Gadling

My daily deal for today is for the Asus Eee Surf mini notebook. This first generation version of the Eee may not have the high specifications of the current versions, but that does not make it less useful for getting some work done on the road.

Inside the Asus Eee is an 800MHz processor, 2GB of storage and 512MB of memory. The machine comes with a portable version of Linux which includes most of the applications you'd need. You'll find the Firefox web browser, Thunderbird for your email and even some open source word processing applications and multimedia players. You can expand the storage by installing a cheap SD memory card.

The Asus Eee Surf 2G has Wi-Fi built in, so you'll be able to connect to hotspots where available. The machine is on sale at Geeks.com, and is a refurbished model, which means it was once returned to Asus for whatever reason, and was restored to its "as new" condition. It comes with a 90 day warranty. Included in the box is the machine itself, a Lithium-Ion battery pack, a soft carrying case, an AC charger and the required manuals and CD.

Small machines like this are becoming increasingly popular, and are quickly replacing the large and bulky laptops we used to carry on a trip. Geeks.com only has a limited stock of these cheap machines, so don't wait too long if you are thinking of buying one!

It sounds like something out of George Orwell's classic 1984. Though it will be at least several years before there is any talk about installing them in airports, the Department of Homeland Security is hopeful that a new screening device could revolutionize airport security. The machine senses things like body temperature, pulse rate and breathing. It will work much like a lie detector, only without the wires. People's vitals will be measured as they walk past a bank of cameras and sensors.

As you can imagine, some people are upset by the idea of these new machines. What about nervous travelers or people who are simply on edge because they know that their pulse and breath rates are being monitored so closely? What about someone who is agitated because their flight was delayed? Will they be carted off the the back room for interrogation?

Keep in mind, though, that the idea is in the very early stages of development. It is slated for at least three more years of testing before before the next step, which, if security officials decided to continue, would include more testing and, surely, more opposition to the idea.

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When I was growing up, my parents taught me that traveling by airplane was a luxury, not a right, and it was a luxury I would not experience until I was 16 years old when I flew to Los Angeles, California with a high school friend (and her mother) on American Airlines for an exciting weekend getaway. I'll never forget that flight. Then, at 17, I flew to Santa Clara, California, to visit a boyfriend in college on Southwest Airlines. I'll never forget that flight, either. I couldn't even believe I was on it. Back then just being on the flight itself was an exciting experience, never mind the drinks and the food and the service, which I don't even remember. But I'm sure a can of coke and a bag of peanuts were involved.

What I remember most, about those two flights was the awe of flying, of looking out the window at the tiny houses below as we climbed up, up, up, until the incredible view became obstructed by something even more magnificent, billowing clouds.

A few years ago I actually met a flight attendant whose very first trip by airplane was to airline headquarters for an interview for the airline he works for now. That flight took place at age of 21. Today, things have changed drastically in the aviation business, and not for the better, if you ask a passenger. Yet the flights are all full, and with more and more children traveling these days. That, alone, makes me wonder, has travel really gotten so bad? Or are our expectations skewed?

"I never got to travel," said my mother, a flight attendant, who started working for a major US carrier in 1997, three afters I had my wings pinned to my blue lapel. "My first flight was with your father to Hawaii, when I was 21, because your father got stationed there in the navy. I got to go home to Texas once - in three years. And because your father spent most of his time at sea, I spent many holidays alone. That's just the way it was. We couldn't afford to travel."

Now that I'm a flight attendant and have the opportunity to fly for free (in coach), I usually take along my two-year son, who has traveled once a month, at least, since he was born. I always get a kick out of watching him leaning against the window, tapping on the glass, as we fly in and out of the clouds, causing him to exclaim at the top of his lungs, "WOW!" I wonder if he'll grow up to appreciate the privilege of travel? I do hope that one day he realizes just how lucky he is. How lucky we all are to be able to get from point A to point B for just a few hundred dollars.

I've wanted to visit Mongolia ever since I first read Rolf Potts' dispatch from the land of Genghis Khan that he wrote for Salon back in 1999. Almost ten years later, Tim Wu, another of my favorite travel writers, is making me fall in love with Mongolia all over again. He's already posted three dispatches for Slate Magazine, and here are a couple of the highlights so far:

"More than anything in travel, I love the freedom to make my own mistakes, which you might also call independence. We soon figured out what that means in Mongolia: your own jeep and a translator. That, plus the magic formula: the desire to go where no one else goes."

