I’ve never really followed the Tour de France but this year I’m a bit more interested. I knew Europe was beautiful but wow, every single town seems to have it’s own story to tell and the architecture in so many is just what you hope it would be.

The last 2 stages have been in the Alps and it seriously looks like you could just happen upon Hedi frolicking on a mountainside if it wasn’t for that guy chasing the riders in a Borat mankini.

It’s been a few late nights for me as the tour is televised at 10.30pm here and I don’t think I can keep it up for 2 more weeks, I think I’ll have to just tune in for the highlights from now on.

I wonder how many people tour France by bike, it looks like it is an excellent way to see the country. I imagine there are quite a few who do, I know I would love to do it.

[tags]Tour de France[/tags]

I’ve just stumbled across a new documentary movie called A Map For Saturday, produced by Brook Silva-Braga it is described as “an intimate window onto the world of long-term, solo travel”. A quick search brought up their website where I watched this trailer.

Before I knew it I had ordered the DVD, just this morning I had grabbed The Long Way Round out of my TV cabinet and was planning to watch it to inspire me some more, well A Map For Saturday beat me to it. I felt completely excited and inspired again just from watching that trailer (not that I was that low on inspiration anyway), imagine what the DVD will do. So hopefully we will soon see a review of it here from me and I think I have found the prize for when I launch the 10 Kilos of Cash competition.

The short intros to the travelers in the trailer gave a very genuine impression and they described why they were doing this with many of the same reason I would use, it seems to have every romantic idea I have in my head just in the trailer. I can’t wait.

My Uncle was recently in the Caribbean for the ICC World Cup Finals, of course I’m happy to say Australia won all be it in probably the most unusual circumstances ever seen in a broadcast cricket game, he also followed the finals in South Africa at the last cup and brought make some very cool photos of the country and of course the wildlife. I think Africa is on everyone’s “To Do” list but it’s probably one that is least ticked off, at least if you don’t count Egypt and Morocco as the “real” Africa.

I haven’t seen any photographic evidence of his latest cricket binge yet but by all reports it was another memorable experience for him. I didn’t know much about the Caribbean other than it was home to the famous (at least in aviation circles) St Maarten Airport, however after doing a bit of research on some of the places he would be visiting I found there was definitely much more to do than watch 747’s make low approaches and blast the sunbathers on the beach. Diving, Wildlife, Nightlife and even a few ancient Mayan ruins. Tourism in the Cancun area took a hit in 2005 when Hurricane Wilma hit and it was estimated 95% of tourism infrastructure was damaged however the recovery has been such a success that the UN declared it as a model for the recovery of similar disasters. So there is no reason for anyone to put off their Caribbean holidays anymore.

I must find out if he went to Chichen Itza which is about 100 miles from Cancun, depending how my budget goes I would like to include South and Central America in my upcoming travel plans Mayan and Aztec ruins are calling me. I have an idea of playing cricket on the beach with the local kids at sunset, romantic I know but why the hell not? I remember seeing a Pilot Guide probably known as a Globe Trekker episode elsewhere that was quite impressive and dispelled with the idea that the Caribbean was all about beaches, resorts and Spring Break and somehow it seemed like you could make ideas like that become reality.

I wonder if you could watch the Jamaican bobsled team train.

Sometimes people wake up in the morning with an idea in their head that they want to do something big with their lives, either steely determination gets them there of a few days later it is forgotten. Getting the idea of traveling is much the same, to keep that keep that idea alive you need to turn it into something more, just a vague idea that it is something you would like to or should do in life is not enough. World travel doesn’t just happen, you won’t get to a point in your life where you say “oh, now I can start traveling”, you have to tell yourself that you ARE going to travel and the best time to do that is now. Some people just aren’t made to travel, they are probably people who fear things different to what they are comfortable with, different food, different clothes, different skin color, they have no curiosity of the world around them, these people can become travelers but they need to change the way they see the the world first.

Do you start getting dreamy when you come across something travel related? Maybe you unconsciously suppress it because it doesn’t fit into your life right now. You are a lucky one, you’re not uncommon but you already have the minimum requirement to become a traveler all you have to do is stop whipping out the bug spray. It’s time to stop ignoring those dreams and start growing them, look up country that has something that interests you on the internet, read, research. You need to look for inspiration, from magazines, travel TV shows, photos, books, whatever and imagine yourself doing the things that appeal to you, go ahead and romanticize as much as you like, soon enough you will find that your travel dreams capture your thoughts regularly, the Travel Bug has bitten.

But being bitten by the Travel Bug is only the beginning…

It’s been a while since I’ve linked to some of the standout people and their blogs and there have been quite a few worth linking to recently so here are a few. I’ve also made a few changes that are worth highlighting too.

The Need for Exploration By Tracey at QuitePaws amazing poetic and something I think a lot of us can really relate to. I wish I could put things into words like that.

Some may have already noticed a new link in the blogroll, I only discovered TrailofAnts about a week ago and it instantly got me with its great humour and wit. It’s a little confusing at first until you figure out what he is aiming for and the result is quite an individual blog.

I had a bit of a laugh at this Forbes article about where to go to get “off the grid”, why? Because I don’t think it’s as hard as they make it sound, especially if you don’t have a satellite phone permanently attached to you.

Obviously I changed the theme a few weeks ago and I am enjoying having the extra column to play with. One addition I am liking is the Shared Google Reader widget, I switched from the built in Opera reader to Google just over a month ago, I thought about doing a review of RSS readers and started testing the top 5 free readers both client and web based. I found Google Reader much more readable and easier to manage and eventually the others just fell into oblivion one by one while the number of feeds in GR just kept growing. The sharing function was introduced about the same time I made the theme change and that was a clincher for me so I am now all GR and I hope you all keep an eye on that spot, I think there is some really good stuff shared there already.

I have also added the DoFollow plugin from Courtney Tuttle so now if you add a url in any comments you make the owner of that url will receive the SEO benefits.

In the future I’ll be looking at making a few more changes so that this theme isn’t quite so stock standard. So maybe a new colour theme and I definitely want to change and reduce the area the header takes up.

I hope everyone is still enjoying my posts and I’ll be back with more soon.

[tags]Linking, Blogroll, Forbes, Google, Reader, RSS, DoFollow[/tags]

Some people have travel in the back of their mind but they are not devoted to the idea they need a reason or multiple reasons. Lets not down play the decision to travel to many of us the answer seems obvious but deciding to travel for an extended period of time is a decision up there with buying a house, getting married or having a child. Some excellent reasons came up in the recent 5 Reasons Why I Travel meme.

• Learn about other people, and yourself.
• Gain experience and knowledge.
• Sense of freedom.
• The challenge, and the adventure.
• Make a dream come true
• Do something that most people will never do, but will wish they had done.
• Make a break from the rat race.
• See how varied and different the world really is and how similar all of us people in it really are.
• To live or retire somewhere new.

Travel gives you a lot of time to reflect on things but that doesn’t mean you will be spending most of your time in some type of travel inflicted meditation, you’ll learn as much about yourself as you face new challenges as you will thinking about things that happened afterwards. Travel can be the best thing you do in life but if will be a whole lot better if you do it for the right reasons and with the right atitude. I have to say Rolf Potts, Vagabonding is the single best attempt to put into words what those reasons and attitudes are, buy it, especially if your wanderlust is currently dormant.

The single best reason to travel is the simplest and you have to have it on your list otherwise your wasting your time.

• Because you want to.

All other reasons flow from this one. Chances are if you are reading this it means you are among the richest people in the world with a bit of dedication you can truely make the world your oyster. It would be irresponsible to pass it up, wouldn’t it?