across the horizon. The image at the top of this blog post is an example of an iPhone panorama.

But what if you want more than that out of your camera when you travel? Here are a few apps to consider.

Camera+
There are lots of photo apps with filters and other special effects to let you jazz up your pics in artistic of playful ways, or try to salvage a bad shot — and more often than not, you’ll end up paying them.

My biggest interest is in apps that help me control the photographic process before the shot, the ones that do a better job of composing a shot and controlling the exposure than your basic smartphone camera.

The first of those that I came across was Camera+. Among the features I really love are the:

  1. Horizon Level — No more cockeyed horizons that need to be straightened out after the fact. Really effective when used in combination with the next feature.
  2. Stabilizer — A feature common on today’s digital cameras, you may need it even more with your smartphone camera. This app gives you one.
  3. Burst — This feature allows you to shoot multiple frames in rapid sequence with a single push of the button, about 5 frames per second, ideal for capturing fast action. Camera+ warns you in advance that shots taken in Burst mode will be of lower image quality than those in Normal mode, so try to save this for shooting in good light.
  4. Timer — to give you a chance to put yourself in the picture, without the now clichéd arm-extended pose — or even worse, the mirror shot.

Something a lot of iPhone users will appreciate. If you have a shot taken with the default camera app and you think it needs some tweaking, you can import it to Camera+ and enhance it there. Nice.

A montage made using Pic Jointer. ©IBIT/G.Gross

©IBIT/G.Gross


Even better, both for capturing fast action giving you more control over your pics while you’re shooting is Fast Camera, which claims to be the fastest camera app out there for iPhones. With a shooting speed of 800 frames per minute, it just might be.

It’s not free, costing $1.99, but you get all its filters and other effects when you buy it, no nickel-and-diming you for all-ons. Gotta like that.

Other iPhone camera apps worth checking out include:

Any of these will help you shoot better and edit better. But there’s another aspect of smartphone photography that’s almost as important as the images themselves, and that’s being able to share them via social media.

Pic Jointer
This is where smartphone cameras really come into their own for travelers. The combination of camera, camera app and social media make it possible not only for you to share your travels with family and friends in real-time, but to do it in creative ways unthinkable in the days of film photography.

One that lets you get creative with presentation is called Pic Jointer. This app lets you combine and frame multiple pics together in your own digital montage.

Specifically, Pic Jointer gives you 16 different image frames, each holding from a single shot to four different images in a wide variety of layouts — square of rectangular, vertical or horizontal. What’s more, you can use all 16 of those image frames in your choice of four different ratios — 1:1, 4:3, 3:4 or 3:2.

The flexibility doesn’t end there, though. You can use your fingertip to position each image within its individual cell. There horizontal sliders and other touch controls that lets you change the size ratio of each pic in the montage, as well as an auto-enhance filter and other visual effects.

And once you’re done, you can save the finished montage to your smartphone photo album email it, or post it online via four of the most popular social media outlets — Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr or Instagram, itself a great smartphone app for sharing images from anywhere.

Postagram
But if it works as advertised, something tells me my favorite way of sharing my travels and travel pics is going to revert to a 21st century version of an old-school custom — sending postcards.

Not digital one, real ones, sent from your iPhone via an app called Postagram.

No, you’re not misreading that. Postagram turns your smartphone pics into actual postcards. You write your brief accompanying message just as you would on an actual postcard, then that will show up in the snail-mail boxes of the family and friends that you designate from your smartphone address book contacts.

This is not a free service. Once you’ve used up the handful of free trial postagrams you’re allotted, you pay 99 cents per card.

Yes, you can send your pics digitally anywhere on the planet in a matter of seconds, but there’s still something pretty cool about getting a travel postcard in the mail — especially one that you know was custom-made just for you.

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TRAVEL TECH THURSDAY: In search of travel apps, Part 1
TRAVEL TECH THURSDAY: In search of travel apps, Part 2
TRAVEL TECH THURSDAY 2.7.13
SAFE TRAVEL: Can your hotel room be hacked?

LAS VEGAS: Four-wheeled bandits

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Water show, Bellagio hotel-casino, Las Vegas | © G. Gross

Water show, Bellagio hotel-casino, Las Vegas | ©IBIT/G. Gross

In the town that fiscal caution forgot, taking taxis could mean getting stripped before you even get to The Strip. But you have options.

In Las Vegas, it seems the game is rigged before you even start playing. When you get a taxi at McCarran International Airport to take you to your hotel, you truly are being taken for a ride.

According to the Associated Press, Vegas taxi drivers are taking their passengers on needlessly roundabout routes, driving up cab fares to the tune of $15 million in excessive charges every year.

You can read the entire AP story here.

Most travelers routinely suspect cabbies everywhere of pulling this trick. In Clark County, they apparently have documented proof of it.

As one who usually rents a car in Vegas, I really haven’t run into this problem personally. If you have, don’t get mad. Get smart. That means looking for alternatives to the desert cab rats.

