A few months ago my mother said the most depressing thing to me I’ve ever heard: “You can’t buy the Montana you grew up in. Not for any millions of dollars. It doesn’t exist anymore.” It was even more depressing to acknowledge how right she was. For her, who grew up a fourth-generation Montanan on the old family ranch homestead, the realization has been an even greater blow, but it was bad enough for me, who was raised to love the mountains and trees as if they were my siblings. The old family homestead, a 2400-acre ranch where my grandfather’s cousin still raises cattle, just south of the mountains pictured above, is now a relic of a frontier past that can no longer be found anywhere on the planet.

Like many places in the American West, Montana has seen an explosion of vacation home and resort development over the past few years. I just returned home from a trip to my native stomping grounds, and am still reeling, slightly ill from the sight of 10,000-square-foot log vacation homes carving up mountainsides I used to walk with only friends and birds. A few months ago I heard about the Yellowstone Club, an exclusive billionaires’ gated community complete with private golf course and ski mountain, where the most expensive house in the world was being built. This not 20 miles from the tiny, dumpy wheat-ranch-dependent town where I grew up and my parents’ house sold in 1988 for less than twenty thousand dollars.

I’ve written elsewhere about the tremendous personal loss I feel at the overthrow of wilderness and open spaces in favor of the vacation home market. But it’s about more than just the loss of intangible values wild places give us: the ease of travel for a generation with good retirement incomes has opened up any community with a bit of beauty and resort potential to the rapaciousness of consumerism and the almighty pocketbook. Montana might be the place closest to my heart, but it’s by no means the only one affected. I have recently talked to friends whose families have lived on Cape Cod since the Mayflower (no, really), who are now being pushed out by rising property prices driven by the same vacation homeowners — people who can afford to winter in Florida or Phoenix and summer wherever they please. I recently heard a news report about a town on the Connecticut shore whose schools and volunteer fire departments are closing because all housing has been bought up by wealthy weekending New Yorkers, and people who just want to live in a good community are priced out of the market.

And it’s not just the U.S. There are islands and towns in the U.K. that have been losing population, and community structure, for the very same reasons. Travel and income have opened up Provence, Spain, and southern Portugal to people looking for a way to invest, buy a retirement home, or dress themselves in the cache that comes of owning vacation property.

The travel and travel writing communities have been talking more loudly in recent years about travel’s impact on both the environment and on local communities — effects that can be both tremendously detrimental and tremendously beneficial. But not many of us are aware of the effect of easy travel on our own communities, our own backyards.

Look at that picture of my ancestors’ homestead. 2400 acres, you’d think, not bad. Driving there involves hundreds of miles through seemingly empty farm- and prairieland. You’d never guess that just five miles away, a huge tract of state forest was sold to a developer, who sold the timber and built mega-McMansion vacation homes on it for wealthy Californians who come to hunt bear and wolves maybe two weeks a year. The wildlife required for their recreation are often “problem” animals tranquilized and lifted from Yellowstone National Park. “Money talks,” said my 80-something-year-old cousin. “They come to hunt twice a year, all those rich people, and in the meantime I’ve lost 14 head of cattle to the wolves and bears. That’s a thousand bucks per head, but nobody’s compensating me.” Against the pleasure-pressure of those with money, how long will he be able to keep his ranch running? At what point will vacation destinations no longer be able to support the communities that made them so attractive in the first place?

I can’t tell you how pleased I was to find an article in the Telegraph about UK travelers and driving on the right, which of course for them is the “wrong” side of the road. 

Just goes to show that reversing years of motor vehicle operating training will pretty much cause your brain to explode.

One of the most difficult mental drills that I’ve ever tried was driving on the left, in Japan, in a stick-shift (manual) car. 

Remember, this means that the steering wheel and driver’s side are the opposite of what I’m used to, the turn signal and windshield wiper controls are swapped on the steering column (you can always tell a brand-new “opposite side driver” because when they come up to a turn, their wipers start going) and the stick-shift in a Japanese car is operated with the left hand.  I also have to shift gears with the “letter H shift pattern” in almost a mirror sequence to what I’m used to, steering a wheel that’s on the opposite side of the dashboard, remembering to look to the left for the rear-view mirror, all while trying not to hit anything. 

The act of making a turn across an intersection is terrifying, and yes, I’ve had a cranial burp mid-intersection and turned, out of long habit, directly into oncoming traffic because I drove into the lane that I was used to, on the “correct” side of the road.

Hey, I only did that with my boss in the front seat one time.  Much unprintable yelling by both driver and passenger.  It really makes one appreciate roundabouts, where drivers can circulate ad infinitum until they get their act together.

