Happy Holidays 2008!

It's been a busy holiday season for me this year. Going here, going there. Hosting this, hosting that.

All the hustling about has been paid off by numerous laughs and fun.

Although I'm not too sure my dog Aries would agree.

While we got quite a few laughs from his Christmas getup, he wasn't pleased to be playing the role of Santa.

Plane Art

Every once in a while I check out DarynKagan.com.

The site posts short documentaries about someone, somewhere, doing something unusual, inspiring and heart-felt.

Listed in November's archives was this story about a Delta flight attendant who is passing out blank paper and crayons to the passengers on her flights.

The passengers, turns out, are embracing the chance to get creative. And I can understand why. I love plane rides for the chunk of uninturrupted time they give me to read.

But I would just as quickly pick up a crayon. It would be fun to draw, color and share crayons. Can you remember the last time you did that?

Freezing in Minnesota!

Penguins don't live in Minneapolis. But if they did, they would be happy today. It's frigid cold cold.

As I type, the air temperature is -6 degrees. That's Fahrenheit, so for all you Celsius people that's -21.

The forecasted high for the day, if we're lucky, is -3 Fahrenheit, which is -19.4 Celsius.

But that's not the worst of it. The wind is even chillier, blowing at -25 Fahrenheit, which is -31 Celsius.

Crazy, right? But the cold isn't all bad.

It's one of the things that bonds Minnesotans together. It gives us a shared experience and thus, in part, helps to forge our identity.

Even though we complain about the cold, meet a Minnesotan anywhere in the world, and they are likely, at some point, to either be boastful or nostalgic about the Big Chill.

But for today, I am neither of those things. Instead, what I am is holed up inside refusing to leave my house.

Questions Answered: Submitting Funny Signs

One of the reasons, perhaps, that the book, Caution Funny Signs Ahead, so captured my attention is that in the course of my travels, I too have snapped some funny sign photos.

Could one of my funny sign pictures make it into a future funny sign compilation?

It wasn't long before I was pulling up image after image from my own digital picture library, trying to find the funniest of all my funny sign shots.

Should I submit the billboard filled with little naked men that I captured somewhere in the Czech countryside?

Or maybe the picture I took of a sign inside a fancy Vietnamese hotel elevator advertising the culinary "words" of art prepared by the chef in the lobby restaurant.

I did submit a picture to RoadTrip America's funny sign collection, although neither of these were my final selection. I guess we'll all just have to wait and see if the one I sent makes the cut.

In an attempt to improve my odds, I figured I'd quiz the collection's co-editor, Mark Sedenquist, about the submission process. Here's what he had to say:

How long have you been collecting funny sign pictures from RoadTrip America readers?

Roughly, since 1996.

How often is a new funny sign picture posted?

Every week. You can see them here.

To date, do you know how many images have been submitted to RoadTrip America?

The total online collection now stands at 466 published Funny Sign photos, but of course that will change next week.

At the present time, we have about 100 images waiting in the “on-deck” circle for eventual inclusion in the collection.

We’ve had over 1600 pictures submitted to us, but we’ve only accepted about 300 of those into the collection. We verify the authenticity of every photo and many do not pass our tests.

What do you think drives travelers to snapping pictures of funny signs and then submit them to your collection?

I think they do it for the same reason we do it – to share moments of whimsy and humor with a greater audience.

What do you like best about editing the funny signs collection?

Writing captions that are not the obvious first choice. We prefer captions that require a little thought when viewing the images.

We spend about 5 hours each week nominating the new featured sign, writing the caption and preparing it for publication on RTA.

What guidelines do you have for photo submissions?

We prefer 300 dpi, jpeg, 600 x 600 pixels as a minimum, but with the advent of cellular phone cameras, we often accept smaller images.

Once a picture is accepted, it could be anywhere between five days to a year before it is posted online.

We don't post them in the order we get them. Instead, we select each week's photo by how funny it strikes us at the particular time we're choosing pictures.

Hmmm. I can only hope my own submitted sign strikes them as funny as it did me!

Do you have your own funny sign to submit?

You'll find the submission guidelines here.

Questions Answered: Caution Funny Signs Ahead

Yesterday, I mentioned a newly-released book that made me laugh called Caution: Funny Signs Ahead.

I enjoyed it so much that I tracked down Megan Edwards, editor of RoadTrip America and one of the book's co-authors, to ask her some questions about it.

Do you remember your first funny sign?

Several signs I photographed very early on in our travels are in the book. One is “Banana Slug Crossing,” which I found in Redwood National Park, California.

Another is “We Make Home Ownership a Reality” next to a trailer mounted on top of a tall pole in Pennsylvania.

Although I can’t remember which is the official first one, somewhere in there I got hooked on nabbing more. And more, and more, and OMG… yeah, I’m forced to admit. It’s an addiction.

Do you have a favorite funny sign?

It reveals my roots in middle school humor, but one of my faves will always be Erik Hollander’s shot of the “Fresh Fudge” banner strung up a little too near the restrooms.

Is there a particular part of the country that seems to have more funny signs than the rest?

There are funny signs lurking everywhere, but Kentucky has more than its share of too-funny-to-be-true place names. That’s where you’ll find Big Bone Lick and Rabbit Hash, just to give a couple examples.

Does it take a certain sense of humor or a certain point of view to notice funny signs?

Nothing more than a middle school sense of humor is required, but it helps to have a hunter’s mindset.

Also, it’s easy to become blind to the hilarious signs in your own town. It’s often easier to find good quarry in places you aren’t familiar with.

