MINNESOTA/MICHIGAN ESCAPE

[curtiejoe]

Ho! Ho! Ho! Travelfan

I too tend to favor the Czar's gold and the Czech Legion, but feel that the Viking story of runes and journeys into the wilds of Hudson's Bay and Minnesota may be of more popular interest among today's avid readers of historic adventure stories. Also, it may potentially be more suiteed for film treatment...Appreciate your comments and opinions.

What I find is that the more I travel and visit new and exciting places around the world, the more I learn about the cultures, customs, and history of the people in these far-flung places. This always leads me to do detailed research about persons and events that are significant to these folks. It's anazing the fascinating things that can be uncovered from such a chain of circumstances. My perspective is to educate myself about such remarkable matters and of course to think about turning some of the often mysterious evenys and personages into an interesting novel. Right now, I've got rough outline sketches for about two dozen such stories.

frequent flyer

[lhbrown]

Hi frequent flyer,

You manage to make your travels last a lot longer by doing research afterwards and thinking about developing ideas for stories and novels. What a wonderful interest. I like to read your novel on the Oetzi man. Let me know when you get it published. Good luck on your other prospective books. I am not that ambitious. For right now, that LL Community board is keeping me busy....

[curtiejoe]

Hi travelfan

Yes, its a terrif way to keep our travel experiences and memories fresh in our minds, and as I noted, can open a number of avenues of further exploration, if only on the Internet for now, that hopefully lead to a future idea for a novel.

I also find that logging into Google Earth provides a fantastic, if visually surrogate, way of revisiting the places we've been to or better yet, of taking a bird's eye view of locales we're thinking of/planning to travel to. In fact, before our mort-recent vacation in Costa Rica, I "flew" to the north-west coast via Google Earth and took a good look at the overall location of our Grand Papagayo resort, the grounds, buildings and surroundings. In this high-tech way, I was also able to visually check out a number of towns, beaches and travel attractions (e.g. Arenal Volcano) in the wider countryside ahead of time. As such, I got a good sense of the lay of the land and what was where in relation to the resort.

Once the Oetzi novels out, I'd be thrilled for you to read it.

frequent flyer

[lhbrown]

Hi ff,
You are full of good info and surprises. I will try out your suggestion on Google Earth for some of the properties I am eying. Look forward to your Oetzi book.

[curtiejoe]

tf



I travel to the far corners of the Earth almost every day on Google Earth. On their web site, you'll often find incredible "tours" that they've put together. All you need is click on a specific one's that's available (eg. they recently had one on the sites set out in the Da Vinci Code book/movie) then sit back, relax with a glass of your favorite wine, and enjoy the armchair-travelers' show as you, the viewer are automatically and as if by magic transported via satellite from one place to another. Amazing!



You can also set up your own tour. This is where the fun really begins!!! Go to those enchanted places you've visited on your travels over the years, find the exact location you'd like to re-visit via Google Earth (say the Louvre in Paris or the pyramids in Egypt), use their 'push-pin' tool to add a placemark at this location, then go to your next destination and repeat. Once you're done, save your tour& name it. Then, you can launch it anytime you like and vicariously enjoy your former travel highlights all over again in the comfort of your own home!!!



ff

[lhbrown]

Hi ff,

Google Earth really sounds interesting. Haven't had the time yet to try it out. My husband and I both loved the Da Vinci Code book and movie and I will definitely check out the Da Vinci Virtual Tour you mentioned, and will also try my hand on some of the others.

Just got back from the Asolo Theater where we saw "Amadeus". The play was great and the actors were superb. Sometimes I think it is not fair that the day has only 24 hours and we need to sleep at least 6 hours away.... and my husband keeps saying whoever invented the calendar must have been a woman because she only put 12 months into a year... with our schedule we could use 24 months in a year.... Oh well....

[curtiejoe]

hi tf



How about adopting a 'metric' type of calendar with only 10 months (like the ancient Romans had) of 36 days each month with a special 5-day holiday at the end of the year? After all, December comes from the Latin for '10'. That'd give us a total of 65 extra days in the 10 months (i.e. 6 extra days each month over and above the average of 30 days we now have)! This could be used for more travel!



What do you think?



ff

[lhbrown]

Hi C,
I like your idea of a metric calendar..... now how do we get it adopted????
I was wondering how your book on the "Oetzi" man was coming along???

[curtiejoe]

Hi L



Yeah, I too think a metric calender would be really cool. Justimagine of all the extra time we'd have to contribute posts on the LL Community once there were 10 days in a week! All of us would have plenty of time to travel. That'd also give me a whole lot of time to look for a publisher for my novel on Oetzi because it's now done. With three extra days a week, I could also get a lot written on the two new books I've started, one on Vikings in Minnesota a thousand years ago and one on the incredible journey of the Lost Czech Legion through Siberia at the end of WW I.



C

[lhbrown]

Hi C,
Wouldn't it be great to have all that extra time... but then, we would get used to a 10 day week and would procrastinate even more... so maybe we ought to be content with what we got..... Wonderful that your first book is done. I like to read it once you get it into print. Sounds really great. Good luck on the other two. Between those two and writing on LL you have your hands full. My husband is getting somewhat jealous, he says I spend more time on LL than with him... he likes to exagerate.....