One of the keys to success in opposite-side driving, for me at least, is continuous chatter.  While driving in Japan (and during a short family trip to Ireland) either my husband or I would repeat the mantra, “Left, left, left. Stay to the left, left, left.”  Chant even louder when approaching an intersection, since the primal driving brain seems to take over at the worst possible time. 

Sainted Husband, who drove more than I did in Japan, found himself getting really screwed up when we stopped in Hawaii on vacation on our move back to the States; he’d worked so hard to retrain himself to be a Japanese driver, he could barely handle getting our rental car around Oahu.  I did a lot of chanting. 

The Travel Insider ran into many of the same issues in driving on the other side of the road, as did blogger Photo Matt.

The short Telegraph piece points to a British Airways/Avis Rental Cars joint Web site that offers handy driving guides for countries around the world. The info on driving in the USA was interesting to read as a US person; pretty straightforward, but good to be reminded that for visitors, not everything is self-evident (”It is not uncommon for you to have to pay for fuel (‘gas’) before you actually fill the fuel tank. If you fill the tank with less fuel than you originally thought, this will be refunded to you at the kiosk.”)

Yep, and we think a “boot” is a sort of shoe, not the trunk of a car.

On the other hand, while reading about driving in the UK, I was interested to learn that “It is also quite common to encounter horseriders on rural roads. These should be treated as a potential hazard, so expect the unexpected. Horses can be easily scared by noise and may panic around fast moving vehicles.”  Erm, OK.  For visitors to the US, the same cautions apply to the horse-drawn buggies that you’ll find in our Amish communities.

As residents in Japan, we had formal driving lessons to help re-train our brain.  I cannot imagine as a traveler just showing up to an “opposite side” country, renting a car and trying to figure it out on the spot. 

Save your poor brain cells and take the train or bus, or at least spend one heck of a lot of time driving around the rental car company parking lot before you venture out onto roads.

And bring that person to chant in the front seat….”left, left, left” or “right, right, right” as the situation requires.

Technorati tags: travel, driving on the left, driving on the right

This weekend is Glastonbury weekend, and I must confess that it has left me feeling somewhat depressed. Not that I actually wish that I was at the annual mudfest, spending five days in a waterlogged tent, queuing for toilets that would even be boycotted in a refugee camp. It’s just that out of my wide selection of ne’er do well friends and miscellaneous hedonists, the only person whom I know is there is our nanny. You know that you are getting old when the only person you know who is going to Glastonbury is your nanny.

Things were so different a couple of years ago when about eighty of us in two groups headed to the Big Chill festival at Eastnor in Herefordshire. Three days of solid partying without sleep and two large encampments to retreat to when it all got too much. In truth, the Big Chill is more of a festival for those who are over the Glasto vibe – they even have hot showers for God’s sake!

The United Kingdom punches well above it’s weight for summer music festivals – especially in a country that is, as the CIA World Factbook helpfully points out, slightly smaller than Oregon! Apart from Glastonbury and the Big Chill, there are a host of others – some in the country and some in London’s Hyde Park. The website of the NME has a pretty good listing for those in the UK, or who are thinking of visiting this rainy season – sorry, Summer!

This year we have our eye on the WOMAD Festival, an eclectic festival of World Music, but with a six month old baby and a loft conversion scheduled for the end of the Summer this may well not happen – now maybe we could send the nanny on our behalf…

Since moving to the Austin area last year, I’ve noticed that many travel magazines have breathlessly discovered the capital of Texas. 

Here’s breaking news; Austin has been the Berkeley of Texas for decades, a blue, den-of-iniquity blob in the midst of a lot of red.  (For our non-U.S. readers: a “Red State and Blue State” explanation.)

Those of us who knew that already are quite bemused by the “gosh, there is a cool, hip city in flyover country!” attitude of some publishers.  Still, we cosmic cowboys think it’s nice to be noticed, especially for the live music scene.  

The insanely fabulous South by Southwest (SXSW), held every March, is perhaps the best-known music event held in the state (no, Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July picnic outgrew his Pedernales Ranch-area setting years ago.)  If you’re a musician worth your chops, you want to be seen and heard playing Austin in March.

For Joe or Jane General Music Fan, however, I’m not sure that SXSW is really the best time to visit.  First, it is a three-part extravaganza; Music, Film and a tech conference called Interactive.  The town is slammed for weeks by the sheer magnitude of thousands of visitors. Hotels are packed, restaurants overflow.  It’s bananas.  Second, SXSW is fundamentally a very buzzy, all-day all-night trade show, at least for the music and film industries.  It’s not intended for fans (although Interactive is pretty consumer-friendly, I think.)

For my money, a better pick is the Austin City Limits Festival, held for three days in Zilker Park in September and tied to the long-standing PBS series of the same name. 

