Go2Go2Go2
^{Travel Exhortations by Ric Carter}

TRAVEL and TOURISM for TOTAL MORONS:
  You Don't Need An IQ To Go Places

People of all sorts, and/or all sorts of people, go places for various reasons — see Where, How and Why Travel? (click here). Even total morons like you go places, because you/they can or must or want to or just happen to. You morons should maybe know a little bit about travel and tourism (not that it'll do you much or any good) so this brief guide is for YOU. Use it well and don't eat it or lose it or shove it up your butt or nose (or anybody else's) or do anything else moronic with it. Please.

WHAT IS TRAVEL?

Travel is when you go someplace else.

WHAT IS TOURISM?

Tourism is when you go someplace to experience whatever is there, but you plan to come back.

WHY SHOULD I TRAVEL?

Beats me. You'll come up with your own moronic reason(s), if any. But some possible motives might include:

• * To go someplace where you can bother someone else.
• * To get away from people who are bothering you.
• * To go someplace different to look at different people and let them look at you, especially if you're dressed funny.
• * To go where the weather and food and odors and sounds and fart jokes are different, even if WalMarts are all the same.

HOW CAN I LOOK AND ACT LIKE A TOURIST?

Wear funny clothes. Carry cameras and stick them in people's faces and take pictures of any dumb stuff you see. Talk loud. Pick your nose and eat the boogers. Look at maps. Ask where the nudie shows are. Hang out with other tourists. Tell everybody that Disney World is better. Talk real loud. Look at things and point.

HOW MUCH DOES TRAVEL COST?

Whatever it takes to get you there and keep you fed and occupied and happy.

HOW MUCH DOES TOURISM COST?

About as much money as you have, or maybe twice as much.

WHAT WILL I SEE WHEN I GET SOMEWHERE?

That depends on where you go. You'll see the locals and the places where they live and work and shop and eat and poop. You'll see other tourists. You'll see cops and maybe soldiers. For complete information on what you can expect somewhere, get some guidebooks about the place. If you can read, read them; otherwise, have people read them to you. Do and see EVERYTHING the guidebooks suggest. Most guidebook writers are much smarter than most morons.

WHY DOES MY BUTT SMELL FUNNY AND ITCH?

Because you sat on some bananas, you moron. Now, brush off the tarantulas. Those are those hairy spider-things.

ARE ALL TOURISTS MORONS?

No, but those who are give the other five per cent a bad reputation.

I LIVE IN TEXAS. WILL I NEED A PASSPORT AND VACCINATIONS TO TRAVEL TO NEW MEXICO?

Yes.

HOW COME, WHEN I GET TO A BORDER, DOGS SNIFF AT ME?

Because you peed in your pants, you moron.

WHERE SHOULD I TRAVEL TO?

Anywhere. And you didn't ask about tourism, so I guess you don't plan to come back. Good. Travel to New York City and Los Angeles — they're like visiting people all over the world. Travel to all the theme parks and roller coaster rides and pachinko parlors and transvestite shows. Travel to oil refineries — they're very interesting, especially inside the fences. Travel to Washington DC and write political reports and speeches like all the other morons there. Stay there. Have fun.

JOURNEYING TO LOST WORLDS:
  Atlantis & Lemuria Are Just Around The Corner

(Re)discovering or inventing LOST WORLDS and/or LOST CONTINENTS and/or LOST RACES etc is easy — see Civilizations Lost & Found (click here). Actually traveling to such can be more difficult and dangerous. Some naturally have tourist facilities on hand, such as Greece's Santorini (Atlantis) or California's Mt Shasta (Mu). Others are stops on scheduled travel routes, such as Southern Spain (Atlantis) or Zimbabwe (Great Zimbabwe) or major Polynesian islands (Lemuria) or even Antarctica (Antipodes). But some, you have to work at — you really have to *WANT* to go there. Here are some challenging destinations:

* TIBET'S LENG PLATEAU: High, cold, remote, and forbidden to foreigners by the Communist Chinese government, the Leng Plateau is also, like Polynesia's Ponape Island and the Antarctic Range Mountains, inhabited by unspeakably vile and monstrous Lovecraftian demi-gods. Never say, "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

* THE ANDREWS PLATEAU: Somewhere in the Guiana Highlands between Venezuela and Brazil and the Guianas, the Andrews Plaeau's sheer volcanic walls make access almost impossible. And if you safely run the gauntlet of voracious anacondas and headhunting cannibals' poison darts, you'll be trapped in a land of carniverous dinosaurs.

* THE HASSAYAMPAYA HIGHLANDS: Rising in the Kualun Shan north of Tibet, flowuing through the Arizona desert, and emptying through upper Wisconsin into Lake Superior, the Hassayampaya River is more than just a good fishing stream. Its banks in the Kualun Shan are still infested with bandits, cannibals, cloistered nymphomaniacs, and corrupt tax collectors.

* SHANGRI-LA: Another Tibetan valley, this is now being developed as a tourist destination.

* SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA: Once an isolated fishport and the last stronghold of the Hippy Diaspora, Sana Cruz is now overrun as a bedroom suburb of Silicon Valley. But some traces of the lost Flower People may still be found in remote canyons, here and as far north as Humboldt Bay and the Cannabis Country of the Eel River watershed.

