Travel writing...

I've never done much travel writing because I've always been cooped up, tapping away at home, working my butt off on the weekends and so forth. This year, that wasn't true.

Whether a weekly venture to Iowa City for a writing class, a day trip to Chicago to skate and eat or southern California for a "conference," I've been a lot of places this year for all sorts of reasons.

In February, it was to the Bitter Cold Show Down with 14 friends in a van. In November, it was with 11 friends to the Hoedown in Texas. I wrote about both adventures for www.iowa-connection.com and some for ONE Magazine.

The latest was posted today — a reflection piece on a six-day trip Las Vegas for some skating, rock climbing and good food in the island city. You can read it here.

The Vegas piece was one of my better pieces recently. I can't really tell you why, but I put some more flavor into it than I could writing for the newspaper.

So, as I keep driving vans for 15 hours or jet-setting to the west, I keep looking for adventures, good food and cool people.

There's still Detroit in February and possibly a few places in the middle.