We’re not sure if this rule always applies, but it seems like taking small roads across the boarder is a much better idea than larger ones. Getting into Canada via some tiny little road was a snap. The guy asked us if we were bringing anything in, Ben says “only what’s in the van,” and we cross over. Ok, maybe there was a little negligence on the Customs Officer’s part, but whatever. We’re good people.

Getting back into the US we decided to shoot straight down I-87. BAD IDEA. The traffic there was horrible, as you can see in the left photo. As we finally got closer I saw a bunch of signs that I thought were amusing (right photo,) but apparently the Customs officers didn’t. They detained us for about 15 minutes, asking questions and attempting to delete my photos the entire time. While they didn’t manage to do that, they did manage to record a voice memo, which I kindly put at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

I can’t even operate the computers at work, I can’t operate a digital camera.

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This could also be true for the rest of Canada, we’ll have a better idea later. The first European impression is obvious: everyone’s speaking French. But it goes much deeper than just road signs and overhead conversations on the Metro. The architecture and design have apparent roots overseas, too. The biggest similarity is the people. Everyone (and by everyone, I mean about 80%,) are in shape and seem to have a sense of style about them. You just don’t see people here eating their filet mignon in last decade’s sweat suit, unless of course they’re from out of town.

I could go on, but I’m sitting in a public park stealing WiFi from a near by “linksys” and power from a municipal building. And it smells like urine. Ahh, the joys of being on lifecation!

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Expert online marketer Andy Beal was not only kind enough to sit down with me for an interview, but was also kind enough to mention Road Trip 2.0 on his much-acclaimed website, Marketing Pilgrim. For those of you who may have ended up here from the Marketing Pilgrim post, welcome!

Imagine this:

You’re driving around Boston on Lifecation. You’re looking for the best Irish pub in town, and have no idea where to start or who to ask. You prefer a bit of a dive bar with sports playing on multiple TVs and a late 20s/early 30s crowd. You are looking for a hotel in a specific price range, and would like for it to be near the bar…you don’t know how late of a night it’s going to be, since the Red Sox are in the World Series, after all.

As you drive into the city, your GPS/Cell/WiMAX Phone displays a comparative list of bars and hotels within 5 miles of each other. Each bar/hotel combination also displays the level of matching criteria based on your previously-input requirements. A dive bar with sports on multiple TVs, but with a college crowd, might display as matching 67%. It may be paired with a hotel two miles away that meets your price range, amenities, and availability at 90%.

A couple of blocks later, you happen upon a bar and hotel combination that are both 90%+ matching your criteria and within a mile of each other. You set it to book your room, park at the hotel, check in, and head straight to the pub just in time for the opening pitch.

Andy mentioned the fact that so many people are trying to define Web 3.0 as Web 2.0 becomes more settled into our marketing psyches.

In my opinion, Web 3.0 is in the works and it’s a combination of three key things that are happening:

• Microformats
• GPS/Geographic Location
• Open Wireless Networks

What Are Microformats?

Read the rest of this entry »

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Today, I’m spending most of the day as a work day…I just spent quite a bit of time putting receipts into our shared Google Spreadsheet, which we’re using to manage and balance expenses.

One of the things that I’ve learned on this trip is to always have something to do, because you never know when you’re going to not be able to do what you intended to, when you’ll be waiting on someone for something, or when you’ll end up on a Metro with 20 minutes to burn.  This happened a bit ago as I ducked into Starbucks to get some work done…no power outlet and my laptop battery was dead.  Here I was, with a stack of receipts and nothing to do with them.  Since I rode my bike here, I’m a few miles from the van and my books that I usually bring along with me.

What I did have, however, was the smaller of my two digital cameras and a stack of receipts.  I also have a group of virtual assistants based out of India through a company called GetFriday.

As I was organizing my receipts, waiting for a power outlet to open up, I seriously considered photographing each receipt, sending the images to GetFriday, having them enter the data into a pre-formatted spreadsheet, then I would just copy that to the shared spreadsheet.  The idea is that I would be able to at least make progress in the meantime rather than simply wasting the time away, listening to my iPod, waiting for an outlet to open up.

Cumbersome?  Absolutely.

Luckily, as I was organizing the last of the receipts, a table opened up near an outlet and I input them myself.

