:: Free Traveler ::

TSA’s layered security strategy uses high-tech detectors and four-footed ones, too

Airport operators and the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) are turning to new technologies and old-fashioned strategies in an effort to thwart future terrorist attacks on airliners.

One strategy, begun last December by Edmund (Kip) Hawley, assistant secretary of the TSA, seeks unpredictability to keep terrorists off-balance and uncertain about whether any given airport on any given day will require travelers to remove their coats and shoes or open their laptop computers when they pass through security checkpoints.

“We do them [terrorists] a great service if we follow the same procedures everywhere, every time,” says Hawley. “If, on the other hand, we build a measure of unpredictability into our operations, terrorists cannot use our consistency to their advantage in planning an attack.”

Supplementing that effort, the TSA is testing cutting-edge technologies from “puffer” machines that detect tiny traces of explosives on travelers and their clothing to shoe scanners that could allow passengers to pass through checkpoints without having to remove their footwear.

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By Stacy Mantle

Today the most difficult decision I have to make is whether I should sit on the alabaster beach and watch the tide crash over a colony of corral reef that I discovered on an earlier dive, or join a group of rowdy tourists on a short boat ride out to the middle of the ocean for the sole purpose of jumping into lukewarm water with hundreds of wild stingrays.  I sip my coffee, thinking about my choices until Malik, my resident waiter for the morning, makes an appearance to take my order.  His broad shoulders block the morning sun from my eyes.  Tall and muscular, he moves with an easy grace, handling the small coffee pot and cup as if they were an extension of his large hands.   I ask his thoughts on my conundrum. 

“You are in Cayman, Mon.” He replies in a soft Jamaican accent, although Britain was still the ruling empire of the island.  “In Cayman we do what we want.  You go see stingrays or watch the tide come in, it’s all ‘da same.  They both be here tomorrow.”  I have to smile at his carefree attitude, the “live and die by the clock” mentality of the states now becoming a distant memory.  He leans towards me conspiratorially, “But Malik recommends the stingrays, Mon. It ‘tis an adventure!” He smiles, his teeth bright against his dark skin, and then disappears into the tall palm trees. 

And how could it not be an adventure?  A person could be here for a year, and although the island can be driven across in less than two hours, never really see everything.  Cayman is a cacophony of sounds and a collection of cultures that is rarely seen in one place.

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In the footsteps of the last Roman emperor

Ravenna grew out of the Adriatic marshes, as Venice one day would, built on pilings and tufts of land. It eventually became a major port, and a base for the Roman Empire’s fleet. Julius Caesar gathered his forces at Ravenna as he prepared to cross the Rubicon. Because the city — surrounded by swamps — was so easy to defend, the capital of the Western Empire was moved there from Rome by the emperor Honorius early in the fifth century.

Ravenna was thus the scene of the Roman Empire’s final act, or at least its final act in the West. The man regarded as the last in the long imperial line, Romulus Augustus, spent the few months of his reign, in A.D. 475-476, in Ravenna. He was, in fact, not a man but a boy of thirteen or fourteen. Because he was so young, people gave the name Augustus a diminutive twist — Augustutus, the emperor was called: “little Augustus.” And because he was a usurper, installed by his father, a general named Orestes, people gave the name Romulus a pejorative cast — Momyllus, they said: “little disgrace.” There was time enough in his reign to mint money — barely — but his name was so long it was hard to fit it onto coins. (Zeno, the emperor of the East at the time, did not have this problem.) But then Orestes fell afoul of barbarian mercenaries in his army and was killed. Romulus lost his throne, and a barbarian named Odoacer made himself king of Italy.

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BEST DAMN WEEKEND EVER

IF BACKPACKING WERE A VIDEO GAME, you’d need a cheat code to get to a level this exciting. You’ll slosh through miles of marshland and tramp across rocky beaches and tidal zones teeming with sea life. Then you’ll cross swollen rivers on shoulder-straining cable cars and “boonie-bash” (localese for bushwhack) through miles of undergrowth. This new 36-mile trek in Cape Scott Provincial Park hugs Vancouver Island’s rugged northern shore and seems engineered to test your mettle and delight your senses. The epic (and fun as hell) gauntlet of challenges also rewards you with some of the island’s finest beach camping.

