Unpremeditated Thoughts

Okay, so I haven’t posted as often lately, but it was for a good reason. I’d been thinking of taking a trip lately and while I’ve been searching for deals so that I can travel on my budget, I thought, “Why not make all of the resources that I’ve put together over the years available to all of my friends. I wanted to have all of the resources and information I’d gathered in one place so I myself could come back to it, but also so that I could share the information so that you wouldn’t have to do as much searching as I’ve had to do.  I hope these resources help you plan your next trip as well.   So, here they are.

Flights

www.southwest.com/

www.jetblue.com/

www.continental.com/

www.usairways.com/

www.united.com/

www.nwa.com/ – Not the old school rap group, but Northwest Airlines.

www.skywest.com/

www.delta.com/

www.aa.com/

Search Engines

www.expedia.com/

www.orbitz.com/

www.priceline.com/

www.travelzoo.com/

www.travelocity.com/

www.hotwire.com

http://www.budgetflightfinder.com/

www.farecompare.com/ – This site has some great deals during certain times of the year. They also provide deals from SLC almost daily on Twitter. Check out their page here:

http://www.skyscanner.com/

http://www.seatguru.com/ Not only does this site help you find flights and hotels, but it also provides very detailed information about the seats on the plane.

www.applevacations.com/ – I booked a trip to Playa del Carmen/Cancun with Apple on the recommendation of a friend. I got a good price on the flight and the all-inclusive hotel.

http://tripeedo.com/

http://www.budgetflightfinder.com/

http://www.statravel.com/ – If you’re a student, this site has some deals for trips to Europe.

http://www.seatgeek.com – This site is cool. It allows you to search for trips by the concert or sporting event you want to attend.

http://www.kayak.com/

http://www.cheaptickets.com/

http://www.gate1travel.com/

http://www.sidestep.com/

www.cheapflights.com/

http://www.cheapoair.com/

Hotels/Rentals

www.hotels.com/

http://www.dohop.com/ – vacation rentals.

http://www.raveable.com/ – reviews.

http://www.vacationrentals.com/

http://www.wegoround.com/ – vacation rentals.

http://www.hotelpricefinder.com/

http://www.hotelclub.net/

http://www.hoteltip.com/v2/index.php

http://www.tvtrip.com/ - Hotel video guide.

http://www.concerthotels.com/

http://www.travelpost.com/ – hotel reviews.

http://www.trivago.co.uk/ – hotel reviews in Europe.

Hostels

http://www.hostelworld.com/ – I used this one on a trip to Italy. The place we stayed at was somewhere in between a hotel and a hostel and it was pretty good. Especially for $25 a night. Breakfast wasn’t that great, but hey, it cost $25 a night.

http://www.couchsurfing.org/index.html – Hospitality exchange. For the truly adventurous. Maybe I’ll try this someday.

http://www.hihostels.com/

http://www.hiusa.org/

http://www.hospitalityclub.org/

http://hosteltrail.com/

Food

www.urbanspoon.com/ -If you have an i-phone, you need to download this app from iTunes.  You can still get good information on this site on your PC, but it’s not as fun. Check out the demo for the app here.

http://www.where.com/- Helps you find restaurants and other things.

http://www.zagat.com/-Restaurant reviews. Better to look at this one over the Internet. They have a phone app, but it is pricey. If you want a phone app, go with UrbanSpoon for the iPhone, it’s free.

http://www.restaurant.com/

http://www.citysearch.com/- Find restaurants and events nearby where you’re staying.

