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.

Experiencing Jsix’s chef Christian Graves’s kitchen for BlackBook

Monday BlackBook published a feature article I wrote:

Jsix’s Christian Graves Gives Us His ‘Chef’s Kitchen Experience’

I had plans to head to San Diego this June for my brother’s wedding rather than work. Either it was coincidence or I mentioned my plans online though, as I received an e-mail from Hotel Solamar and Jsix’s publicist inviting me to stay there and participate in Christian Graves’s “Chef’s Kitchen Experience.” (“Inviting me” is a euphemism for “it was free.”) When I mentioned I was traveling with my wife and 6-month-old daughter, thankfully the publicist didn’t wince; if she had I would’ve felt awful about having them sleep on a bench in Balboa Park while I enjoyed the restaurant and hotel.

I knew Christian was an excellent chef and that he and this trip to a local farm that supplies his kitchen would make worthy subjects for an article for BlackBook. And I realize I’m committing a journalism faux pas here, but I want to like the subjects of my articles (then again, I mostly cover travel, not terrorism). When possible I want to encourage readers to give their business to talented people who are nice. Hopefully Christian’s warm personality came through in my piece.

My favorite example didn’t make it into the final version though. When I asked him why he became a chef, he answered that he found something special about being able to cook for two people who were leaving their infant daughter behind for the first time and watching them enjoy themselves and stare into each other’s eyes.

You can watch Christian plot out our meal here:

Ustream Broadcaster iPhone ap streams live video to the Internet, just not well

Ustream: "You're On." Maybe. But not in good quality.

On my trip to San Diego and Kamiah, Id. last week, I tried out Ustream, a “live interactive broadcast platform that enables anyone with an Internet connection and a camera to engage their audience in a meaningful, immediate way.” Immediate, yes. Assuming it works And if by meaningful, Ustream means via video that gets hung up, truncated, or chopped up into installments–if makes it to the Internet at all–then it lives up to its billing.

I was hoping to use Ustream to share my travel experience immediately (the technical term is in real time) by broadcasting video live from my iPhone 3GS via the Ustream Live Broadcaster ap (free) to my Ustream channel at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/zach-everson. I configured my Ustream account to send out a Tweet with a link to my show as soon as I started broadcasting. And when I finished broadcasting, the video would save to my Ustream account, a link to it would go out on Twitter, and a copy of the video would be posted to my YouTube channel and Facebook profile. Nifty, huh?

The results? Mostly poor. The executive summary: don’t use Ustream unless it’s essential for you to post live video. And it’s probably never essential for you. The suggestion: keeping using your iPhone camera to record video and posting it to YouTube, where viewers can watch it (gasp) a minute or so after you took it. Check below the jump for the details.

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2010 brings a new travel buddy

Vivian Elizabeth, born Jan. 8, 7 pounds, 13 ounces and 18 inches:

She and her mom are both doing great (and I’m rocking too, thanks for asking). Yes, she already has her own website, but between sleeping, eating, going to the bathroom, and looking cute, she hasn’t had a chance to post on it yet.

Vivian’s first travel experience–at least on a journey further than her pediatrician’s office–will be this March when the three of us take a road trip to Milwaukee and Chicago. I’m excited about my first visit to Milwaukee (it’ll be Vivian’s first time there too I think). And while I love Chicago, I expect this stay will be different experience from my last time there when my wife and I spent most of the afternoon sampling wines and cheeses at Bin 36 before heading off to a four-course meal at a culinary school.

And this summer we’re taking Vivian on her first flight when we go to San Diego. I’m excited about traveling with her (until she screams on the plane anyway) and look forward to writing about my new way of experiencing travel.