Crazy Adventures

Big Crazy Family Adventure

I watched the first 2 hours of the Big Crazy Family Adventure on the Travel Channel last night and I was pleasantly entertained.The show features the Kirkby family – mom – Christine Pitkanen, dad – Bruce Kirkby, and two sons Bodi and Taj. They are travelling halfway around the world and doing it unconventionally. For starters, they begin their trip in canoes floating on the Columbia River. While getting a bit wet, they make it to their train, which makes a special stop for them practically in the middle of nowhere. They ride to Vancouver where the board a cargo ship (of all things) for a 2 week trip across the Pacific to Korea. Now I've been on a cruise ship before but sharing a transPacific trip with a bunch of cargo containers is indeed pretty crazy. When they finally reach Korea, they stay with families they had never met, but who they found on the internet. WOW! I am impressed by their courage.

The show is put together nicely and I find it very entertaining. The kids are great and the parents are very loving and caring for each other and the children. It is really nice to see such a wonderful family of people on TV when most television is more interested in showing how horrible people are. So far, many rigors of travel have been overcome – from an unexpected port of call in Russia to missing their train to Beijing, and I really find myself pulling for this family.

If you need a break from the insest and child killings in Game of Thrones or the occult bloodletting of Penny Dreadful, I highly recommend you give this show a try.

Shambling Guide to NYC

Just started reading this novel by Mur Lafferty and I am really enjoying it. The first few chapters lay out the tale of a down and out travel guide writer, Zoe, who just lost her job and ends up in New York. But this isn't the regular NYC, this city is crawling with monsters, or as they prefer, coterie, and she doesn't stay without a job for long. A vampire is her new boss in a publishing company filled with zombies, water sprites, and incubi. Needless to say, it sets up a pretty interesting scenario that I want to find out more about. I kinda get a Lost Girl or a Dresden Files type feel about the book which is a good thing.