When she swaps life as she knows it for an uncertain future on a sailboat, she succumbs to seasickness and a growing desire to be alone.Guided by impulsiveness and the joys of an alternative lifestyle, she must navigate personal storms, trouble with US immigration, adverse weather conditions, and doubts about her newfound love.Does Liesbet find happiness? Will the dogs outlast the man? Or is this just another reality check on a dream to live at sea?

    But are they? He is probably the only man who has ever requested the recipe for an airline’s lasagna or wanted to enjoy his flight with an inflatable rubber woman sat on his knee. Prepare to meet the man who must have his diet of stir-fried mulberry leaves accommodated and the man who left his false teeth on a flight and is sure he recognized them on a later flight—in a flight attendant's mouth. Ravenscroft's correspondence tackles travel annoyances like excess baggage charges alongside more surreal letters, such as the one starting out asking an Australian airline if they offer an authentic Australian experience (for instance, Australian cuisine or in-flight movies) which then moves on to the question of at what age a baby is safe from being swallowed by a dingo.

    What’s it like to work at Walt Disney World?Amber Sewell spent two semesters “earning her ears” at the Happiest Place on Earth, first in the CareerStart Program and then in the better known Disney College Program.During her time backstage, as the Cast Member areas of the theme park are called, Amber kept a diary of her successes and her failures, her moments of delight and her moments of despair, and most of all, her discoveries about what happens when the pixie dust settles and the guests have gone home.Amber will never feel the same about Walt Disney World again.After you’ve read her book, neither will you.

    Over 170 people have disappeared from cruise ships around the world since 1995, several under very suspicious circumstances. Others have their lives senselessly stolen, like the 8-year-old boy sucked into an unprotected pool drain at a major resort, leaving his mother crying out his name as security staff held her at gunpoint. Or 22-year old Nolan Webster, denied proper medical care after being pulled unconscious from a Cancun resort pool, only to have his dead body left in plain view for hours and his parents billed for his room.Vacations are meant to be joyous and fun. Sometimes terrible things happen unexpectedly. A parasailing newlywed plummets hundreds of feet to her death on the last day of her honeymoon when her harness snaps in midair. Hikers make a fatal plunge on an improperly-marked Kauai cliffside trail. And of course, there's every mother's nightmare: the disappearance of Natalee Holloway while on a high-school graduation trip to Aruba with members of her senior class.

    All of a sudden, he found himself falling back into the old religious devotions of an earlier time. The meaning he had found through years of engagement with therapy began to dissolve. Here, in On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist, Harding examines the search for meaning in life which keeps him fastened to the idea of god. After many therapy sessions focused on an effort to uncover personal truth, and long solitary months on the road with a one man show, Harding is finally led to an artists' retreat in the shadow of Skellig Michael.Mixing stories from the road with dispatches from his Irish Times columns, On Tuesdays I'm a Buddhist is a spell-binding and powerful book about the human condition, the narratives we weave around the self, and the ultimate bliss of living in the present moment. 'What happens between one story and the next? That's the really interesting part. That's the space where we find bliss; where we float sometimes, suspended, and only for a brief moment. Perhaps only for a few scarce moments in an entire life.'

    Theis book could almost be a reference manual, training tool and recruitment handbook for any one interested in wearing a Smoky Bear hat. The author has lived and worked in parks ranging from USS Arizona in Hawaii to the Florida Everglades with most of her career at Grand Canyon.

    It was on a spring day in 1939 that L. T. C. Rolt first stepped aboard Cressy. This engaging book tells the story of how he and his wife adapted and fitted out the boat as a home and recreates the journey of some 400 miles that they made along the network of waterways in the Midlands. It recalls the boatmen and their craft, and celebrates the then seemingly timeless nature of the English countryside through which they passed. As Sir Compton Mackenzie wrote, "it is an elegy of classic restraint unmarred by any trace of sentiment" for a way of life and a rural landscape which have now all but disappeared.

    In search of the most unusual and wildest festivities, the author was pelted with beans, amazed by giant snow cows, stampeded in a temple full of men wearing nothing but "nappies," befriended by alien abductees, and much more while attending a Hogmanay in Scotland, a Tomato Festival in Ripley, Tennesee, a Bean Throwing Festival in Tokyo, and a Vodou Festival in Haiti. The side-splitting stories will inspire readers to attend—or create—peculiar festivals of their own, and on a more serious note, explore and appreciate other cultures.

    In May 2004, Flynn reached the summit of Mt. Everest--but not without tears, laughter, failures, near-death experiences and great friendships. If you'sve ever wondered what it would be like for a mere mortal to attempt Mt. Everest, this book is as close as it gets.

