Review: Carbon Offsets For Your Travel

Any way you travel, you cause pollution. Sad but true. Sure, you reuse your towels. You shut the A/C or heat when you leave your hotel room. You turn off the lights, too. All of this helps, but you can do more.

NativeEnergy and TerraPass are two sites that will estimate the carbon footprint of your plane or car trip. You make an offsetting donation which benefits Western U.S. wind farms, solar-energy installations and other sustainable projects.

Help ease the pollution your trip is causing by checking out these two sites.

Overnight at the Airport

It happens.

Flights are cancelled for any number of reasons.

If you have a long international trip, you might come into an airport at night and not leave until the next morning.

Making the news right now is London's Stansted Airport, where it is reported that campers move in by 10 PM.

Maybe Sleep In Airports should be bookmarked on your laptop.

Ironman Lake Placid

This is an event that takes place in pretty much my back yard. Well...maybe not exactly but within an easy one day drive.

This is the 10th anniversary of the Lake Placid Ironman and there are actually 8 participants (one woman, 7 men) who have done all 10 of the events.

The participants today will be swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles and running 26.2 miles.

Think this race might be for you? Then be sure to read Dev Paul's Part 1 and Part 2 about mistakes not to make and what you need to do if you hope to win.

Pitchfork, Siren, Mile High - Summer is the Time for Festivals

Summertime is here and it's time for all those big summer festivals.

Yes, there are some major festivals going on this weekend. There is the Mile High Festival in Denver, the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, and further east in New York for the Siren Festival.

But even small towns take advantage of the summer to have some type of festival going on. Do a Google search for 'small town festivals' and you end up with links to a post on byways.org and loads of specific small town festivals.

Take advantage of what your area has to offers. Enjoy these small town festivals and support your local community.

Northwest Raising Fees

Besides slashing about 2500 jobs, Northwest Airlines will also be charging fees for passengers' first checked bags and for frequent flyer tickets.

The $15 fee for a passenger's first checked bag goes into affect with tickets purchased starting July 10th for travel after August 28th. You are exempt from this fee if you are a member of their frequent flyer program or traveling on a full fare ticket.

Fees for changing flight plans have also gone up. For changes to change flight arrangements on a nonrefundable ticket, you'll now pay $150 instead of the previous $100.

And if you want a frequent flyer ticket, it will now cost $25 for domestic travel, $50 for trans-Atlantic and $100 for trans-Pacific. Northwest Airlines is hoping that the fees on frequent flyer travel will be ‘temporary”.

Man Strips Nude

Can you imagine!!!

Yesterday, the pilot of an American Airlines flight going from Boston to Los Angeles diverted the plane to Oklahoma City.

A man went into one of the airplane's restrooms and stripped naked. After being confronted by Craig Tornberg, general manager of the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer, the man went back into the restroom and put his clothes back on.

But then he headed to one of the emergency doors. At that point he was tackled by Tornberg and other team personal.

This headline, Soccer team members help subdue man on flight, gives you the full story.

The Phantom Hotel

I found a hotel I definitely would not want to stay in. Not that I'd really have the opportunity because it is located in North Korea.

The Ryugyong Hotel was nicknamed The Phantom Hotel when construction stopped 16 years ago. It has never had one guest.

Considered by many to be grotesque, its construction appears to have been an attempt by North Korea leader Kim Il-sung to compete with the growing economy in South Korea. When money ran out, work on the hotel stopped.

Now fast forward to today when it looks like the building may get a new lease on life. Read about how Egypt's Orascom group appears to be renovating this old corpse.

And I'm STILL pretty sure I wouldn't want to be a guest there.

ExpressJet Ends Branded Operation

As of September 1, you will no longer be able to fly an ExpressJet branded airplane. If you have a ticket for flying before then, you are OK. If your flight is after September 1, call the airline for a refund. At least they are still solvent so you can get your money back.

They will still be flying co-branded with Continental and will also be flying for corporate aviation groups. I hope that continues. I have a flight AFTER September 1 on Continental that uses ExpressJet to get me from upstate NY to Newark.