Why is this?

Travel Story #2: "The Bomb"

I haven't told this story in a long time, but it's very true, and it happened the summer before last when I was backpacking through Europe with my good friend Ryan. When I got back to the states, I was advised to contact the AP (Associated Press) immediately to try to sell them the story so they could wire it to news/press entities to publish if they so chose. The following is a brief I was asked to draft by the Chief European News Correspondent in the AP's Rockefeller Center, New York City executive offices. After I verbally told him over the phone what happened that particular afternoon in France, he asked me to write up the story and send it to him immediately so he could get it in the hands of the European press headquartered in Rome. Below is the brief I wrote up, completely factual.

"To whom it may concern,
On the morning of June 7, 2004, I took a bus from London to Dover, England, and caught a ferry across the Pas de Calais to Calais, France, during a six-week long backpacking tour of Europe my travel companion and I had just started. After leaving the port of Calais, we walked to the train station just up the road to find that about 25 to 30 police officers had the station roped off and were not allowing access to the station to anyone. Approximate time was around 3 to 4 pm. I asked a gentleman who was standing with the crowd about 50 yards away from the station what was going on and he said there had been a bomb threat. Thinking not much about it, that it was probably a "common" occurrence, we decided to stick around until the police gave the "all clear" and let everyone in the station. About 30 minutes later, however, the police officers moved us back another 100 feet or so.

Not a minute later, I heard a very loud explosion followed by the sound of shattering glass coming directly from the direction of the train station. Broken glass was still falling when we looked that way. We later came to find that a time bomb in a duffel bag had detonated. No one, I believe, was injured, though, because the police had cleared the station. I assume they had found the bomb and immediately cleared the station, or were forewarned.

Over two hours later, they let everyone back into the station and the trains started going again. The authorities had half of the station roped off in the inside, so I had a clear view of the almost unrecognizable burned up duffel bag with burned clothes and the like strewn about. A few technicians with gloves on were sifting through some of the rubble for evidence. The whole station still smelled like smoke. I was looking in a different direction when the bomb detonated, but the ear that was facing the station was ringing for a good 2 hours thereafter due to how loud it was. Only myself, my friend I was traveling with, and about a dozen other train passengers were present for the explosion. We went ahead and took a train to Paris that night, and the next day we checked 4 different Parisian newspapers and not one of them had any story on the bomb. I assume the French wanted to keep it under wraps in order to not disrupt the tourist season like the bomb in Madrid a few months before this date had drastically affected Spain's tourism, keeping in mind that Calais is a busy gateway to France from the U.K. Still, it's rather odd that the incident was not reported even in France.

I have 4 digital pictures from the train station in Calais that day. Two are clear shots of the destroyed duffel bag and the area around the detonation (with the agents searching for evidence in the foreground), and 2 are of the station roped off from the outside with policemen in the shot. My contact information is below. If you are interested in this story, please contact me immediately."

The AP guy in NY said the main appeal to the story probably wouldn't be the fact that a bomb went off, but the fact that France intentionally covered the incident up. The day after I sent the above brief to the AP, I left for Missouri to work at a camp and was basically unreachable for a month.

I never heard back from anyone.

I blame the French.

Pythons in the Everglades

So I was watching NBC's morning show this morning and they did a story about how many python owners in Florida have let their Burmese pythons go in "the wild" when the pythons have outgrown their cages. Apparently, these owners didn't know that snakes actually get bigger over time (ESPECIALLY PYTHONS). Therefore, Everglades National Park is crawling with hundreds (maybe thousands) of pythons, breeding and eating at will. Park rangers have said that the number of endangered alligators/crocodiles and rare birds has plummeted in recent years, mostly due to these pythons.

How crazy. I can't imagine what Burma is like.

Headline: Gas Prices Continue to Rise

On cnn.com this morning, the headline states that "summer vacation drives won't be cheap". The article goes on to state that gas prices will be on average $.25 higher this summer than last. Throw in minor tropical storms in the gulf every other week and raise that quarter to probably $.75. Making the average gasoline prices around $3.12 for the entire summer...even in Oklahoma. And I'm not joking about the "minor" tropical storms. Because of what happened last summer with Katrina and Rita and the effect they had on oil platforms and refineries, every single little burp the weather makes in the gulf will drive oil prices higher and higher because of the "threat" to the fragile supply. And every single flippant comment by Iran's rogue president will push prices up as well.

My point is that this summer is going to be expensive on the transportation side of everyone's budget. The question is, are you okay with that? Will Americans be okay with that this summer? The United States will consume 9.4 million barrels of gasoline everyday this summer. In 2001, the U.S. consumed about 3 gallons per day per person. Other industrialized nations used a little under 1.5 gallons per day per person. All other nations used about 0.3 gallons per day per person. Doesn't seem to balance does it? I guess the 300 Tahoes, large minivans, and huge pick-up trucks I see driving to work every morning occupied by only one person adds up when you look at the entire nation.

There's another way to look at it though. According to conocophillips.com, the current price of gasoline, after adjusting for inflation, is close to what it was more than 50 years ago. 50 years ago, one gallon of gas cost 27 cents. Adjusted for inflation, $.27 in 1955 is $2.25 in 2005. That makes the prices seem a little more reasonable. Furthermore, a gallon of mountain dew costs 6 bucks, if you multiply the cost of a 20 oz. bottle by about 6 (128 ounces in a gallon). Visine eyedrops would cost around $9.00/gallon. That makes paying $2.50 for a gallon of unleaded a little easier to stomach... but I still don't like it.

I fall somewhere in the middle of the two paragraphs above. It's pretty easy for me to get ticked off when I see some guy in a "7 miles a gallon" Hummer driving down the nice highway, but when a bottle of water costs over a buck, gas prices don't seem that far off the charts.

I hate bottled water.