    Some years later in 1977, Nan Shepherd published The Living Mountain, her prose bringing each contour of the Cairngorm mountains to life. These pioneering women set a precedent for a way of writing about wilderness that isn’t about conquering landscapes, reaching higher, harder or faster, but instead about living and breathing alongside them, becoming part of a larger adventure.The artists in this inspired collection continue Gwen and Nan’s legacies, redressing the balance of gender in outdoor adventure literature. Their creativity urges us to stop and engage our senses: the smell of rain-soaked heather, wind resonating through a col, the touch of cool rock against skin, and most importantly a taste of restoring mind, body and spirit to a former equanimity.With contributions from adventurers including Alpinist magazine editor Katie Ives, multi-award-winning author Bernadette McDonald, adventurers Sarah Outen and Anna McNuff, renowned filmmaker Jen Randall and many more, Waymaking is an inspiring and pivotal work published in an era when wilderness conservation and gender equality are at the fore.

    He lands an enviable gig writing about shopping and fashion for the city’s major newspaper, but an ill-fated promotional junket gets Albo into hot water. He becomes a gossip item and finds himself caught in an acrimonious war between Old and New Media. Here's a gimlet-eyed account of the back-biting media scene, a glimpse into the inner workings of the fashion crowd, and a candid portrait of what it takes to survive as a writer in today’s chattering and watchful New York City."I was perilously close to exposing a secret underground economy of promotion: favors and junkets and banquets and gifts that keeps the city in motion, and keeps underpaid writers at work. Basically, I became the Silkwood of Swag."

    Her book is about the fear of an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. . . . It is good to read of someone who is just crammed full of courage, guts, spirit and determination." --Smoke Blanchard, Walking Up and Down in the WorldCindy Ross had already hiked the 2000-mile length of the Appalachian Trail when, hoping to escape a deadening daily routine and sort out her life, she returned to the wild. But this time it was a more rugged arena: the Pacific Crest Trail, a mostly mountainous, 2600-mile route from Mexico to Canada, vastly different from the relatively gentle, well-traveled Appalachian Trail.Her trip began--badly--in the California desert, where the hiking "partner" she had selected from an advertisement proved to be totally inexperienced and so strange that they parted company the first day. Continuing alone, Ross soon became the de facto leader of a motley, ever-changing crew of PCT walkers that came to be known as "Cindy's Circus." Long, rugged hiking days produced physical ailments and strong emotions, but in confronting and surmounting these challenges, Ross grew in strength. After many months and several major changes in her life, Ross beat fall snows and storms to reach the Canadian border. More than the end of the trail, this was also a symbolic milestone in her life.In narrating her story, Ross deftly brings the reader into the physical and emotional landscape of long-distance hiking. Her cast of "Crest characters" is sharply drawn in both words and sketches.

    During the summer of his senior year at college, while earning a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, David P. Spears spent eighty hours undercover as a panhandler. Systematically recording every transaction at the exit ramp, Spears captured a rarely seen picture of how modern urban charity works.This book is the record of his adventures, part economic research, part investigative journalism. Both the numbers and the stories behind the numbers provide answers to the questions we’ve all been wondering: Who gives more to panhandlers—men or women? What percentage of drivers roll down their windows to donate? And most important of all, how much can a panhandler earn per hour?Get out your bi-weekly pay stub—by the end of this book you’ll know if you make more or less than the guy with the cardboard sign.

    He's like Huckleberry Finn Sort of. He's a twenty-two-year-old housepainter living at his parents' house in Southern California, across a four-lane street from a gated subdivision. Now this suburban innocent is striking out on the only type of adventure he can afford: he's getting into his station wagon and going camping in the desert. Join Mark Sundeen on his rumble-tumble journey across the Southwest, and find that the mystical home of Butch Cassidy, Chief Cochise, and Major John Wesley Powell has been transformed into something entirely strange yet unexpectedly familiar. It's a new West of low-rent trailer parks and high-dollar houseboats, of hot-springs singles scenes and homeless river guides and hapless soul-searchers, for sun-beat old-timers chewing the cud of the land and survivalist teenagers hiding out form the Man. It's a place far from the America you thought you lived in, but close enough to drive to in your car. Car Camping is a modern-day western adventure in the spirit of Mark Twain and Jack London, and you're invited to come along.

    With his college buddy Iggy riding shotgun, this green-thinking guy—who's in love with the idea of free fuel—sets out on an enlightening road trip. The quest: to be the first people to drive cross-country in a french-fry car. Will they make it from Vermont to California in a beat-up 1985 Mercedes diesel station wagon powered on vegetable oil collected from restaurant grease Dumpsters along the way? More important, can two guys survive 192 consecutive hours together? Their expedition on and off the road includes visits to the solar-powered Google headquarters; the National Ethanol Council; the wind turbines of southwestern Minnesota; the National Renewable Energy Lab; a visit to one of the first houses to receive platinum certification for leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED); an "eco-friendly" Wal-Mart; and the world's largest geothermal heating system. Part adventure and part investigation of what we're doing (or not doing) to preserve the planet, Greasy Rider is upbeat, funny, and full of surprising information about sustainable measures that are within our reach.