About Scott: Travel

Travel is everything. But you know this.

Me sitting on a waist-level wall on a sunny Mt Pilatus in Switzerland, with mountains in the background

Mount Pilatus, Switzerland, November 2014

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The cliche. The big duh.

The thing that makes me just like millions of people: I have always loved traveling.

Read about my travel book, Backseat Cities.

Nevertheless, it's true. As a boy growing up in Columbus, OH, I looked forward to trips to Cincinnati or Lake Erie to visit family. The logistics often interested me as much as the destination. Where would we stop to eat, what roads would we take, which towns were we passing through, etc.

Travel is the poetry of daily life.

After graduating from high school, I went on a trip to France with my best friends. As a kid from the bland suburbs of Columbus going to Europe for the first time, I saw the possibilities. It changed everything.

As a junior in college, I spent a semester in Paris. I got to know the city and I traveled around western Europe.

During my senior year, my girlfriend and I considered starting a tour company offering trips to France and Germany. It never happened, but it was the first thing I thought of when facing the onset of The Rest of My Life™.

In graduate school at UC Davis, I traveled extensively in the western US and in Europe, particularly in France.

Kid running up a hill of lava rocks

Inferno Cone, Craters-of-the-Moon, Idaho. Sep 2019

Me standing on a tower with trees behind and below me

Ziplining in the Hocking Hills, Ohio. Oct 2010

My wife and I started taking cool trips almost as soon as we met: the Adrenaline Tour (2010), the Grand Tour of Europe (2014), the Food and Music Tour (2015), etc. We began traveling with our son about a year after he was born. As of October, 2022—at six years old—he has already been to twelve American states, Denmark, Norway, and France.

Taking a trip isn't just fun, or a recharging of your batteries, or a way to open your mind. It's involving yourself in history, art, food, spirituality, nature, commerce, politics. Travel is everything.

Compared to someone who works for the State Department, or veteran travel writers, I'm not even close to widely traveled.

Most of all, when done right, travel is a series of distilled experiences which encapsulate what we're doing during our brief time on this planet. Travel is the poetry of daily life.

Travel Writing

See Reading, check out the 44 Reviews, or learn about my travel book, Backseat Cities.

Travel Maps

Compared to someone who works for the State Department, or veteran travel writers, I'm not even close to widely traveled.

Mother with suitcases and child in pajamas

Gina and Francis at the Gare de l'Est, Strasbourg, Oct 2018

I've created three maps to show where I've been. I did them for myself as much as for site visitors.

  1. These are places I visited from childhood to the end of 2009.
  2. This map starts in the fall of 2010, the first time I traveled after my first wife and I divorced.
  3. I ran out of layers on #2, so I had to start a new map! It's 2020 to the present.

There are so many blank spaces on these maps, the markers read like a travel brochure for middle class white Americans. I will rectify that.

  • Favorite American cities: New York, New Orleans
  • States I have not yet been to: North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, Alaska
  • Favorite foreign countries: France, Mexico, Switzerland
  • Countries I would especially like to visit: Costa Rica, Argentina, Senegal, Morocco, New Zealand, Japan, Russia, India

If you're on a decently-sized screen, you can look at these more closely by clicking on the "View larger map" icon. View larger map icon here

Recent Posts

A Month in Siena  10/16/2023

Eyewitness Travel: France  4/24/2023

L'Africain du Groenland  8/2/2022

On the Plain of Snakes  5/17/2022

Volcanoes, Palm Trees, and Privilege  3/22/2022

L'axe du loup  2/28/2022

The Art of Travel  12/31/2021

Postcard: Los Angeles  11/5/2021

Afropean  8/6/2021

Roadrunner  7/22/2021

Archive

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About

A smiling Francis and me, sitting outside in front of some shrubs

Some basics

A brief biographical sketch

Me on top of a sunny Mt Pilatus in Switzerland, with mountains in the background

Travel

Pardon the saccharine and the obvious, but travel is everything

A couple standing in front of a large Gothic church, on a bridge over the Seine

France

France deserves its own section

Francis, as a two year-old in a car seat, in sunglasses reading a French picture book

Reading

The bullshit of daily life? I'd rather read.

Stage with musicians going at it—they're Gogol Bordello, and they're crazy

Music

Let me take you back

Little boy sitting on a big white bed, looking at a tablet

Television

I watch a lot more television than movies

Live action from a soccer game at Crew Stadium—yellow versus blue

Soccer

The only sport that matters

Ugly photo of a pig knuckle after it's been eaten—really, it looks horrible

Food

As a travel writer, I have to talk about food

Me in an outdoor restaurant drinking from a green coconut with a long straw

Dumb stuff

You will not feel smarter after reading this

Dumpster full of garbage

Minimalism

Trying to live simply

Me getting out of a red Ferrari F430 with a guy clapping for me

Other Interests

I've only driven a Ferrari once

Dude wearing orange pants and orange and green shoes walking on wet grass

Get off my lawn

A few brief rants

Recent Tweets

If you toggle the switch above the words "Recent Tweets" and it still says, "Nothing to see here - yet," it means the idiot who broke Twitter either hasn't gotten around to fixing this feature, or intentionally broke it to get us to pay for it (which is moronic, I can easily live without it and it generated traffic to his site).