Planning

http://www.luggagelimits.com/ A site that’ll tell you how much luggage you can take with you before they’ll start charging you for it.

http://triplittle.com/ – All in one trip planner

http://citytours.googlelabs.com/ – This site is only in beta, but what a cool site to help you plan your trip.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ – I always go to this site before booking a trip. It usually has good reviews and good advice from a large community.

http://www.x-rates.com/ – Even though I would have named this site a different name for obvious reasons, it has information on the exchange rates for your money. http://www.google.com/transit – Help with the transit system from your friends at Google.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-sites-for-cheap-online-car-rentals/

http://www.spottedbylocals.com/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/collection/travel – Firefox add-ons for travelers. Road Trips http://gasbuddy.com/http://gasprices.mapquest.com/

www.gaspricewatch.com/

http://www.fuelgaugereport.com/

http://www.waze.com/homepage/ - traffic info

http://www.nationofgo.com/ – An interactive website that gives you info on road trips as well as different trails.

http://trapster.com/ – A way to avoid running into your friendly local law enforcement and incurring extra “fees”.

http://riskyroads.org/ – Watch out for the dangerous roads while traveling.

http://gis5.com/pois_along_route/gm_pois_along_route.php – This is supposed to be a site to help you discover points of interest. However, all it showed me was where all of the fast food restaraunts were along the way. At least I now know where all of the In-N-Out burger joints are from SLC to California.

http://www.bikely.com/ – Bike trails

I hope this is helpful. Do you know of other good websites that you’ve used and have been helpful when planning your trips? Share them in the comments.

When I was a young kid, I was just slightly more immature than I am right now. Apart from being childish my reasoning skills hadn’t quite developed yet. One cold winter day near Christmas time I used those limited reasoning skills and walked outside without a coat. I don’t even remember why I went outside, but I did and it was very cold. While on my short outdoor adventure, my sister decided it would be funny to lock the doors on me so that I couldn’t get back inside. To make things even more hilarious, my sister ran around the house and locked all of the doors.

After several attempts with no luck at finding an open door and some repeated knocking, I realized what had occurred. After I ceased to knock on the door, I could see my sister looking at me through one of the bedroom windows. With a smile on her face she proceeded to stick out her tongue and wiggle her hands to taunt me. So, I decided to do what I thought any reasonable human being my age would do and take matters into my own hands.  I was going to be resourceful and use one of my talents. Being a pitcher in baseball, I thought I was really good at throwing baseballs and so I decided to throw a snowball at her to scare her and teach her a lesson. It wasn’t going to hit her, but it would just make her flinch and she would stop sticking her tongue out at me.

Although I was prideful even at that age, I should have had more confidence in my abilities because when I threw the snowball, it shattered the bedroom window when I threw the snowball. Luckily, the window I hit was a double-paned window and the snowball didn’t break through the second pane.  When I saw the window shatter, I knew it would mean trouble for me when Mom and Dad came home and found out. My sister stopped joking around and all of the sudden the situation became serious. My parents arrived home and found out what had happened. They weren’t very happy with me. However, I don’t really remember them doing anything to my sister at all for locking me out of the house.

The year of the snowball incident wasn’t a very good year for our family financially. Times were tough for everyone and my family was no exception. The extra expense of replacing a window was going to stretch the family budget.  My parents seemed upset and hinted that someone with the same name as mine might be on Santa’s naughty list that year.

When Christmas Day finally came, sure enough I was on the naughty list and there was a large lump of coal waiting for me from Santa Claus. It was a really big piece that weighed several pounds. Although at first glance it might  seem a bit harsh, I wasn’t exactly an angel that year. My being on the nice list would have been touch-n-go regardless of breaking that window. Great, just what I deserved I thought. My parents were right.  I was on the naughty list and received coal rather than presents like the nice kids. However, after less than two minutes my mom let me know that Santa was in a good mood that year and was being more lenient than he had been in previous years and she came in with the presents that Santa had instructed should be given to me.

I’d never really even thought about this experience until a few years ago. Since then, I’ve often thought about how much we all deserve to be given coal at certain times in our lives and at other times we deserve better. My parents had taught me through the guise of Santa Clause; that even though some people probably deserve the coal, we should give them something better just like the Master, even Jesus Christ does when he intercedes on our behalf to God and gives us blessings even when we don’t deserve them. This Christmas season, you’re likely to run into both people that deserve coal and people that deserve better. I encourage you to be like Santa and Christ and err on the side of mercy and  treat everyone as though they deserve better.

Women seem to have all different kinds of scented soaps in their bathrooms, especially single women. I guess for the most part, the  novelty of the scented soap (I call it smelly soap) wears off after marriage. Or by then has it merely fulfilled its secret purpose?