* WORKER'S PARADISE, RUSSIA: This Stalinist Shangri-la is now gone but not forgotten by the shapely former comrades whose blissful days and sensuous nights have become legendary. With the sinking into the sea of time of the storied Gulag Archipelago, this Heaven-on-Earth will never be seen again, except in North Korea.

* LAURENTIA: This primeval supercontinent once encompassed the entire non-oceanic world, breaking up to form our present global map. Laurentia boasted dinosaurs, giant amphibians, brontosaur lice that could eat a man whole, cyclopean cycads, crocodiles the size of a royal yacht, etc. Traces of Laurentia lie everywhere, but to go there you'll need a time machine &mdash see TIME TRAVEL: A User's Guide (click here).

* EL DORADO: The fabled Land Of The Golden Man, where streets and buildings and bedrooms and nasal passages are lined with gold, still lies somewhere in the Latin American Cordillera, fiercely protected by the indigenes. No amount of bribery or torture will loosen their lips to reveal its location. Give up.

* HELIGOLAND: A veritable Atlantis of the North, where Norse super-scientists built a glowing civilization and cracked the secrets of the atom, zero-point energy, cosmic resonance, and fartless beans. But their hubris angered and provoked the gods of Valhalla to sink Heligoland into the Baltic Sea. Don't you just hate it when that happens?

Many other Lost Lands did or will or might exist. After you've worn yourself out visiting all the 'found' places, tourist traps that have been 'discovered' and ruined with high-rise hotels and time-share condos and Chinese souvenirs and cruise-ship excursions, try the 'lost' places. They're usually much more authentic.

THE TOURIST IN A HURRY:
  Seeing Everything in Minimum Time

You want to visit everywhere, see and do everything, but you just don't have the time. You've considered having yourself cloned (see CLONING FOR TRAVELERS - click here) but have encountered legal-moral-medical impediments. Your fund of experiences is running woefully short. What to do?

That's easy — just use the famous FAST-TOURING (tm) technique. It merely requires a bit of organization, some rapid transport, and a few performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals. Just follow these simple steps and you can WHIRLAWAY whenever you want!

• (1) ORGANIZATION: Make a quick list of what you want to see. For hints, see THE JOURNEY OF A LIFETIME (click here). Don't bother going anywhere unless it has at least TWO *** three-star attractions — anyplace with less is just a waste of time. And be sure to run route-optimization software to plot your fastest path between your chosen sites.
• (2) TRANSPORTATION: Line up your transport. You can't cross the Atlantic on the Concorde any more, but chartered executive jets can make your long-distance point-to-point journeys both fast and enjoy­able. On the ground, engage high-performance limousine services that employ Formula One race drivers and turbo-charged machines. Avoid any public-use transit like the PLAGUE.
• (3) PHARMACEUTICALS: Obtain the proper drugs. Cocaine and methamphetamine will stretch your time sense, lysergic acid and dimethyltriptamine will enhance your sensations (long-term and short-term, respectively), and ketamine will enhance your nightmares. Accept no substitutes nor generics.

Now put those all together. Know where you're going, let professionals whisk you there at lightning speed, and experience the trip with your accelerated-enhanced senses. Do it now!

AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 MINUTES:
  You Just Can't Go No Faster, D3WD!

This time-frame is currently limited to spacecraft in LEO (Low Earth Orbit). Sneak or bribe or charter your way onto a Soyuz or Space Shuttle or Shenzhou spacecraft, blast off, and enjoy the fastest trip in the world! This sort of speed-travel will become easier and cheaper as private spacecraft and hypersonic ballistic liners come online. Be patient and you can go as fast as you want!

THE UNDERWATER TOURIST:
  20,000 Leagues Around Your Bathtub

You're tired of touring (and maybe even living) in the open air. The air stinks, traffic is noisy, you're hot and sweaty, your clothes stink, your companions suck, life stinks, etc. But you still want to travel. What to do?

That's easy! Just submerge yourself! Life and travel are much easier and cleaner and quieter and cooler underwater. And you have so many options!

# CHEAPEST: Pull on some swim trunks (or not — see NAKED, HERE?), grab a snorkel and mask and fins, jump in the water face-down, and start flipping your feet. You'll be amazed at how far you can go, especially if you're in a body of water larger than a bathtub or playpool.

* WARNING: Avoid jumping into hot springs, lava pools, waste-treatment or nuclear-cooling ponds, mining or agribiz runoff, shark- or piranha-infested waters, Lake Erie, the Aral Sea, and the White House swimming pool (unless you're a presidential crony-pusher-hooker etc).

# NOT SO CHEAP: Replace the snorkel with aqua-lungs and/or an air scrubber. Spend a bit more money and you can get an underwater tractor to tow you along under the waves. Be sure to factor in air-fuel costs.

# EXPENSIVE: Buy, rent, or build a submarine. One-man pedal-powered subs are good exercise but tiring. Used British or other naval subs are fairly cheap but may have maintenance problems. If you're a handyman, recover a lost nuke from the bottom of the sea and refurbish it. You'll be the talk of your neighborhood!

# PERMANENT: Get a gill implant and have your feet surgically sculpted into fins. Learn to catch fish as you swim and eat them raw. You'll never have to surface again! And you can try that exotic dolphin sex. Woo-woo!