GALFROMDOWNUNDER UPOVER

A downward dog with a building up your butt? That's Yoga at Bryant's Park. When I travel I try to pretend I've been in the place I'm visiting for years. That is, rather than rush about seeing sights, I try to do normal things that I or anyone else would do at home. Like eat, sleep, work, buy groceries. I might take in a museum or show or two, but I don't run around with this great long list and a Fodor's duct-taped to my chest. In fact, I don't run around at all. I've been known to spend days indoors in the heart of a NYC summer, the MOMA, Met, Cooper Hewitt, and Century 21 clothing store beckoning, glued to my laptop. What's the fun in that, I hear you ask? In this way, I don't get so much of that 'gotta tear myself away' angst and 'get back to real life' letdown when my stay comes to an end. This *is* real life. Or as a friend put it, 'This is not a holiday, this is my life.' So my attending a free yoga class in the mid

I just visited the famous Mandolin Bros fretted instrument shop on Staten Island, NY. Mandolin Bros, owner Stan May (left), the Gal with a Guild, and ever patient sales expert Dennis Ryan. … and came out with something a transglobal telecommuter can neither store, stash or carry terribly easily: a brand new guitar! Just like the time I schlepped home a giant framed Paul Alan Bennett picture for my birthday last year, and which is now freeloading in a friend's dining room in Eugene, Oregon. (As you will read, I almost dropped $750 on a blanket too…) "Paintings and blankets, you're settling," quipped my sage friend, Jerry Norquist. I've never heard of Mandolin Bros until I happened to jump onto the tail of the New York Cycle Club Ride to the Staten Island Bluegrass Festival, led by a bluegrass aficionado, Mark Gelles. Take a look at Straight Drive playing on stage here. "You gotta go there, best shop in New York," said Mark. "By t

One of the many things you can buy on RAGBRAI My RAGBRAI shots (the photogallery doesn't work that well in CHROME) I've just returned from bouncing around like an email selling Viagara .... NY, Philly, Texas, Eugene, Seattle and finally IOWA, where I rode across the state with 10,000 others on RAGBRAI. Including Lance, who, at all times, seemed to be riding his bike just outside my field of vision. After many 'Where's Lance?' moments I lightheartedly accused his yellow and black clad platoon of fundraisers of being paid to say 'here's over there' while pointing in precisely the opposite direction. I saw one guy who I swore was Lance except on dropping my gaze to his shoes I saw a pair of sandals. Would Lance wear sandals? If he was wearing ballet slippers with a large gold button on the toe I'd know it was him - I read somewhere he was dating a NY fashion designer called Tori Burch whose signature creation for 2007 are those very slippers. B

My my NYT book review has attracted at least one new sale as evidenced by this fan letter I received just today: Dear Ms. Chiang, I just finished reading your book "The Handsomest Man in Cuba" and I must comment that I have never read such egotistical drivel from a so-called travel writer. Your website says it all when it states "the self-indulgent writings" et al. If you're going to write about your travel adventures and expect other people to read them and enjoy it, please write about the culture, the people and the history of the countries that you visit and your experience in relationship to these cultures so that you can convey to your readers a sense of the country. All you did in "The Handsomest Man in Cuba" was basically bitch about everyone and everything in the most untrusting way. I have been to Cuba several times and my experience was totally different than yours. Perhaps because I didn't think solely of myself the entire tri

The Handsomest Man in Cuba has just appeared in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, June 2, 2007 - 'The Summer Reading guide'. It's about about 8 inches of review in a Travel book Section. My agent Peter McGuigan (pictured below) says it's very unusual for a first time paperback, especially by a fabulous nobody like me to appear in the guide. A friend in NY said, and I quote, "you should expect to get laid by the literati every day for a year now." (He's mortified that I actually wrote that, saying it drags the tone of this blog into the gutter). He'd better not read my book then! Bike Friday even gets a mention! Thanks to all the folks at Globe-Pequot, Bike Friday, Peter McGuigan, and those who made it happen along the way. Read the full review on the NYT site or read the text of it below. Read the blurbs from the first two pages of the book . +++ Travel books can generally be divided into two categories. First there are the ones

This is a re-post of a trip review written for Bike Friday and Ciclismo Classico. Ciao tutti! Ready for a truly stellar, fully escorted bicycle tour of Italia? One that comes standard with stupendously good food, spectacular walled cities, a panoramic pedal through the Appenines with several challenging climbs into a luxury 4-star hotel bed? Put another way, if you're over pulling rocks from under your Thermorest, scrubbing congealed oatmeal from your MSR stove, and standing on traffic islands with a fragmented map flapping in your face, welcome to touring the Ciclismo Classico way. I was privileged to review one of the company's most popular tours:  Bike Across Italy . Spanning 'the mid-calf to the mid-shin' of the boot of Italy over ten days, this moderately challenging tour takes in the regions of La Marche, Umbria, Tuscany and Lazio, starting in Fano on Adriatic sea and ending in Porto Ecole on the Mediterranean. The average mileage is about 50 gradually

A Bike Friday, a regular bike, or a Ciclismo Classico bike - Dave Pruitt and the Gal choose different ways to Bike Across Italy Some notes on the gear and getting to/from for Ciclismo Classico's Bike Across Italy trip, as experienced by former Bike Friday Customer Evangelist, Lynette Chiang, who did the trip in the May 2007. FLIGHTS and CONNECTIONS The Ciclismo Classico staff, Erika and Jewel, were able to both arrange all travel and give me detailed advice on the connections. Because Bike Friday folks tend to be independent, I wanted to know if it was necessary to bring the Bike Friday Travel Trailer. My connections were as follows: NYC -> (London, 6 hour flight) -> Rome (4 hour wait, 2 hour flight) -> Rome Airport Train Station (has elevator) -> Roma Termini Train Station (30 mins, 11 euro) -> Overnight in Hotel San Remo, Rome (20 minute walk from station with bags, tired) -> next morning, Roma Termini Train Station (10 min walk with bags, havi