For years, up-island hiking paled in comparison to the West Coast Trail, that famous 45-mile stretch of boardwalk in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Now, however, after 2 years of development, Cape Scott has its own fledgling backcountry prize: a 4-day trek through wildlife-packed coastal boreal forests with camping on pocket beaches, each more beautiful than the last. The trail officially opens this month, even though some sections are a tad behind schedule. Fortunately, instead of delaying the entire route, BC park officials have simply issued warnings to watch your ass through the dicey sections. God love the Canadians.

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By David Arthur Walters

California has represented the bright future of This Great Nation of Ours ever since young men were told, “Go West, young man.” Pure Land Buddhists in China also say El Dorado is in the West; they take a short cut and go East to get to California. Now it appears that a Chinese navigator arrived in California long before a Caucasian barbarian set foot there, and he did not say “Eureka!”

Go West, young man, indeed! Today pundits say, “As California goes, so goes the nation.” The Golden State of course goes for the gold, as we can see in its golden state mineral, golden gate bridge, golden poppy, golden trout, and golden-orange garibaldi. Fortunately, by way of contrast, the Golden State has the California redwood, gray whale, and brown grizzly.

The prospect of going West for the gold alone is not so alluring to those who prize their integrity during the great American pursuit of happiness - all that glitters in the moral sphere is not golden. To begin with, the Golden State is a stolen state.  To make a long story short, it is the most bizarre state in the union.

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Once a backcountry refuge for draft dodgers and hippie farmers, British Columbia’s Gulf Islands are now home to a new national park reserve and some of the highest-priced real estate in Canada

It’s easy to feel wistful about what might have been when I’m aboard the Spirit of British Columbia, the Vancouver-to-Victoria ferry that weaves through the southern Gulf Islands. Even early European explorers, who found the mountainous West Coast forbidding and gloomy, admired the Gulf Islands. Garry oak meadows give the gentle hills of the islands the appearance of an English garden, and the steely North Pacific bursts into tropical blue-greens at their shores.

For the past 140 years, since non-aboriginal settlement began, the Gulf Islands have been a refuge for adventurers, eccentrics and solitude-seekers. I was almost one of them.

In 1988, when my family lived in Victoria and I was a shy 16-year-old, my mother contacted a real estate agent on the largest and closest of the southern islands, Salt Spring. She dreamt of a waterfront home. True, neighbours said that unwashed people lived in the forest and that the villages were filled with pot-smoking American draft dodgers. Though my mother wasn’t at Woodstock, she’s a free spirit who had variously been an unpublished novelist, a candle-maker and a quilter. So she brushed aside the fears of her neighbours and imagined a quiet, congenial rural refuge of artists and craftspeople. Oh, yes, and it was cheap. She was widowed and had no job, but she was comfortably looking at oceanfront properties.

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By: Manuela Pop

During our four-month trip in India this year, my husband and I stopped in Khajuraho to visit the Erotic Temples. While there, we heard of a small village, Kundalpur, where hundreds of Jain Monks gather in a two-day festival to celebrate fifty women becoming Jain mothers.

We left with a local Jain couple and their family to take part in the festival. Kundalpur turned out to be a very enriching and deeply spiritual experience. It changed our perception of Indian religions forever.

Kajuraho temples are not to be missed. They spread through the entire town. You need to rent a bicycle or a rickshaw to visit those that are far away. You can spend hours admiring the detailed carvings, which portray day-to-day activities. However, their worldwide fame derives from the carvings depicting sexual human acts.

Despite the aggressive touts, Kajuraho can be a laid back place. There isn’t really much else to do aside from visiting the temples and eating good food. Somebody who has been in India for a while learns to appreciate quiet places such as Khajuraho.

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