Category: Travel

Who The Hell Is ‘Baksheesh’ And Why Does Everyone In Egypt Keep Mistaking Me For Him?

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, TravelLeave a comment

Orion and I spent 2.5 weeks traveling around Egypt in 2008. There were many parts that were memorable, the Egyptian people there were warm and friendly and genuinely welcoming. The police were terribly corrupt and the people who made their living off the tourists were positively terrible. It seemed like the scams in Egypt were endless, the Egyptian people after centuries of practice had perfected the art of extracting every last penny from every tourist who happened to wander into their country. For such an amazing country with so much to offer it was sad to see the dishonesty and the blatant corruption of many of the police, taxi drivers and many hotel owners. The ones that were honest really stood out as shining examples in a land of socially acceptable corruption.

Cairo was frenetic and totally insane, just crossing the street is more extreme than any extreme sport I have ever done. There is the standard dual pricing here for tourists which is endlessly frustrating and anything you want to do you have to haggle like crazy with the locals or they will charge you 5 times what stuff is worth. That gets old really fast but the Egyptian people are warm and friendly. Having Orion around really makes people even warmer and friendlier than they usually are.

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Pickpocketed By Bald Weightlifters And Attacked By Subway Doors In Russia

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, TravelLeave a comment

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My trip to Russia in 2007 was the hardest trip I’ve taken in my life. Between dealing with pickpocketers and the guillotine doors of death on the Moscow subway I also got to bribe train conductors and get harassed by police. I spent most of my time lost, waiting or confused. Most days I was able to walk 20 or 30 km but most of what I saw was more of the same crumbing infrastucture and a total lack or respect for nature. In some ways it seemed almost like there was just downright contempt for anything involving the environment. For most Russians drinking seems to be the national pastime. Everywhere you look people were drinking, on the trains, in the streets, in line at the grocery store. Since cigarettes were less than a buck a pack almost everyone everywhere seemed to smoke. You begin to realize how far the US has come with advancement in non-smoker rights. In Russia the nonsmoker has no rights and people seem to smoke most everywhere.

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Am I in an Oven? Nope Just at Burning Man Yet Again

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, TravelLeave a comment

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I got back for a week then turned around and flew out to Nevada to camp in the desert for a week with my son and my good friend Eric Skawold in 2007. The Burning man trip was even more intense than Russia had been. The first day the thermometer said 100 degrees in the shade. I was totally overheated and could barely function. The first day I thought I was going to die right there in the desert. Once I stopped moving and just laid and sweat in the shade I started to feel better again. Orion had a fantastic time and most of my energy was spent trying to help facilitate him having a good time. Someone set the man on fire early, which to my great surprise actually made national news. The art installations were amazing and intense as always. The heat and dust storms were pretty intense, and trying to camp in a tent didn’t help.

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More Traveling In The South With The Best Kid Ever

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, TravelLeave a comment

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Orion standing tall in the beaches of Alabama.

This is about my 4th trip down to Hatteras in 2007 to hang out with Greg. He’s still in Chemo so he has one week of chemo and feels like total crap then he can kite for a week before he has to go back and do the chemo treatment again. His recovery from cancer has been amazing everyone including the doctors and myself.

I found a really cool dead sea turtle on the beach that was the biggest one I had ever seen. I grabbed the skull and soaked it in bleach. It will be the perfect skull for my new Honda Minivan I plan on traveling with Orion around the US in. Got stuck in traffic for 2.5 hours in Dover because there was a race there. Ended up running a tollbooth because I was so pissed off. The worst part is the PT cruiser is having overheating problems so I had to crank the heat while sitting in traffic on hot summer days.

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Took Child to Iceland, Drove Hours from Anyone, Drove Across River, Rental Car Almost Floated Away. Don’t Tell his Mom.

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, Travel2 Comments

The trip to Iceland in 2007 was really something special. In 10 days Orion and I managed to work our way all the way around the Ring Road and back to Reykjavik. The biggest thrill of the trip was driving the jeep across a glacially fed stream and having the river so deep that there was water coming up onto the windshield. Considering that we had just driven about 4 hours without seeing another car it could have been very bad if the car had just floated away down the river. We also got to hike around on magnificent glaciers and ride really cool amphibious cars into big bays full of icebergs. There were countless hot springs, cauldrons and even a geyser or two. When we went whale watching on an old Oak ship we got within 50 feet of several Humpback and Blue Whales. The amazing natural beauty of the island was supplemented with frequent stops at geothermally heated swimming pools, which seemed to be located everywhere in Iceland.

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10 Days Of Epic Kiting In Panama Followed By $1500 Of Damage To A Helicopter

On By Karl GessleinIn Kiting, TravelLeave a comment
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Public transportation.
I spent 9 days of kiting in very good conditions for 5-7 hours a day in 2007

I got to see over 30 stingrays flying through the water while kiting
I was stung by a couple of jellyfish
The stray dogs ate through my nice tent twice to eat my food
The same dog broke into the bathhouse and ate my soap twice, yuk!
On the last day I was there I broke the rear window of a very nice $500,000 helicopter and caused over $1500 in damage

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Lifelong Dream To Visit Chernobyl Reactor Fulfilled, And A Near-Deadly Encounter With Ukrainian Ranger

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, Travel1 Comment

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Reading through my travel diary the most striking statement I found was the following,

“I don’t travel to see things, I travel because of how it changes me.”