The other day, I was visiting a friend and had to use her restroom. When I was finished attending to business, the only soap at my disposal was the scented soap in the picture above. Great, my hands are clean, but now they smell like Midnight Pomegranate.

Later, I could be watchin’ the game and all of the sudden, “Why do these nachos smell like pomegranate? Wait a second, it’s not the nachos, it’s my hands and they don’t smell like pomegranate, they smell like Midnight Pomegranate! It’s true that Midnight Pomegranate is a clever name. Anything with the word midnight in it has to be at least semi-cool, right? But let’s face it, I don’t want the stuff all over my hands. I wish there was an unscented alternative soap for when guests pay a visit.  I wouldn’t mind having a choice. However, it is my belief that something more sinister is at work here than just the utter humiliation of a woman making a man smell like an exotic fruit basket.

It’s now my belief that having the smelly soap as the only option is a test for us men. This is exactly why more single women carry smelly soap than married ones. Let me explain further.  It’s to test whether or not a man will 1) swallow his pride and wash his hands with the smelly soap, 2) wash his hands with water only (not recommended), or 3) not wash his hands at all (this should be illegal). If a man comes out of the bathroom smelling like he’s spent too much time near a Bath and Body Works, a woman can be sure that he not only has good hygiene, but he is also a humble person for doing so. If a man comes out of the bathroom void of the Midnight pomegranate scent she will think, “Wait a minute. Something’s wrong here. You don’t smell fruity.” And she’ll know that he is either prideful, or has bad hygiene. Either one is a deal-breaker so it makes it easier for a woman to narrow down the list of potential mates. This is why married women don’t carry smelly soap as often because they have already conducted the experiment and only repeat it every now and then on a man that had previously passed the test just to keep him on his toes. If he doesn’t pass one of the random post-marriage smelly soap experiments, is that possible grounds for divorce? I’ll let you be the judge.

Let me be clear. The author has always bitten the bullet and come out smelling the part. I’m not advocating that anyone go out and buy soap that smells like barbecue sauce or bacon for when a man comes over to visit. I’m not even suggesting that a woman should buy unscented soap as an alternative. I simply wanted to shed some light on something that at first glance may seem like a harmless activity, when in fact it might just be much, much more.

I couldn’t get to sleep right away, so I thought I’d share a story.  Several years ago, my friend Phil invited me to go rock climbing with him.  I had never been before, but had always wanted to go. We drove out to Parley’s Canyon and just stopped off  somewhere on the side of the road.  There are plenty of good spots to climb in that canyon.  My friend Phil offered to go first so that he could take a rope up for us that would make it safer for those who had never done it before (me).  The rope would also allow us to repel down the mountain so that it wouldn’t take so much time to get down once we had reached the top.

My friend Phil made rock climbing look so easy.  When he finished, it was my turn.  No backing out now. I think I was actually more afraid of repelling down the mountain then I was of the actual climb.  I started up the mountain. However, I did something that wasn’t very smart. I hope there are others out there that have done this, but I’m probably alone in my foolish blunder.  As I started up the mountain, for some odd reason I only used my arms to try and pull myself up the mountain.  I didn’t even think to use my legs for strength (stupid I know, but that’s how it went down).  When I was about half-way up the mountain, I started to lose all my upper body strength until my arms fully gave out. I let go of my holds on the mountain and gave in to gravity. I started to fall.  Luckily I was hooked up to the rope that my friend Phil had put in place.  However, the rope would not have done me any good if Phil had not been keeping an eye on me from the bottom of the mountain. As soon as he saw me start to fall, he grabbed a hold of the rope and I didn’t fall more than a foot or two before I was suspended in the air. For a minute, all I could do was just hang there. My strength had fully given out.  While I was hanging there in the air, Phil shouted some words of encouragement, “Don’t worry, it gets easier the higher you climb.”  This was a total lie.  It didn’t get any easier but the encouragement helped me anyway.  However, I was smart enough to use my legs and arms once my strength came back to me after hanging there for a few minutes to think about what went wrong and I eventually reached the top of the mountain.  Repelling down was no problem as I knew my friend Phil had the rope below and wouldn’t let me fall.

