2010 travel highlights: Beijing, the Big Island of Hawaii, and a new travel buddy

A trip to San Diego in June marked my daughter's first dip in the Pacific Ocean.

Just over a week into 2010, I became a dad. During the year I realized though that any concerns I had about parenthood—and my new editor-in-chief gig at Louisville.com, which I also started in January—impacting my travel were unfounded.

Here are my travel highlights for 2010 (and while my daughter didn’t go on all of these trips with me, she did make it to 14 states and Washington, DC in her first year):

• In February I visited the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach and wrote about its teen club for Air Canada’s in-flight magazine, enRoute, and one of my rare visits to a spa for UpTake.
• A road trip to Milwaukee and Chicago in March marked my daughter’s first trip out of Kentucky; I talked about the experience on a podcast for UpTake and mentioned our Chicago hotel room’s wonderful view in enRoute.
• As much as I enjoy traveling, it’s nice when a big event comes to me. In May it was the Kentucky Derby, which I wrote about for BlackBook and oversaw Louisville.com’s best week of traffic ever (November’s Breeders’ Cup did well too).
• While family was the focus of my June visits to San Diego (brother’s wedding) and Kamiah, ID (to see my grandmother), I wrote about San Diego restaurant Jsix’s chef’s kitchen experience for BlackBook.
• In June I made it back to New York City for TBEX, a travel bloggers conference, and finally got to meet in person a lot of folks I’d only known on the tubes. They were terribly disappointing exceeded high expectations.
• Coming from a small family (no aunts or uncles), my wife’s family’s annual reunion just outside of Morgantown, WV is a can’t miss—I’m serious.
• In Columbus, Ohio for my brother-in-law’s wedding, I stayed in a hotel where James Thurber use to live.
• In August I flew to the The Big Island of Hawaii on assignment for enRoute to take a fine art photography class with Photo Safari Hawaii.
• Later that month Las Vegas was the destination for another enRoute assignment, this time to take a poker lesson from two-time World Series of Poker champ Mark Seif.
• I wrote about looking out over Gerald Ford’s grave site from my hotel room in Grand Rapids, Mich. for UpTake and visiting the art fair with the world’s largest prize (if not the best art) for Gridskipper.
• On Columbus Day weekend we trekked to Watoga State Park in West Virginia for another of my wife’s family reunions (it’s a big clan).
• At Thanksgiving I returned to my hometown of Reading, Mass. for the first time in 17 months, the longest I’d ever gone without a visit; I reviewed the accommodations at my parents’ house for UpTake (executive summary: meh).
• For the second year in a row, I visited China with the Ritz-Carlton (this time it was Beijing); I won’t complain if trips to China with that hotelier become an annual tradition. Culinary highlights already have been posted on Gridskipper.
• It was fantastic to get back to Washington, DC and see our friends. I wrote our stay at the Ritz-Carlton, Washington DC about for UpTake.
• For the third time in four years, both my wife’s family and mine gathered in the neutral playing location of Deep Creek Lake Maryland for Christmas.

My Kentucky Derby coverage roundup

Watching Kentucky Derby 136 from the roof of Churchill Downs, mint julep in hand, one of the rare moments when I wasn't tethered to my MacBook Pro.

And I’m spent.

The seven days leading up to the Kentucky Derby is the most exciting week of the year in Louisville. But it was also the most exhausting.

As editor-in-chief, I oversaw Louisville.com‘s coverage of the city’s signature event. We had five writers (including me) at Churchill Downs for the Derby and also dispatched writers to 10 of the city’s biggest Derby parties (I reported from the Playboy Celebrity Lounge–funny how that gig fell to the person making the assignments). Our treatment of the parties included a preview of each one the day before, live updates to our Twitter feed and Facebook fan page with photos from the event (yes, using ping.fm) and a review the following day.

At Churchill Downs, two of Louisville.com’s writers focused on the races, one covered the infield and other lifestyle stories and one contributed live sketches. Our cartoonist was walking around Churchill Downs, drawing in her notepad and snapping pictures of her finished work on her cell phone, which she then e-mailed to me to post for her on the website. Unfortunately a technical problem caused many of the sketches not to arrive in my e-mail inbox until 11 p.m. Regardless, it was a different way of reporting on an event that draws so much media attention and was well received.

As for my writing, 2010 is the 40th anniversary of Hunter S. Thompson’s “The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved,” in which the Louisville native birthed gonzo journalism at the track in his hometown. My plan was to take passages from his article and see how they stand up 40 years later, posting live throughout Derby day. Alas, Louisville.com had two technical glitches (the influx of traffic led the site to briefly crash twice and the RSS feed from the site to our Facebook fan page done broke). Those issues, along with my responsibility for posting the cartoons, promoting the other articles online, answering questions from the writers and following up with PR reps on party credentials kept me mostly tethered to my computer in the media center. I did manage to post a bunch of articles though, mostly of photos, and take notes for the Thompson piece, which I’ll either run as a feature on Louisville.com or a series of smaller posts (granted it was pre-Internet, but Thompson’s Derby article wasn’t published until a month after the race either).

