As my father always used to tell me, 'You see, son, there's always someone in the world worse off than you.' And I always used to think, 'So?.

I ordered a coffee and a little something to eat and savored the warmth and dryness. Somewhere in the background Nat King Cole sang a perky tune. I w….

I still enjoy traveling a lot. I mean, it amazes me that I still get excited in hotel rooms just to see what kind of shampoo they've left me..

There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the r….

But that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned. I don't want to know what people are talking about. I can't think of anything that ….

To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in whi….

For a long time, I'd been vaguely fascinated by the idea that Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic and Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in the same summer..

A sign in the yard of a church next door said CHRIST IS THE ANSWER. (The question, of course, is: What do you say when you strike your thumb with a h….

The average Southerner has the speech patterns of someone slipping in and out of consciousness. I can change my shoes and socks faster than most peop….

What this means in practice is that if you are not a born worrier you have nothing to worry about (though of course you wouldn't be worrying anyway),….

In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless..

To my surprise, I felt a certain springy keenness. I was ready to hike. I had waited months for this day, after all, even if it had been mostly with ….

If a potato can produce vitamin C, why can't we? Within the animal kingdom only humans and guinea pigs are unable to synthesize vitamin C in their ow….

I think it's only right that crazy people should have their own city, but I cannot for the life of me see why a sane person would want to go there..

Perhaps it's my natural pessimism, but it seems that an awfully large part of travel these days is to see things while you still can..

I turned to my own bunk and examined it with a kind of appalled fascination. If the mattress stains were anything to go by, a previous user had not s….

Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines..

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit..

There is something about the momentum of travel that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop..

For anyone of a rational disposition, fashion is often nearly impossible to fathom. Throughout many periods of history – perhaps most – it can seem a….

Where I grew up, in Des Moines, Iowa, there is hardly any downtown economic activity now. Everybody shops in malls - you don't find a sense of commun….