When I came down, all I thought about was how fun it was and that I had reached the top.  But now the experience means so much more to me.  Before this climb, I hadn’t seen Phil in a few years.  He and his family had moved away a couple of years before.  However, even after not seeing him for a couple of years I trusted him enough to know that he would catch me if I fell.  After he caught me when my strength had failed, I didn’t fear anything.  I’m happy to say that I’ve been surrounded by friends like Phil my whole life.  And I hope they know I would do the same for them.   Even though the climb didn’t get easier as I got higher like Phil suggested, the climb did get easier when I knew I had a friend that I could trust holding the ropes that was looking out for me and giving me the encouragement I needed to reach the top.  So, next time you see a friend who’s strength is about to give out, be the one to grab the rope and don’t let them fall.  Because it doesn’t get easier as you get higher, it’s still just as hard.  But good friends you can trust and words of encouragement will help you reach the top.

After a couple of years of being too old to Trick-or-Treat, my friend Rob and I got bored one Halloween. We were right at that age where we were too old to go around the neighborhood and ask for candy, but young enough that there weren’t too many Halloween parties for our age group going on either.  Rather than being lame and playing Parcheesi with the folks, Rob and I thought that we would have a little fun this year and scare unsuspecting Trick-or-Treaters that came to the house . We had the most brilliant idea that was sure to scare everyone that came to the house. I had an evil gorilla mask just for the occasion.

The plan was that I would hide below ground in the window well right next to the porch and when someone came to the door and knocked, I would jump out of the window well in a single leap and scare them all.  It was the perfect plan and we were set for a night of pure fun and entertainment.  However, the night ended up being quite different from what we planned.  My parent’s house was near a highway and most parents didn’t like taking their kids anywhere near a busy road (I don’t blame them now, but I did back then).  So, I waited and waited in the window well, but almost nobody came to the house.  My mom gave out decent candy too. None of that toothbrush or pencil crap.  I think that the original plan was for both Rob and I to trade-off wearing the mask. However, there just weren’t enough people coming to the house to make it any fun. Many people would turn around  a house or two before ours because they wanted to stay away from the busy road.

Rob and I weren’t about to give up on the whole night, so we decided to give it one last shot. People weren’t going to come to our house to trick-or-treat, so we had to get them to come to the house for some other reason.  By this time we were getting hungry and my mom had warned us not to eat all of the candy that we were supposed to give to kids that came by (We ended up being able to eat most of it anyway when almost no kids came to the house that night). So we decided that we would order a pizza. That way, we would get food and we could scare the pizza guy when he came to the door to deliver the pizza.  It was the second brilliant plan of the night.  Never mind that the first brilliant idea of ours didn’t pan out so well.

We ordered the pizza and shortly after, the pizza delivery man arrived.  Little did he know that I was lying in wait in the window well wearing a gorilla mask ready to scare him. I kind of hoped that he would be so scared that he would drop the pizza and run as buying a pizza was quite an expensive meal for me when I was that young and I could have used a free pizza.  As he approached the door, I jumped out of the window well and yelled as loud as I possibly could through the mask which I figured is what gorillas would do out in the wild just before catching their prey.  To my utter disappointment, my gorilla scare tactics had not even phased the pizza delivery guy. He didn’t even flinch.  Once I was done belting out my all-but-terrifying roar, there were a few seconds of awkward silence and the pizza delivery guy said, “That’ll be $14 please.” I honestly can’t say that I remember the exact amount that he asked for, but I gave him the money with a modest tip and felt like a huge failure.  However, I only thought about the failure for a couple of minutes and then I was just too excited about eating pizza.  I didn’t really talk about the experience for several years because if word had ever got out, I knew I wouldn’t ever get hired at a haunted house or corn maze because I would have been known as the kid that couldn’t even scare the pizza guy. I never ended up working at a haunted house anyway, but I wanted to have my options open just in case I were given the opportunity someday.