Has anyone ever gotten mad at you for taking a picture of their sign?

So far, no one has complained, but I do try to be careful. I’m very aware that Dr. Anil Ram might not think his name is funny, and that the owners of the Poo Ping Palace may not want their possibly excellent restaurant immortalized in a gallery of funny signs.

Even though the signs are out there in public, and I’m not really invading anyone’s privacy, I’m thinking about getting a more powerful zoom lens.

How has your obsession with funny signs changed you as a traveler?

Probably the most apparent effect is that I’ve pulled some pretty silly--not to mention oh-so-slightly illegal--maneuvers to get photos of funny signs.

I’ve also driven hundreds of miles out of my way just because I noticed an enticing name on a map. How could I resist going out of my way to visit Earth, for example, or Mars, or Noodle?

I guess it’s fair to say that it’s added a hunting element to my road trips that wouldn’t be there otherwise. It makes me take the back roads, too, where I’m more likely to find businesses that advertise “Custom Killing” or “Eat Here, Get Gas.”

Read yesterday's post about the book.

Caution Funny Signs Ahead

Megan Edwards and Mark Sedenquist have long enjoyed travel. However, they have a particular enthusiasm for road tripping North America.

It is a passion that helped them out of a tight spot: When the couple’s home burned in a 1993 California wild fire, they piled into a RV and started off across America.

Yet once they hit the road, they started noticing funny signs. Some were sandwich boards on downtown sidewalks with strange wording. Others pointed the way to less-than-appealing local attractions.

Edwards and Sedenquist were so delighted by these signs that they soon began capturing them on film.

In 1996, they posted their collection online at their web site, RoadTrip America, and invited the world to begin submitting pictures of their own funny signs.

Just last month, in November 2008, they released a book called Caution: Funny Signs Ahead.

It features the best of this growing collection with photos from 92 different photographers.

I sat down with the book and an afternoon cup of coffee and it wasn’t long before I was giggling.

And it also wasn’t long before I sought out Megan and Mark to ask them a few questions about their funny sign obsession and their new book.

Tomorrow I'll post our Q & A conversation.

Ion Foot Cleanse at Healthy Measures Spa

My feet feel light, airy and fresh.

They feel as though they've been vigorously rubbed with an exfoliating peppermint scrub.

But they haven't. Instead, they just spent 30 minutes soaking in an Ion Cleanse.

Yesterday, I called up the Healthy Measures Spa and Wellness Center to gather information for a story I'm writing.

The owner, Sharon, invited me to stop by for an Ion Foot Cleanse.

I'm not one to pass up a spa treatment, especially an unusual spa treatment, so of course I took her up on her offer.

Sharon and I chatted about wellness and holistic health as my feet soaked away in this Ion Cleansing bath.

Even though the water started out clean and clear, in half and hour, the water had turned a disgusting puke-colored orangish brown with a white film floating on top. Gross!

Even grosser was the thought that all that gunk was toxins that had been lurking in my joints, lymph nodes and liver. Ugh.

If I were ardently seeking a path to greater holistic wellness, a series of 12 Ion Foot Cleansing sessions might actually be a treatment plan in which I would enlist.

It was noninvasive and pleasant, so long as I didn't spend too much time inspecting the color of my water.

But do I feel any better?

Actually, yes. Three hours have passed since I dried my toes and drove back home, and yet my feet are tingling still. They do feel clean and pampered and massaged and ... well, different.

Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance

Usually, I zip through books. This fall, though, I've been having trouble finding much time to read.

I was excited, therefore, at the prospect of the two-and-a-half hour flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix and then back again ... time to read!

So that I could feel more accomplished, I picked short novels. Ones I felt sure I could finish in the span of a flight and just a few hours more.

The book I read on my return home was called Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance.

It was written by Lloyd Jones, a New Zealand author.

I picked up the book for a couple reasons:

1. Earlier this year I read Mr. Pip, another book penned by him, which was short-listed for the 2007 Booker Prize.

I tend to like Booker Prize winners, and I liked Mr. Pip. Jones was an author I'd never heard of before, so when I saw this other title, I figured I'd give it a go.

2. Also, this book, this Here at the End of the World book, partially takes place in Buenos Aires, a city I love.

It is a love story (and who doesn't like those?) about dancing the tango.

The book captured my attention right away as it starts in Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

I'd been to Chacarita Cemetery myself. I'd toured it on my own years ago in an attempt to see just how far I could push the envelope as a solo traveler.

If I could trapse around a massive (and it is massive) cemetery by myself, my thinking went at the time, surely I could do just about anything.

One of my favorite Chacarita discoveries was the tomb of Carlos Gardel, the famous tango singer. That tomb gets mentioned in this book.

Now that I've reached the end of this book, however, I'm not too sure what I'd grade it as.

It certainly won't make my top 5 reading list for the year, and yet I read it to the end and enjoyed it.

Ultimately, though, I think it was my own obsession with Buenos Aires that pulled me through.

Bye-Bye to Complimentary In-Flight Drinks

We flew US Airways from the Twin Cities to Phoenix.

I don't know that I've ever flown US Airways before. Certainly, I've never encountered an in-flight drink service like theirs before.

Alcohol was served at a cost of $7. This was nothing new. Beer, wine and the sort have always been sold at a price to interested coach passengers.

However, juice and pop were going for a cost of $2. Coffee and tea cost $1.

When I clarified prices with the attendant, she offered this consolation: "You get free refills on coffee."

I took the juice instead. When I dropped my tray, however, I encountered yet another plea for cash:

Advertisements had been plastered all over the trays as well!