  • Plan your stay
    What do you plan to do and where do you plan to go while you’re in Las Vegas? If you’re going to be ranging far and wide — say, out to Hoover Dam or other side trips — odds are you’ll want to rent a car, anyway. So just track down the best rental car deal for your stay and thumb your noses at the wandering cabbies.
  • Hotel shuttles
    If you plan to stay pretty much in one area, be it the downtown or the Las Vegas Strip, ask when making your reservations if the hotel has a free shuttle service to that pick up and drop off hotel guests at the airport. Many do, and here’s a list.
    In the unlikely event that your hotel doesn’t offer a free shuttle, there are pay shuttle services that could work out to be cheaper than taxis. That list, courtesy of Vegas.com, is here.
  • The bus, Gus
    The Regional Transit Commission of Southern Nevada, aka the RTC, operates multiple bus lines to and from McCarran, including its own bus shuttle between the airport, The Strip and downtown Las Vegas. Virtually guaranteed to be cheaper than any taxi ride.
  • Catch “Mono”
    The Las Vegas Monorail won’t get you to or from McCarran, but if you’re staying on The Strip, it can get you around smoothly and comfortably, without need of pricey cabs. What’s more, you can buy passes good for unlimited rides per person, from a day to a week.
  • Be Forewarned
    There are several online programs and smartphone apps which, among other things, allow you to calculate a cab fare in advance. Check out the fare from the airport to your destination, then ask the cabbie to give you his estimate of the fare. If his figure is substantially higher than yours, don’t get in.

    Taxi fare calculators include:

    Also, according to the folks at Mashable, there is a Tax Fare Calculator app that will allow users of Bing Maps to estimate cab fares between two points.

Eventually, the local authorities will find a way to crack down on their wandering cabbies. But even if they don’t, you still have plenty of cost-effective options. “What happens in Vegas” does not have to needlessly reach into your wallet.

New York is HOT

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The Big Apple is getting its heat on this weekend with the inaugural New York City Hot Sauce Expo. If you can take it there, you can take it anywhere.

New Yorkers have long prided themselves on their toughness. Some of them are putting that toughness to the test this weekend at the first New York City Hot Sauce Expo.

Your tastebuds are almost certain to have a good time, even if some of them are traumatized for life.

A few samples of condiments with names like Dragon’s Blood Elixir, Torchbearer and PuckerButt and you may well come away convinced that Post Traumatic Chile Disorder is real. On the other hand, if you already consider yourself a true pepperhead, you’re not interested in a cure, anyway.

WHEN: April 20-21
WHERE: East River State Park
110 Kent Ave.,
Brooklyn, NYC
PRICE: $10

Hot sauce fests are nothing new to the United States. Texas, Louisiana and New Mexico have practically turned them into a mini-industry. But this is the first time the Big Apple has decided to get the heat on.

For you hot sauce novices, a small word of caution:

When you feel the need to cool down your tongue after a close encounter with a thermonuclear hot sauce, avoid carbonated cold drinks and especially beer. I can’t explain the science behind it, but no matter how furiously your mouth is burning, trying to put out the fire with beer will only make it worse.

And yes, I am speaking from experience.

Your best bet: Milk.

The festival wraps up Sunday. Enjoy.

The Gambia: RootsFest cancelled

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Plans for the biennial festival honoring those caught up in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and honoring their descendants in the African Diaspora have unraveled. Why? Who knows?

It seems there will be no International Roots Festival this year in the Gambia.

Held every two years to commemorate the trans-Atlantic slave, the festival is based on the writings of Alex Haley’s book “Roots: The Saga of an American Family,” which began in the Gambia. It was held in early February, during the dry season.

Organizers made a special point of inviting visitors from across the African Diaspora — especially from the United Kingdom, the Caribbean and the United States — to attend.

IBIT was there in 2011 and made some wonderful new friends. Among them was Aadam Muhammad from London, who had bought a travel package to return to the Gambia for this year’s festival.

It was from Aadam that I learned that the festival had been cancelled. He had confirmed it first through the London travel company through which he had bought his Gambia package, then through the national tourism board in the Gambia itself.

Disappointing as this cancellation is, the circumstances surrounding it are, in their own way, even more disturbing. Why? Because no one knows what those circumstances are.

Well, someone knows what they are. They just aren’t sharing that information with the public.

To date, the only public word on the cancellation I’ve been able to find is this terse announcement on the festival’s Web site:

“The Ministry of Tourism and Culture regrets to announce that the International ROOTS festival slated for May 2013 has been postponed till further notice. Any inconvience(sp) caused is deeply regreted.(sp)”

BIG MYSTERY
The announcement uses the word “postponed” instead of “cancelled,” but with the less tourist-friendly wet season fast approaching, the likelihood of this event being held any time in 2013 would seem pretty slim.

So what happened? So far, it’s all a big mystery. Not a word about it anywhere in Gambian news media. Nothing from the tourism ministry’s own site. Nothing from the home pages of the Gambian embassies in the US or the UK.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Aadam wasn’t having any more luck than I was, even after personally contacting the GTA’s marketing director in the Gambia:

“I asked why it was cancelled and he seemed as if he didn’t want to fully disclose the reason. When I asked him if this cancellation has been officially stated on the primary Roots homecoming festival website, he once again chose not to respond clearly. For all we know, people may still be planning to attend; purchase tickets make other arrangements.”

I sent an email to the Gambian Tourism Authority, asking what happened, using the email link the GTA provides on its Web site. The email bounced back to me moments later, almost certainly unseen by anyone.

WARNING SIGNS
In hindsight, perhaps I should’ve seen this coming.

You know how certain things, when they happen, cause the little hairs on the back of your neck to stand up? I had that sensation when I first heard that the festival, initially scheduled for February per usual, had been reset for March. March then became May, which then became June, then back to May.

When a festival date becomes a moving target, for whatever reason, that will make you nervous.

The next clue came when friends who work in Gambian hotels told me they had been furloughed, right around the time that the festival was due to take place. As red flags go, that’s a big one.

When Aadam told me of hearing of the festival’s cancellation, it confirmed my worst fears.

I don’t know what happened in the Gambia to bring this about. So far, that information seems to be a big, tightly held secret. But winning back the trust of prospective visitors to “the smiling coast of Africa” will be a daunting task, indeed.

What a letdown.

It also points to the need to cover yourself with some form of travel insurance that offers you a chance to recover all your expenses when things go wrong.

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