The results? Traffic for Louisville.com blew up. The site had its seven best days ever in terms of visits, getting triple it’s non-Derby week best on race day itself. We also increased our fans on Facebook by more than 10 percent that week, which should lead to sustained growth in that all-important local audience. While we attracted more non-local traffic than usual because of Derby, Louisvillians flocked to the site–the average visitor from the city spent 4:44 on the site, reading 3.93 pages a visit. Between the festivities at Churchill, the parties and other Derby-related events, Louisville.com posted more than 150 articles about the Kentucky Derby in the past three weeks, as well as several hundred Tweets and updates to our Facebook fan page.

And as if that wasn’t enough work Derby week, I wrote a couple of posts for both BlackBook magazine’s website and Gridskipper. For BlackBook, I interviewed two Derby insiders. And for Gridskipper, I wrote about where to score two essentials: good food and easy sex.

Check below the jump for the complete list of articles I’ve written on the 2010 Kentucky Derby (so far).

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Talking Kentucky Derby for BlackBook

Last week BlackBook published two interviews related to the Kentucky Derby that I conducted for its Industry Insiders section:

• Joey Wagner, Derby Promoter
• Jill Byrne, Best Bet

I covered two events at Wagner’s Prime Lounge for Louisville.com during Derby week too:

• Playboy Celebrity Lounge at Prime Lounge attracts the beautiful people, celebs or not
• Prime Lounge’s Celebrity Jockey Bartending Event review (minus the celebrity jockey bartenders)

And while the four horses Byrne, director of on-air racing communications at Churchill Downs, liked did no better than third, I found my own way to lose money on the Derby (I did, however, win an exacta on the previous race, turning an $18 bet into $111).

From Idaho to China, 2009 was a fun year for traveling and writing

How can a year in which you got an action figure of yourself be anything but great?

Recently the Internet has featured an abundance of laments about the disappointment that was 2009. I disagree; 2009, you were a good one.

From Kamiah, Idaho (population 1,160) to Guangzhou, China (population 10,045,800), I experienced and wrote about some amazing places this year–and had a blast doing it.

Some highlights:

• In January I drove from my new home in Louisville to Las Vegas with my brother and then flew to Washington, DC for Barack Obama’s inauguration.
• For Valentine’s Day, I reviewed 10 engaging spots to pop the question for Budget Travel.
• Traveling to celebrate my grandmother’s 90th birthday with her, I drove through Idaho, one of the most beautiful areas in the United States.
• I discovered one of my new favorite American cities–Nashville, which I visited twice.
• I covered the running–and parties–of Kentucky Derby 135 (and got this hilarious voice message from a Paris Hilton flack in the process).
• I experienced my first music festival–Bonnaroo.
• Trips to Boston; Morgantown, WV; Charlotte, NC; and Washington, DC allowed me to spend time with family and friends, as well as do some exploring.
• My more than 100 articles for Louisville.com provided me with ample opportunities to investigate my new hometown.
• While in New York to officiate a friend’s wedding (yes, you read that right), I finally met in person many travel writers and editors whom I’d known only virtually before.
• I consumed delicious tacos, lattes, and cocktails in Austin, TX.
• I reviewed concerts by two of my favorite performers–Bruce Springsteen and Roger Daltrey.
• After a fantastic trip to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, China, sponsored by the Ritz-Carlton, Cathay Pacific and Dragon Air, I wrote about the ethics of press trips for BlackBook.
• And I began contributing to Air Canada’s in-flight magazine, enRoute, and blogging about lodging for UpTake.

On a personal note, I’ll be closing out 2009 or beginning 2010 with a new daughter–my wife and I are expecting our first child any day now. Look for articles in early 2010 about traveling with an infant: we’ve already made plans to bring her to Milwaukee, Chicago, and San Diego.

Best wishes for a great 2010!

Paris Hilton flack uninvites me to Kentucky Derby party for mild jibe: Was I not mean enough?

Old news, but my voice recorder was having issues transferring files to my computer.

From my description of the Derby Nights Free Concert with O.A.R. in my article for BlackBook, “Louisville cool: The hottest parties of Kentucky Derby week“:

While other events offer the possibility of rubbing elbows with celebrities, here you’ll be mingling amongst tomorrow’s infield crowd (unless you stick around for the celebrity party afterward, which will be hosted by Paris Hilton—but would you really want to rub anything with her?)

In the long history of words, photos and videos dedicated to Paris Hilton, what I wrote was probably on the nicer side. Heck, it was on the softer side of what I wrote about celebrities in that article.

The next day, I received this voice mail:

paris_hilton_pr_voice_mail.m4a

Some observations (three in fact):

• Caller ID for this message said Unknown, the caller didn’t identify herself, and the only clues to her identity that I could discern were that she had the speech pattern of Sarah Palin and the voice of Laverne (both leads went nowhere)
• I hadn’t requested a media pass to Paris’s after-party and hadn’t been notified I’d been given one anyway
• PR people for parties hosted by celebs who I was not as kind to were quite accommodating in their offers of access

Unfortunately Laverne never called back.

As for how I spent Derby Eve, the folks at the Goodtimers 2009 Derby Eve One Night Stand (yes, that’s the party with the promoter that focuses on “urban entertainment”) were generous enough to supply enough VIP tickets for me, my wife, and our common-law sister-in-law. Goodtimers was good times–possibly too good.