Travel Nerd Time, with Rick Steves

Decidedly non-music-related, but this guy’s my dad’s personal hero, right up there with John Wayne. Travel guru, TV star, author, & all-round strange guy Rick Steves will be speaking this coming Friday, November 14th, at the University of Houston Cullen Performance Hall. I’m not entirely sure what the heck he’ll be talking about, but he’s got a new book out called Backpack Diplomacy, and the guy’s a fount of travel-related knowledge. Tickets are a little pricey, sadly — $20 for HoustonPBS members and $25 for non-members.

Now, I’ll be honest — while I like the guy okay, he’s not my favorite travel writer (that’s a tossup between Redmond O’Hanlon and Lawrence Millman, although they admittedly do somewhat of a different type of travel writing from Steves), or even my favorite travel TV host (current winner? Andrew Zimmern, hands down — I’ll never, ever eat the bulk of the things he tries, but hey, at least now I have a vague idea of what they’d taste like if I did). He is however, pretty much a travel biz icon, and well worth listening to. And going by what I’ve heard of his latest book, he and I see pretty much eye-to-eye on foreign relations and travel, in that we both believe the best way to coexist with our neighboring nations is to send real-live Americans out to the far corners of the world with backpacks rather than guns.

Plus, I have to respect — albeit in a back-away-slowly-and-keep-smiling kind of way — a guy who includes such handy phrases as “I have no venereal diseases” in his Spanish-to-English phrasebook. Truly, truly classy.