Price - 101 places not to see before you die

PLACES
NOT
TO SEE
before you die

Catherine Price

For my grandmother

Contents

T here are a lot of things I need to do before I die.

Or at least thats what my local bookstore is telling me. Every time I visit, Im faced with a shelfs worth of guides listing things to accomplish, from 100 Places to See in Your Lifetime to 101 Things to Do Before Youre Old and Boring. I appreciate the idea behind Patricia Schultzs , 000 Places to See Before You Die , the inspiration for this genre of books, but its offspring stresses me out.

There are lists of jazz albums I need to listen to, foods I must taste, paintings I have to see, walks Im required to takemy own father has a book of 1,001 gardens I cant die without visiting. How am I supposed to conquer 1,001 movies while simultaneously reading 1,001 books and traveling to 1,001 historic sitesnot to mention making it to the 500 places I must see before they disappear? By the time I found a copy of 101 Places to Have Sex Before You Die , I was tempted to swear off travel books, grab a selection of the 1,001 beers I have to drink, and head to one of the 1,001 spots where Im supposed to escape.

I am a person who routinely writes lists of things Ive already done, just to make myself feel more accomplished. Like many people, I already spend too much time coming up with arbitrary things I should be doing, keeping myself so busy that its hard to separate one moment from the next. The last thing I need to read is a book that pits my desire for adventure against the time pressure of mortalityespecially in the form of 1,001 places Im supposed to play golf.

So I decided to create an antidote: a list of places and experiences that you dont need to worry about missing out on. I called upon travel-loving friends, family members, and, in some cases, complete strangers to tell me about overhyped tourist sites, boring museums, stupid historical attractions, and circumstances that can make even worthwhile destinations miserable.

Some entries on the list are unquestionably unappealing, like a field strewn with decomposing bodies or fan hours at the Las Vegas porn convention. Some depend on contextPamplonas a very different city from the perspective of a bull. Some are just good stories, albeit ones that are more fun to read about than to experience firsthand.

As I gathered suggestions, I came across a characteristic common among frequent travelers: a reluctance to define anything as bad. I have a soft spot for underdog places and a perverse need to find even the worse stuff a source of delight and titillation, wrote one friend about her inability to hate on Uzbekistan or, for that matter, Detroit. Shes right, of coursethe worse something is in the moment, the better the story when you get home. So for those people who look at a warehouse full of rotting human sewage and see an interesting way to spend an afternoon, I also included some places that would be impossible to visit even if you were intent on finding the bright side in everything, like the Yucatn Peninsula sixty-five million years ago or the bottom of the Kola Superdeep Borehole. It might seem pointless to say that you shouldnt go to a place like Io, Jupiters least hospitable moon, but look at it this way: when someone publishes , 001 Places in Space to See Before You Die , the pressure will be off.

No matter what type of traveler you are, I invite you to take a break from your other to-do lists and spend a moment being grateful for some of the things youre not doing. Then, when youre ready to hit the road, leave behind your list of , 001 Places You Must Pee and give yourself a chance to come up with some experiences of your own. Travel should be an adventure, not an assignment, and if you spend your vacations armed with too many checklists, youre missing the point of leaving home.

F orget apple pie. Few foods are as uniquely American as the Rocky Mountain oyster, a euphemism that refers not to a high-altitude mollusk but to the testicles of a bull. Also known as cowboy caviar and Montana tendergroin, these balls can be boiled, sauted, or even eaten raw, but theyre usually treated more like chickenbreaded and deep-fried.

There are also few things more American than eating competitions, so it should come as no surprise that each summer offers opportunities to prove your manhood by stuffing your face with gonads. I appreciate the pun of the Nuts About Rocky Mountain Oysters competition that occurs annually in Loveland, Colorado. But the award for Best in Show goes to the Testicle Festival, held each year at the Rock Creek Lodge near Missoula, Montana. Started in 1982, it is Americas premier venue to chow down on balls.

When the festival first began, it drew about three hundred people. But these days the crowd has grown to fifteen thousand, and the debauchery has expanded to a weekend full of wet T-shirts, impromptu nudity, and an Indy 500inspired race called the Undie 500all natural evolutions of an event whose tagline is Come Have a Ball. Try your hand at Bullshit Bingo, a larger-than-lifeand quite literalgame of chance where every time a bull defacates on a giant bingo card, someone wins $100. Or support the events alternate titlethe Breasticle Festivalby signing up for the Biker Ball-Biting Competition, where girls riding on the backs of Harleys race to snag a Rocky Mountain oyster off a string without using their hands. There are belly shots. Theres No Panty Wednesday. And, of course, there are the Rocky Mountain oysters themselvesmore than fifty thousand pounds of themgreasy, salted, and USDA-approved.

Jim Kleeman

I magine this scene: youre walking through an underpass in Connaught Circle, a mess of traffic where twelve of New Delhis roads converge, and all of a sudden a voice calls out of the crowd.

Excuse me, friend, it says. Youve got feces on your shoe.

Several weeks in India have made you realize that when people yell at you on the street, its usually best to ignore them. So at first you pay no attention. But something in this mans voice is different, believable. He repeats himself, and you slowly lower your eyes.

And there it is: a flattened turd sitting on the top of your shoe.

Your first reaction is disbeliefyouve had shit on the bottom of your shoe, sure. But the top? How can this be? There arent any birds around, or monkeys. Disgusted, you lean down to inspect it. Still moist and glistening, it gives off a familiar fecal smell.

You consider throwing up, but before your gag reflex can kick in, a voice pipes up. Dont worry, I will clean it for you. It is your new friend, who now is standing next to you with a shoe-shining kit. Well, will you look at that! Here you are, caught in the one moment in your life where you need an emergency shoe cleaning, and this kind man pops out of nowhere to help you. What are the odds?

Before you have a moment to actually calculate the odds of this happening coincidentally, the man has escorted you off to the side of the passageway where, with a flourish, he rids your shoe of the offending turd. Then, as you reach into your wallet for a tip, he announces the price for a shit-shine specialand its more than most New Delhi residents earn in a week.

If you think about it, the scam is brilliant. The service has already been rendered, and besides, who wants to walk around with a turd perched on his shoe?