But, I think that this exemplifies the mantra of “Always have something to do” and what becomes possible.  When I talk to people about outsourcing, the first response I always get back is something to the effect of “I have no idea what I would outsource.”  Until I made the jump and hired them, neither did I.

In this instance, what would otherwise be considered laziness could have turned into an efficiency.

Next time, though, I’ll be sure to have a book on hand.

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We’re in Canada! This is my first time to grace the country with my presence. Ben has visited Montreal once a while back, but it’ll probably be a new experience for the both of us. The plan is to camp out for 2 nights at a Walmart located on the southern end of the city. It has a Metro station across the street which, for $18, will let us access the entire city easily. The three big things on my radar are:

-Old Montreal & Port. Listed in all the guide books & resources I’ve seen, it’s got a lot of history, shops, and cafes.
-The “Underground City” is a bunch of underground shops, businesses, & malls that connect off the Metro.
-The old Olympic Park has an indoor pool that we can use ($4) for exercise & to catch a shower. It has the added benefit of being an environment worthy of our physical prowess.

If you have any recommendations let us know!

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I got the chance to go on a weekend-long camping trip a few weeks ago with my brother, Jonathan. Along with many other things, one of the topics that often came up with a sense of vigor, paralleled only by fans of Nascar talking about Dale Earnhardt, was the glory that is: Hot Sauce. More specifically, Texas Pete.

Jonathan adds Texas Pete to everything…pizza, eggs, chicken, sandwiches, cereal, beer…you name it, and the Pete is right there on it.

I’ve often been perplexed by this behavior. While I find hot sauce to be a mystically delicious element essential to the Earth’s being, I never found it necessary to add to everything and certainly never envisioned caching a full bottle, or even half a bottle.

On this trip, like the essence of water, Texas Pete has become a thing of necessity. It doesn’t need cold storage and, as Alexi noted last night, it has the right balance of salt, pepper and vinegar to add a never-overpowering flavor to just about anything.

As we were finishing up our amazingly delicious burritos, made with left over cow’s arse, I noticed that the bottle of Texas Pete was almost gone…after only two weeks of making use of it.

At first I wanted to cry since we were almost out. In fact, I’ll even admit it…I shed a tear.

But then I realized the inherent cosmic glory that radiated from the situation - not unlike how a golden God beams its energy over the land of its people - and was, again, at peace.

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This sleepy little city, in this sleepy little state, made us really, really tired. No, seriously. We’ve been going to bed at 10:00 and waking up at 9:00 for the past 3 nights. But it was probably good for us. We used the extra time to get burn some calories, do a little fancy cooking, and enjoy a couple of campfires. Not to mention that the trees are starting to turn color. The only downside of the season was a strong wind every day but the morning that we’re packing up to leave. This prevented the awning from being deployed, something we’re both looking forward to.

There’s not much else to say about South Hero, Vermont, so I’ll let the slideshow do the talking after the cut. Read the rest of this entry »

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To stick with the food theme, we decided to show you guys what it’s like to cook in the van kitchen. I’m no Julia Childs but you should get the idea. Notice that we’re not only being constrained by space, but also our $100/wk. (umm.. attempted) budget.

Note: The content of this video may cause more sensitive viewers to lose their appetite.

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Did you know that you can get 2lbs. of “Round Steak,” whatever that is, for about $3? We found that out last night when we drove into town (Milton, VT) to do some grocery shopping. Pound-for-pound, that’s gotta even give tuna a run for it’s money, and certainly is tastier. Ben busted out his camping grill and cooked up a 1/2lb for each of us along with some greens:

What a pleasant little meal. But it’s fairly 1.0 for our 2.turbo-charged road trip. I knew from intuition, and past experience, that putting un-ground meat on bread is delightful. Ben took only a little convincing, and then he was sold.

Behold, the Steak Sandwich. Brought to you by Road Trip 2.0.

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We’re not in Burlington. But we drove through it. Little did we know…

• Burlington is the largest city in the U.S. state of Vermont.
• With a population of 38,889, Burlington is the core of one of the nation’s smaller metropolitan areas.
• Burlington is also the smallest U.S. city that is the largest city in its state.
• As of 2006, the Burlington metropolitan area has an estimated population of 206,007, approximately one third of Vermont’s total population.

I was wondering where everyone was and why it was so quiet.

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