I have a lot of ideas for new posts, but lately I just cannot get myself to write something up. Maybe this is a Christmas block, but quite frankly I think is the weather getting to me again.

 

When Louis and Clark crossed the US to find a route to the West coast, they crossed enemy territory and endured unforgiving terrain. It is close to a miracle that they did what they were set to with everyone in their group managing to survive the trip. They arrived somewhere in the Oregon coast and set camp. Louis wrote that the trip was nothing compared to the following 60 days after they arrival. It rained every single day and everyone was so miserable that fights would start all the time.

 

Well, to compensate the lack of anything interesting to write, here goes another site I stumbled upon: http://postsecret.blogspot.com/. The idea is to people send them postcards with personal secrets and they pick the ones they like and post them online. Completely anonymous. I like this type of stuff, but be warned most postcards are on the sad side.

 

My favorite silly read are newspaper personals. I find it unbelievable how people summarize themselves in 100 characters and still manage to say so much. If you think I'm crazy, give it a try. Check "They Call Me Naughty Lola: Personal Ads from the London Review of Books" - unlike American personals where everyone is pretty, in good shape, rich and a winner, the Brits have a refreshing self-deprecating sense of humor.

 

From time to time I stumble over an interesting travel site.

 

One of my favorite sites is SeatGuru, and I have a permanent link to it on this very blog (http://www.seatguru.com/). It has information about the seat configuration on most air companies in the US, including what seats to avoid and which ones have power outlets, or extra leg room.

 

The other site I like to watch is FlightAware (http://flightaware.com/). It has real-time information about air traffic over most large US airports.

 

I recently found iFly.com (http://www.ifly.com/). It has a lot of information about airports all over the US including flight tracking, parking options, regulations and the inevitable ads for airplane tickets. Worth a look.