"After some time driving around the Mongolian countryside, I hit upon a great way to make new friends. It was simple: Draw a line in the dirt, paw the earth a bit, and wrestle to the first fall. Call me primitive, but there's something about fighting in the dirt that seems to foster a certain kind of companionship."

"Mongolian men in the countryside spend their time riding horses, killing animals, and breaking firewood. They tend to hold their face in a fixed grimace. At times, it is like a country of Daniel Craig impersonators. Along with parts of Latin America, it's probably the most macho place I've ever been. And so, my Asian brothers, if you ever want to know what the extremes of Eastern manhood look like, forget about Jet Li or even Bruce Lee. It's Mongolia where Asia gets tough."

Here's part 1 of the series. Part 2. Part 3. You're bored-- go read it.

I picked this photo because it encapsulates the very points that makes travel so incredibly interesting. It's those details that make you shake your head and say, "What were they thinking?" And you have no idea what they were thinking because people don't always think alike. What makes sense to the people who live in a particular country can seem stupid to those not from there--or at least nonsensical--except that it could make sense. Kind of.

According to Damiel who took this picture, this billboard is on the hotel building where he was staying in Bratislava. His room is behind the letters "o" and "u" in "navigáciou." I wonder if that means that he could look out through the "o" and the "u"? Or were the windows covered over? Either choice seems odd.

If you have a photo you'd like for us to consider for Photo of the Day, send it our way at Gadling's Flickr Photo Pool.

By the way, I'm dedicating this Photo of the Day to my fellow Gadling bloggers. It's an inside joke.

It seems that the fiasco of Heathrow's Terminal 5 opening earlier this year was really just the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

Heathrow, a "national disgrace," according to some of its officials, finds itself in the crosshairs of London's Lord Mayor Boris Johnson, who has a team at city hall preparing plans to build a new major airport closer to the city that would close Heathrow for good.

You're thinking: He must be joking.

He's not.

Heathrow has been something of a punch line for years now, especially in the UK, where it's known for its abysmal lines, delays and general dreariness. Now a task force is drawing up a proposal to build a new hub in nearby Kent, directly on the high speed line that links London with continental Europe. Four to six runways could be built on a tidal estuary in the Thames River, Johnson says. Passengers could get to central London in as little as 35 minutes and not much longer than that if they're heading to France.

Will this really happen? Hard to tell. We'll certainly be hearing more about this. Officials figure a new airport could be built in six years. But so far they're studying island airports such as Hong Kong's to see if it can be done. No price has been pinned to this idea yet, and one of the question marks is just how much officials are going to have to pay Heathrow owner BAA.

A few deadlines, though, seem like they'll keep this idea from simply languishing on the shelf. At the end of the year the British government is to decide whether to permit a third runway to be built at Heathrow. And, of course, you have the 2012 Olympics.

Look for short haul airlines to object to the plan: If passengers have easy ground connections to continental Europe, they're not going to need many puddle hoppers.

Buffalo is famous for several great things: tons of snow, losing the Super Bowl, and wings. In the 44 years since their invention, wings have become an American favorite, served in every bar in the country. Whole restaurant chains have developed around the buffalo wing, but does anything compare to the closely guarded secret recipe of the original?

Next time you're in Buffalo, find out for yourself. Stop by Anchor Bar at 1047 Main Street for a taste of the original buffalo wing. According to bar legend, it was a Friday night in 1964 when bartender Dominic Bellissimo's buddies arrived at the bar ready to eat. He asked his mother, Teressa, to whip up something special for the guys, so she went to the kitchen and got out the chicken parts that were originally destined for the stock pot. She deep fried them in a secret sauce of her own creation and served them up for the boys. The rest, they say, is history...

Now just because this bar was the first to serve buffalo wings, of course that doesn't make it the best -- but its many awards give the Anchor Bar a solid reputation as a fine eatery. Not going to Buffalo? No problem -- you can order Anchor Bar memorabilia, including their signature sauces, at their online store.

In Part 1 of Gadling's conversation with novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux, the author of the recent Ghost Train to the Eastern Star talked about growing older and the importance of the return journey.

In Part 2, America's most famous travel writer takes on India, China, Russia and Georgia, considers his past work and gives his own assessment on the impact of his seminal travel book, The Great Railway Bazaar.

