Within France, more than 150 canals were built. Most are still in service, as France now has the largest waterways network in Europe, about half of it in canals.
Once upon a time on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, before the evolutionary ingredients of post-industrial-strength river tourism — hairnets, gourmet menus, the Norwalk virus, food handlers’ licenses, coolers the size of refrigerators, rigorous spot kitchen inspections, a river food ethos of “plenty” rather than of “enough,” the potential of routine waste — and [...]
Wherever you are right now, drive 14 miles. Depending on the direction you’re coming from, you’ll either turn right or left at the fourth unmarked dirt road. Follow this road until it forks. Turn and drive toward the sun — east or west, depending on the time of day. After a sufficient amount of time, [...]
I am stopped waiting for the highway crew to clean up a terrible accident on Highway 37A in northern British Columbia. The accident involved a car trying to avoid a mama bear and cub and consequently hitting another car in the process. As I pass the accident scene, there is a highway worker that looks [...]
GPS route-finding has been enthusiastically accepted by drivers who don’t want the drudgery of piloting their vehicles or the tedium of orientation and navigation. Begging the question of why they don’t just take mass transit, most of us have heard really great stories that involve use of a GPS route finder, flat unbelievable cluelessness and [...]
Europe is known for its mountain ranges and for its extensive web of rail networks that spans the continent. In that web are some two-thirds of the world’s mountain railways, lines that employ special technologies to climb and descend steep grades. And mainlines crisscross landscapes at lesser grades. It’s long been that way. Many of [...]
If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventure, heat and cold, If schooners, islands, and maroons, And buccaneers, and buried gold, And all the old romance, retold Exactly in the ancient way, Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of today: —So be it, and fall on! If not, If [...]
Aron Ralston? He had to have been an idiot getting stuck in that canyon the way he did. That’s all I could figure at the time. Even if you kick it hard as a test, you don’t put your weight on some chintzy chockstone. Clan of half-naked desert spawn who call this region of southeast [...]
For Christmas, I got him this little wooden cross that dangles from his dog collar, only half-jokingly to signify his calling. I threaten to get him a little black robe with a white collar, but he — with his classic border collie coat — already wears those. I, once his equal partner in search and [...]
