Today, in my regular wanderings around other people’s blog and link rolls I stumbled across a beautiful little gem, The Bathroom Diaries.

As a child, I was one of those kids who insisted that since the books my parents read to me at night didn’t have instances of the characters going to the restroom in them that my poor parents needed to add these in.  I believed that it was very important that these fictional characters that inhabited my imagination have adequate opportunities to relieve themselves.  Amazingly enough I’ve never had a problem with keeping a tight reign on my own bowels, however my fascination with the  ways in which we deal with our biowaste has never ceased.  Enter The Bathroom Diaries.

Travelers are perhaps the only other group of people who can understand my strange fixation on ‘loos.’  When traveling abroad, it’s always an adventure, from bidets to biodegradable toilets to squatting in the wilderness you simply never know when and how you’ll need to ‘go.’  Enter this site.  Which is great.  From exact directions on how to use a bidet or squat toilet to reviews of local toilet facilities.  I even did a vanity search of my home town.  Yep, they’ve got listings.  Since they’re not great though, I’m not sharing!!!

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I’ve been watching Roswell recently on DVD.  Our roommates own the first season and so I’ve been enjoying it as I eat lunch or power down in the afternoon.  As Darling puts it, Roswell is “Dawson’s Creek with Aliens.”  He makes fun of me, but I’m still enjoying it.

So we were watching the first episode and Darling grabs for the remote.  Scrolls it back and pauses it mid-scream for a better view of the crash-down cafe.  “That looks like it’s in Pasadena, but I know it was filmed in Covina” he says.  We stare at the picture for a while.

Here’s the cool thing about living in Southern California.  There are all these places that you know, or sort of know, that you see again and again in movies and television series.  Covina, CA, where Darling grew up is, indeed, home to the former set of the Crashdown Cafe (seen here).  I love to try and identify the places that I’ve seen on television and one of my favorite sites for this is Seeing Stars, which not only has location of star’s homes but also great pictures and maps of where things were actually filmed on location.  It’s only about 4 miles from where I sit typing this and it turns out that much of the town was actually used to film Roswell, including the Sherif’s station and the park among others.  Perhaps I’ll go check it out this evening.

If you could see any television or movie set, which one would it be?

What is your town’s silver screen claim to fame?

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It seems like all my favorite blogs are coming to an end, with the exception of Dave over at Go Backpacking.com.  He’s just headed to Bali and into his 4th month of RTW travel.  Wonderful pictures & writing coming from following him, plus he loves weird food as much as I do which is making his foodie pictures very welcome as I cook my Meat and Potatoes for Beloved.

But my other new favorites- LL’s World Tour and  No Impact Man are just coming to an end of their big ‘project’ time.  This has both good and bad sides.  LL just returned to the States and when she’s in Los Angeles in a few weeks we’re going to meet for coffee.  That’s kind of like meeting a Rock Star for me.  I couldn’t believe that she asked ME!  I tried not to sound too desperate in my return email “REALLY??? CAN WE??? HOW SOON??  CAN I DO YOUR LAUNDRY FOR YOU???” That’s not desperate right?  (ok, I did restrain myself, I didn’t actually offer to do her laundry.)  In other news, No Impact Man is going to be becoming a book and a movie.  The book in 2009 and I’m not sure about when for the movie.  Should be interesting though, I was impressed with how living the past year has changed his prada-loving wife as far as not buying anything new.

But alas.  I need another new favorite blog.  I was particularly bummed as I only found No Impact and LL in the past month, right as their projects were winding down.  So I’m on the prowl.  Got any favorites I don’t have listed in my blogroll?  Let me know!  I’m looking for a blog that updates at least 5x a week cuz that’s how often I read.

Tim Patterson’s blog inspired me to dust off my bicycle panniers again.  He’s biking around in South America and recently returned to Buenos Aires after a bout of homesickness and overworking himself.  I’ve been reading a lot about Buenos Aires recently and I’m thinking it might need to go on this year’s destination plan.  Once this year’s destination plan coincides with this year’s income plan.  Which I hope will be in May/June but we’ll see.

Brave New Traveler and Daily Transit continue to be great regular reading.  Also I’ve recently added Lives of Wander but due to the horrors of PhD studies their leave date has been postponed until fall!  But this to will pass.

If my blog search were a personal add:

Homebound armchair traveler seeks adventuresome well written blog who enjoys great food, funny experiences and has a good eye behind the camera.  Will link love and blog about great articles and encourage more visitors if you are a good match.  Possibilities for a long-term relationship are good, and blogs of all nationalities are welcome to apply although special consideration is given to US travelers.

Please contact by replying below!

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So when Jason over at happyscrappy wrote about being denied his beer, I began to be concerned with the sanity of the United States and our Homeland Security administration. Not that I wasn’t concerned about this venerable institution before (I mean really, hasn’t anyone read Orwell’s 1984?) but the bizzare fear of good old Czech beer was beyond my comprehension.
So as any good blogger will do, I commented on his blog. It was my first time there, having been turned onto it by the good guys over at The Daily Transit, which I read regularly. Great writing btw for anyone looking. Then, as any good blog owner is wont to do, Jason emails me a response to my comment. We got into this bizzare conversation about the phobias that TSA is imposing on poor innocent travelers. Somehow they’ve decided that we all need to be afraid of the following: full-sized shampoo bottles, shoes that lace up, non-white people, bottled water, coffee (but only when carried in cups) and now beer. As if the possibility of falling out of the sky somewhere off the coast of Los Angeles while trying to figure out how to simultaneously use my seat as a flotation device and put on an oxygen mask wasn’t enough to keep my feet on the ground.

Then he drops his ace in the hole.  Apparently while on the flight back (after making him return his beer) they announced that anyone not from the US or Western Europe was going to be FINGERPRINTED!!!

Anyone else not ok with this new action of our government?  What the bleep!  I didn’t believe him, but oh yes, here it is in a small article on CNN.

Anyone else not believing this?

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With the launch of our ‘QUEST TO 100‘ RSS feed challenge, I’ve decided to do a bit of revamping around the blog. We’re over two months old now, we can stand to do with a bit of direction. Here’s what I’m working on:

1. Developing a unique voice - there are tons of travel sites out there (trust me, I know, I read most of them) and I want make sure that StartGo is a unique voice in the travel community.
2. Create amusing content- I’m bringing in a daily post that will be more light-hearted for our readers to enjoy. Because if it’s not fun to read & write, what’s the point?
3. Share great content - I spend all day looking at travel websites, most of which are truly amusing. The posts I’ve gotten the best responses to in the past are ones that share this with others, so I’m going to up these types of posts.
4. Picture. Ok, I’ve been slacking. No illustrations and that sucks. We’re bringing them back, never fear. Starting with this post.
5. Gravatars. Just because I think they’re cool and I like seeing what y’all look like. They’re coming later this week. Get yours here.
6. More surveys. I’m looking for a good company to do some sidebar surveys so that y’all can be more interactive. I know some of my stuff sucks, I just am not sure what yet.

Other possibilities are:

• video blogs
• podcasts
• travelogue-style stories
• guest bloggers
• etc. etc. etc.

Let me know your ideas for this blog! I promise to seriously consider them all!

Thanks to The Mellon Pro for the image.

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