How to Have Fun While Getting Lost

Filed in archive Good Read on July 14, 2008

During the winter, I work as a skier surveyor for Copper Mountain. There's a question on my survey that asks you to agree or disagree with the following statement: "I insist on planning every single detail of my vacation!" The question always makes me laugh. Quite often, I can actually predict what the person's answer will be.

The thing is, sometimes the most exciting things happen by accident! Dave Fox, author of Getting Lost, Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad
would be inclined to agree. Here's a blurb from the back cover:

When you travel, things go wrong." That might not sound like uplifting advice, but in this hilarious collection of stories about mishaps in faraway places, award winning humorist Dave Fox proves otherwise.

At age eight, Dave moves to England and nearly starts a riot in Northern Africa. As a nerdy teenager, he smuggles illegal radio equipment into Finland on his way to spending a year in Norway. In his college days, he discovers it is not wise to seek inner peace inside an Icelandic volcano, narrowly misses being stripped, gassed, and robbed (at least in his own head) on an overnight train through Italy, and finds himself surrounded by machine-gun-toting cops in Greece. A few years later, he does something exceptionally reckless. He becomes a professional tour guide.

Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad spans 30 years of adventures and misadventures overseas, from Dave's year as a British school boy, to his teenage days as a foreign exchange student, to his so-called "adult life" as a professional traveler. He weaves together tales both poignant and amusing in this memoir of a travel-obsessed geek.

If you're an aspiring travel scribe, you might be interested in taking Dave Fox's Travel Journaling Cruise in March of 2009. You'll visit Brazil. Morocco and other exciting destinations while you learn the secrets of effective travel writing. Prices start at under $3,000, and include round trip airfare to Rio and home from Barcelona, Brazilian visa (which costs $100) some meals and the writing course. If you are traveling with someone who is not taking the course, they can receive a $200 discount.