Author Archives: Beau Woods
The Tyranny Of Planning
You remember those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books? They sucked after a while. I kept getting eaten by giant ants or falling into a black hole. Choosing your own adventure in travel can be the same. Take this cartoon, for instance. The image is of a couple at a travel agency looking through brochures. One says to the other “It all looks so great. I can’t wait to be disappointed.”
And it’s true – the more we plan and the more we put into some of the things we do, the less we get out of them. But if we simply go with what we are given, we have a great time. With few pre-conceived notions, we have a smaller chance of being disappointed. The surprise is a part of the enjoyment of the trip.
But ironically, I really enjoy planning trips. Oh, could I catch any good concerts or sporting events while I’m in town? What are the best places around for sightseeing? These types of things keep me up at night searching online excitedly. But it doesn’t make the actual trip any better.
So that led me to undertake the travel experiment that I am currently undergoing: I will plan as little for my next trip as possible, knowing nothing in advance but the dates of departure and return. The planning is essentially in what to pack – and I plan on packing very light.
This is probably part of a larger issue we have in our society with choice. According to Barry Schwartz, we have too much of it and it is ruining our lives. Any time we feel we could have made a better choice, we feel we should have. The more choices we have, the more potential we have to make a sub-optimal one. But if we have few choices, we focus on making the best of what we get.
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
Ticket To Somewhere
See more posts in the Mystery Trip saga!
I am going on vacation September 19-October 11. I just don’t know where. It’s not that I haven’t decided, I’ve got a plane ticket already. I will be informed of my destination when I get to the airport to get on the plane!
I’ve been thinking about this type of trip for a couple of months now and finally decided to go ahead with it. I asked Brian to find me someplace to go for 3 weeks, with the following rules of engagement:
- I won’t know where I’m going until the day I leave.
- Nothing booked in advanced except the departure and return flights.
- I can carry one bag plus the clothes I’m wearing.
- I’m going to blog the whole trip.
He booked me a ticket and gave me some guidance.
What you need:
- Backpack
- Boots
- Clean undies
- A good attitude
- Camera
What you cant bring:
- Rollerbag
- A lot of stuff.. you need to travel light
So where in the world am I headed? I haven’t got a clue but it sounds like it’ll be an awesome trip!
How Much Is Free Time Worth?
I’ve spent a good amount of time in contemplation of man’s balancing of work and so called free time – that in which he is wholly his own master. It is my considered opinion that I am truly lousy at striking this balance naturally and so I have begun to apply logic and economics to the problem, as best I can without actually knowing anything about logic or economics.
First, let’s start with some assumptions and concepts of value. I will assume that I get enjoyment and happiness from my free time and that is the value I’m seeking. To keep things simple at first, I’ll assume that there is no value to be gained from working other than monetary compensation. It might seem that the choice is easy, then: maximize free time and to hell with work!
But it’s more complex than that because money made from working can the value of each free hour. Money increases the diversity of experience through travel, eating out, decorating, etc. Going to the extreme of work makes no sense either: lots of wonderful toys but no time to play. Some balance between work and play is necessary to, in economics terms, maximize the total value of free time.
Staying with economics for just a minute, I’d like to introduce some concepts and make them relevant to the discussion.
- The total number of hours to devote to working and free time is zero-sum or fixed-sum. So the more time I spend working, the less I have free.
- The more scarce a resource, the greater its value. So the less free time, the more valuable each hour becomes intrinsically.
- Opportunity cost is the relative cost of making one choice over another – in other words the loss of total value of free time by moving the equilibrium in either direction.
Now let’s reach out into the real world and see how we can apply them. For example, most people I know are on a fixed-income salary. Each extra hour they work produces no extra money. So effectively you get what we typically observe – people work the minimum hours to satisfy requirements.
Now let’s address a hidden assumption here: that you control the number of hours you work. If, instead, you assume that hours worked are not controlled, we get something different. When the equilibrium is shifted in either direction, we get less total value of our free time. If that shift happens in the direction of free time, we can always find work to do to fill idle time so we can still maximize the value of our free time. But when the shift reduces our free time the problems begin.
What happens exactly? The total value of our free time decreases but the hourly rate increases. Whereas the hourly rate of our monetary compensation goes down. We’ll want to try to restore the previous equilibrium, though doing so is tricky and may be out of our direct control. This may mean renegotiating salary, looking for a new job or simply refusing to work the extra hours.
The salary renegotiation option is interesting – basically this is an attempt to reinstate a new equilibrium with a higher total monetary compensation. What I’m currently interested in is what this does to the ratio of the hourly values. If the value per hour of free time rises, is there an equivalent rise in the money per hour worked? Is the rise of one larger than the rise of the other?
If I go from working 40 hours per week to working 50 hours per week, how much more should I be making? If I was making $10 per hour before, should I make the same now (ie. $400 to $500 per week)? If my hourly rate is to go up or down, by how much?