This year, the festival dates are 14-16 September, and the lineup includes the usual disparate group of performers:  Björk, Bob Dylan, White Stripes, Beausoleil, Raul Malo, Joss Stone, Steve Earle, Wilco, Ziggy and Stephen Marley, Arctic Monkeys, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Asleep at the Wheel,  Yo La Tengo, Ghostland Observatory, Cross Canadian Ragweed, Ben Kweller,  Lucinda Williams, Paolo Nutini, Preservation Hall Jazz Band….Ow, my head hurts….just go see the whole 2007 lineup.

Where to stay?  Every magazine review of the city flogs the funky Austin Motel and super-Zen-hip Hotel San Jose, both of which are quite nice and probably quite sold out already for September (hey, call and check; maybe you’ll get lucky.)

Here’s what I recommend — you need a place that is within walking or cycling distance of Zilker Park.  I have now done the shuttle bus drill from downtown to the park, and while the distance is short as the crow flies and the service is pretty darned efficient, there are just so many people that it takes forever to get out of the park when the evening ends.  People dribble into the park at various times during the day, so going in is not bad, but everyone pretty much leaves at the same time at night, forcing a lot of standing around/waiting when you’re most ready to collapse into your hotel bed.  

These other hotel options are all a fairly long walk or a short bike ride on the Town Lake Hike and Bike Trail from Zilker Park back towards downtown; the trail is well-lighted at night and you’ll be pumped from the music anyway.  Try the Radisson Hotel, the Four Seasons, the Hyatt or the Embassy Suites, all next to/near Town Lake at the foot of Austin’s “Main Street,” Congress Avenue.  A little further north, clustered around the Convention Center near Trinity and 4th Streets, are the Hampton Inn, Hilton and Courtyard and Residence Marriott properties.

There is also a lesser-known Extended Stay America at 6th and Guadalupe; very handy and clean, plus it’s within stumbling distance of Katz’s Deli, open 24 hours because “Katz’s Never Kloses.”  Nothing like a bagel with lox or blintzes at any hour. 

And now the bad news….I didn’t move fast enough to write this and the 3-day tickets are already sold out, but you can still get single day tickets (buy one for each day!) or spring for big-bucks VIP tickets that cover all three days.  Move fast if you’re interested, obviously.

Y’all come on down!

Technorati tags: travel, music, Austin City Limits Festival, Austin, Texas

Hot summer days tend to remind me of Japan, and the wonders of the Japanese vending machine.  

It’s certainly true that you can buy all sorts of things in these machines (rice, toilet paper, kid’s toys, beetles) but the most common item dispensed is some sort of drink.

Big deal, you say; there are soft drink machines all over the world.  Yes,  but the Japanese definition of “all over” is just a little more “all over” than you can imagine. 

Commensurate with the country’s extraordinary population density, the vending machine count is staggering;  “5,582,200 vending machines in Japan, or one machine for every 23 people” according to the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturer’s Association.  Because the petty crime/vandalism rate is so low, you will see machines in the diciest neighborhoods and out in the middle of nowhere on the highway, just plugged in and glowing at night like a thirst-quenching beacon, without any burglar bars, either.

This means that no matter how dried-out and miserable, you are usually only a block or two away from cold tea (green or oolong,) coffee, soda, water and sometimes fruit juices or beer.  What a country.  Prices for the non-alcoholic items range from about 120 to 150 yen (a little over a dollar US or about .90 Euro cents, and some take credit cards) and you’re satiated.  

Under each row of lighted display cans/bottles in the front is a blue or red bar — blue for chilled and red for heated.  They are swapped out seasonally, so there are more chilled items in summer than heated, but there are always some of each.  (In winter, I highly recommend popping one hot can of coffee or tea into each jacket pocket for the snuggly effect before you drink them.)

I am more of a coffee than tea drinker, and my favorite is the Georgia brand (owned by Coca-Cola.)  Pretty soon I learned that the light brown can is coffee with sugar and cream; just right for Goldilocks.  Suntory makes “Boss” coffee for the machines but I didn’t like it as well — it has a logo with a Titan of Industry man’s head smoking a pipe, a very Old School boss.  There’s another brand that has a Starbucks-ish green logo.

Sports drinks include the famous Pocari Sweat, which is basically like Gatorade,  and Calpis (known as “cow piss” amongst some expats.)  My favorite water bottle has a nice Mt. Fuji drawing on the label.

One summer, the Dr Pepper cans had a really neat manga character on them; I enjoyed the dissonance of drinking my favorite Texas soda while strolling the tiny streets in Asakusa. 

Thank you, Japanese civility and low crime rate, for quenching traveler thirst.

Technorati tags:  travel, Japan, Asia, vending machines