For me traveling is more of a process of self-realization and actualization than it is a tour. Sometimes I need to remind myself of this fact when I get tired or sick or I am lost and confused. For me traveling is frequently all four of these things, as soon as I get comfortable in one place I want to move on to see more.

Started the trip flying into Kiev, that evening I could not find accommodation. This was especially bizarre because for the rest of the trip it seemed like I was the only resident in the huge 200+ room life-sucking soviet hotels. I ended up sleeping in Kiev proper behind an abandoned building. As I was trying to sleep I smelled something that smelled suspiciously like human crap. Turns out there are basically no public toilets in the Ukraine and I put my tarp and slept in the local crapper. That morning I washed off the bottom of my tent and went on the Chernobyl tour with about 80 other Scotsman who were here to see some big Football (soccer) game.

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Couldn’t stay away from the Dominican Republic, went back with Kevin Seaman author of “The Winning Mindset”

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, TravelLeave a comment

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My last day out on the water has ended and I am remarkably sad to leave. I miss my son and his mother’s family and my family as well so I know that its time to return home. A big part of me wishes I was a beach bum that could just live somewhere for as long as I wanted to just kiting every day. I realize that I have a lot of responsibilities to my son, my customers and my family. The place we stayed while we were here is an ultra nice ultra new condo that Laurel Eastman purchased with a friend of hers Karen. It’s very cush and everything is very expensive, but there is still the constant reminders that you are in the DR. The power goes out at regular intervals and the water goes off as well. The first 3 days we had no hot water. Anytime Kevin and I got home and there was water, hot water and electricity all at the same time we were thankful and amazed. The people here steal electricity by wiring up their businesses and homes when the power is out. The only problem is that if they are messing with the cables when the power goes back on they get fried. The people here in the DR are just as friendly as I remember them. There are a few bad apples but for the most part people here are very easy-going and pretty friendly. I like the place we’re staying halfway between Kite Beach and Cabarete. Its a little beach called Bozo beach and the people here are super friendly. It’s also far less crowded than kite beach and there is little or no attitude. It’s only a 5-minute walk into the heart of Cabarete or to Kite Beach, which is nice.

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Did The Homeless Theme-Park Circuit With Small Child In Tow, slept in Rental Van.

On By Karl GessleinIn Lifestyle and Health, Travel1 Comment
My favorite part of the trip
My favorite part of the trip

It amazes me how I can go out and kiteboard for 10 hours on the lake and feel totally energized, yet every day after theme parking with Orion in 2006 I was always totally exhausted. It must take a lot of energy to ride that many roller coasters. How can a 6 year old out-endurance me is a complete mystery.

The first night we got in and drove to LA to hit Disney and stayed in a nice hotel, which cost a bizillion dollars. I decided to go to Target and buy a couple of pillows and an air-mattress and Orion and I spent the rest of the vacation sleeping in the back of the minivan. He loved it and it was way cheaper than spending $100-200 a night for just a bed to sleep in. Disney was great, so we spent 2 days there instead of one. There were actually two separate theme parks. You could easily do both in one day and see pretty much everything. Orion was very brave and went some pretty crazy rides, included the Twilight Zone tower of terror which flew pretty fast up 200 feet then opened up the elevator doors and dropped you really quick. Orion really liked the moderate roller coasters that didn’t have loops in them. He was a real sport and we rode many ride again and again and again until I felt like I had been run through a blender. The high point of the trip was getting stuck in it’s a small world after all for about an hour. Most of the parks we hit on the weekdays, which meant no lines, the zoos, and water parks we hit on the weekends.

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Snowkiting In Switzerland. A Chilling Tale Of High Mountain Adventures

On By Karl GessleinIn Kiting, Travel1 Comment

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My trip to Switzerland in 2006 was amazing. It was interesting to see the vast startling contrast between America and the Swiss, which was exaggerated by my choice for departure from JFK. JFK is in a serious state of disrepair, it always feels like a war zone down there. The people who work there have seriously negative attitudes and I can only imagine what most of the airlines that fly through there think. Case in point our departing plane had been at the gate all day, but no one had some to clean it so we were 30 minutes late in boarding. Once we boarded there was no ground crew to see us off, so there was another hour we had to wait. This was a huge international flight as well with maybe 200 people on it, not just a puddle jumper. Everything in Switzerland was very nice and new and clean. The public transportation was amazing, I never found myself waiting more than 10 minutes for a train or a bus and the buses were all free. When I got back to NYC and had to get in my car and drive through rush hour NYC traffic you really start to appreciate how different America is from other countries in the world.

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