Your earlier travel books, like Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonia Express, were continuous trips, taken from point A to point B, and I think the narratives reflect that. But your Pillars of Hercules trip was taken in two parts. Dark Star Safari had some elements of a second trip to Africa in there. Ghost Train is not a continuous trip. Does that change the way you travel, not going continuously? Does it make it hard seeing a trip as a whole journey?

I think of it as a whole journey. But try to stay away from home for more than three months. It's really hard. First, bills start piling up. Things go wrong. You're needed. You can't be out of touch for more than three months. That's about the limit. After three months you have a lot of people screaming.

Earlier in my life I did. I've been away for as much as four or five months at a time. To be alone, to be away from a family or away from the responsibilities of life, the bills and whatever -- it was very difficult.

With Ghost Train, I broke it up. When I got to Vietnam, I went to China and from China to Tokyo. Tokyo is quite near Honolulu, believe it or not. So I flew home to Honolulu. I actually had a colonoscopy appointment and did all those things. A little time past and I returned to Japan and resumed the trip. That actually seemed to work out quite well. I hadn't gone very far, I was still sort of on my trip [in Hawaii], and then I went and finished the trip. I could have done it the way I did before, but I actually spent more time on this trip. With the Railway Bazaar I was gone about 3 1/2 months. This was more like six months of travel.

India was major section in The Great Railway Bazaar, and it's a major section in Ghost Train. You were confronted with ostensibly a much different India this time around, but I got the sense that you feel the truth of India has remained relatively unchanged.

I think so. My sense is that in India, the rituals, the pieties, the religion, the beliefs of the people, which are deeply held in most cases, are the things that make India itself, and at the same time prevents it from becoming something else.

In China, it's different. I can only talk about India by comparing it to China because China has been transformed. China has been able to modernize but at the expense of losing its soul and many of its traditions. But there is something in Indian life that is perpetually backward looking, and as modern as a place that they are trying to make India, it has this link with the past. It's as though China has severed its link to the past.

Take foot binding. If foot binding had been an Indian tradition instead of Chinese, they'd still be binding feet in India. But binding has been abandoned in China. A lot of traditional things that are good, bad and indifferent are still practiced in India, some more widely than others. But they've abandoned those things in China. I think this is why India is such a fascinating place to visit. When you are looking at India, a lot of it is still the old India. A lot of old China is disappearing.

A lot of people who go to India miss that, it seems. They talk about India in terms of either quick healing devotion or IT. You juxtaposed that during your visit to Bangalore: one minute you're in an ashram and another you're in a massive call center. That seems to be the two kind of ways people see India.

Last August, the collapse of the 35W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis captured national attention. Though the loss of life was significantly less than it could have been, the idea that a collapse could and did happen had people cringing and gritting their teeth whenever their crossed any bridge.

A new bridge was being planned within hours of the demise of the old one. Local politicians pushed for and received federal funding to aid in both the clean-up and construction of a new span. The new structure was slated to open at the end of this year, but finished ahead a schedule. I drove across it for the first time this morning. It...well...looked like a bridge, but I guess that was what they were going for. Nothing spectacular, but seemingly sturdy.

Here's the problem I have with the new 35W Bridge. It was completed quickly because politicians and the Department of Transportation's had their necks on the line. Meanwhile, the Wakota Bridge, connecting the Twin Cities to the eastern suburbs and Wisconsin has been floundering in a state of half-completeness for as long as I can remember. On separate occasions, engineering mistakes and a budget crunch have halted work for months at a time. Sure, the new 35W bridge is awesome, but out of the spotlight, the Minnesota Department of Transportation is lacking. Readers: Is your state's DoT as inept, or is it just me?

My daily deal for today is perfect for all your iPod/ owners. This Cables2Go travel kit contains 4 separate items, neatly packed away in a pocket leather case.

Inside the case is an AC charger, DC (car) charger, retractable headphones and a retractable USB/Firewire charger cable. The cables will work on all iPod models with a dock connector, but the specifications say it is not compatible with the first, second and third generation iPod. Essentially this means that it will work on any iPod that plays video, and all the Nano versions.

The kit will most likely not work with the iPhone or iPod Touch. At $13.99 this is quite a good deal, and a great way to carry all the parts you need to keep your iPod charged anywhere you have AC or DC power. The user reviews do point out that the headphones are pretty poor, so don't expect them to replace your current iPod headphones.

The Cables2Go iPod charging kit is available from buy.com, and shipping is free.