New Jersey’s Toxic Waste
I have my obligatory New Jersey toxic waste story now. I still feel A little ill from the fumes and thinking about the mess makes me nauseous. People kept telling me that Jersey was actually a decent place and that it wasn’t as bad as everyone said. But then I hit the Reo Diner.
It came recommended at the hotel, apparently people said it was pretty good. They didn’t have what I had. Now there are ways to serve rancid meat so that it’s not quite so bad. Luke warm and covered in gravy is not an effective way to do this.
I don’t know that it was the meat that made me ill. It could have been the eggplant dish which was very gritty. Either dish alone would have been cause for complaint. It must be said, however that the baked potato was the perfect thing to help buffer the reaction in my gut. That’s what helped me to limp back to the hotel without pulling over to the side of the road.
Good Places To Eat Near Rahway New Jersey
Since I posted my Toxic Waste story, I felt like I should mention some of the good places I ate.
I got some ice cream at the Colonia Dairy Maid and it was excellent. The line was out the door and around the building and stays that way.
Dimple’s Bombay Talk restaurant. Pav Bhaji – dipping bread with a sauce of pureèd tomatos, bell peppers, onions and other veggies. With lime you could squeeze into the dish for taste. I ordered a homemade Malai Kulfi for desert. It was like a small slab of hard ice cream cut into bite size pieces and served on a plate. The flavor was good, not overly sweet and with just a bit of savory.
English Is The World’s Second Language
I think I’ve said before that English is the universal language. Well I think it is better said by Jay Walker here in this TED talk, which is both a little scary and a little inspiring.
http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf
His point is that the local language will always be the first one learned and the primary one used amongst people. But English is quickly becoming the world’s second language.
To use an example to drive the point home, China will next year become the world’s largest English speaking country. Every year 80 million Chinese students will take a test for which they have spent 12 hours a day for three years studying – and 25% of it will be scored on their mastery of English.
Wow!
Fort Morgan, Colorado
I’m back in Fort Morgan, population ~11,000. Last time here the place smelled awful due to a couple of industrial stink manufacturing plants. As a byproduct they also produced sugar from beets and…whatever you get from a cattle rendering plant. The beets smelled worse. And before I came I read that the beet plant had been smelling really foul lately, to the point where some of the old timers even complained about the smell to the town council.
Needless to say I was not looking forward to this trip. Actually I was dreading it. This is the place I had dubbed “Stink Town USA.”
Beet processing season is apparently over now so there is only one affront to the sense of smell here now. And since that’s on the East side of town, the West is relatively safe.
The weather is getting warmer here – highs this week in the low 90s – but is still comfortable in anything but the bright sun at the height of the day. Nights are in the fifties and sixties.
I realized that this is actually kind if a nice town without the stink. And I’m enjoying myself despite my dire expectations. Granted, it’s a small place – only a few restaurants and no real nightlife to speak of – but it’s comfortable for a few days.
That goes to show the value of keeping an open mind when traveling. A place might not be what you expected and that might be a good thing. Make an effort to allow your expectations to be dispeoven and they often will. Whether you see that as good or bad is up to you but if you let yourself be wrong you can sure learn a lot.
Vibram Five Fingers Review
A few weeks ago I grabbed a pair of the Vibram Five Fingers shoes after seeing them in a video blog post by Tim Ferriss and Kevin Rose. As soon as I saw them I said to myself that they were made for my barefoot lifestyle! All of the barefoot and none of the splinter and glass and getting thrown out of restaurants. Sandals are nice and I liked my Sanuks at first but they got tattered and stinky fast.
Wearing these things it feels like I’m wearing nothing at all (as Ned Flanders would say)! These are the closest things to being barefoot and, as such, you quickly realize that man was never meant to walk on concrete. But walking on grass or gravel feel practically wonderful. It’s always interesting walking on different surfaces and actually feeling the textures. For example, some carpets have odd textures you can feel. Your feet, long forgotten in the sensing world, are now giving constant feedback on your world. More than once I’ve stopped and looked down to see what I was walking on – some ordinary seeming ground feels different and interesting.
The soles are rubber and have striations which enhance their grip on slippery surfaces. After walking a while you will notice that you’re not walking on your heels quite as hard as you would in normal shoes. That’s probably partly because of the large amount of padding on the heels which mean less penalty for smashing into our heels and which contributes to the way normal shoe heels stick out a little by design (after going barefoot or wearing sandals for a few days I often find myself tripping on the heels like Hank Azaria in The Birdcage). In the Vibrams I tend to strike closer to mid-foot with the heel only used as a pivot point to redirect the force of the step. Striking the heel hard as in shoes stops forward motion and puts stress on knees, hips and back.
One caveat: you’ve got to be more careful where you put your foot. The soles are thin and briars and thorns go right through. Ouch. So don’t use these for hardcore hiking, but then you probably wouldn’t anyway.
meanderingwoods 