New piece on Brave New Traveler

Well, I think I set a record for the fast-track to publishing this time!

A week or so ago my buddy Tim published a piece in The Traveler's Notebook called How To Travel the World For Free (Seriously).

His essay is basically an advice column for very-low-budget travel. But it has some metaphysical undertones that struck a nerve with some readers, and unleashed a heated discussion in the comments section.

If you care about the details, you can read for yourself, but basically some folks were breakin Tim's balls for being a "privileged idealistic hippy" and an "arrogant irresponsible hipster," etc.

Hipster? Man, that's low. I'm from Oakland, and that's just WRONG.

Anyway, the disproportionate negative reaction got me thinking. (uh-oh)

Why would people - ordinary people - flip out because Tim suggested to go traveling, not to worry about shit, and just let the Universe do it's groovy thing?

I got obsessed with this question (like I do), and yesterday morning I could not do anything else until I had written up some kind of answer.

So between 9:30 and 11 AM I vomited out this treatise on a kind of Taoist take on eco-travel.

I emailed my vomit to Tim, who looked it over and forwarded the vomit on to the editors of Brave New Traveler, and apparently it was vomit they could dig, because this morning there it was - my vomit published for God and everyone to read on the World Wide Web (and not just on this blog where I can put what-ev I want when-ev).

OK, so that's like maybe less then 24 hours from neuron to magazine.....is that a record? It has to be close to a record. Seriously.

So.....READ IT!

And leave comments!

The title they gave it is: The Tao of Vagabond Travel

I wrote it, but in the interest of full disclosure: the ideas aren't mine. I stole them from Alan Watts, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, and Jesus.