Third Place Happiness/Flight Payment Plans/Escaping the US

Nomadico Issue #173

The Happiness of Coming in Third

This week I’m curating some interesting articles from others. The first is strange and encouraging. It turns out that multiple studies with different methods have found that Bronze winners in the Olympics are happier than the Silver winners. There are probably lessons in here about drive and ambition, but maybe it’s just a good reminder to enjoy the moment when you appear on life’s podium. If you expect everything to go perfectly and to win every time, including on travel days, you’re going to suffer a lot of disappointment. Via Chris Guillebeau at A Year of Mental Health.

Payment Plans for Airline Tickets

My friend Kerwin McKenzie wrote an in-depth article for T+L on all the options that are out there for you if you need a plane ticket now but don’t want to pay for it now. Usually you’re better off putting the purchase on a credit card that earns you something back, but if that’s not an option, see these ways to buy a flight on a payment plan and stretch out the due dates. (Many budget airlines around the world offer this directly too in the purchase process.)

The Inherent Conflict of “Live Like a Local”

Despite the best intentions, you will never really see life from a local perspective if you’re on vacation or sticking around for two months as a digital nomad. As this sarcastic “live like a local” article points out, you can only scratch the surface. Most people who live there are working a physical job to pay the bills, dealing with family issues, fighting with the local government, and doing zero sightseeing. Working remotely for a Silicon Valley company at 10X the local salary while in a posh Airbnb rental is just not the same. Found via James Clark at The Travel Wire.

Bolting the USA

Nomadico partner Mark Frauenfelder, from sister newsletter Recomendo, interviewed me at Boing Boing for this article on escaping the USA. If you’ve got your eyes set on greener pastures, check it out for some ideas and considerations. Remember too that “moving abroad” doesn’t need to have a one-destination answer. Plenty of working travelers and retirees bop around to different places in the course of a year and having a home base doesn’t have to mean spending 12 months there.

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

10/2/25

What’s in my NOW? — Melissa Willis

issue #224

Melissa Willis is a writer from northern New Mexico, USA. She is a hobby family historian and genetic genealogist who weaves together the stories of her ancestors. She lives on a diversified farm with her family where she documents the past and present in the margins of her busy days. Her personal blog is undertheelderberrytree.com, and you can find her on Bluesky @melis-willis.bsky.social.

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PHYSICAL

• THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT: It must’ve been the mid-1980s when I first read Stephen King’s The Stand. I was probably too young for such stories, but it filled my imagination with visuals of a whole new world, for better or for worse, and there was no looking back. Alas, when I found out about THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT, I had to get my hands on it. This short story anthology, fully authorized by King himself, brings us back into the world of The Stand from different points of view, during and after Captain Tripps wreaks havoc on society. At nearly 800 pages in total, each short story (~20 pages each) offers just a snippet into the plague that haunted so many of our dreams. I’m taking each story as it comes, when time and space allow, and my youth heart couldn’t be happier.
• Creative Journals: When I finally committed to keeping a physical journal in 2020, I knew I wanted to have a proper cover with fresh inserts that could be replaced when one journal was full. So, I began searching for a journal cover that would last through years of regular use and fell in love with Oberon Designs leather embossed offerings. I started with the Honeybee cover for my personal journal and have since added two more journals to my shelf; a Heritage Journal for creatively tracing my ancestry and a Folk Magic Journal for documenting nature’s cycles, herbalism, and my spiritual practices. I am so glad I took this route and love how each cover gently softens over time, adding comfort and security to the stories they each hold.
• Noise Cancelling Earbuds: As someone who lives in a tiny house on a diversified farm with a lot going on, being able to pop in my earbuds and have agency about how much I can and cannot hear happening around me has absolutely saved my sanity. Whether I’m listening to music, an audio book, or a TV show, being in my own world while not entirely closing out the household or the critters outside is such a gift.

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DIGITAL

• The StoryGraph: What can I say, I’m a sucker for solid lists and pretty charts. After spending much of my youth with my nose in books, my young adulthood found me reading for educational purposes instead of for fun. Add children and a career to the mix and reading for the joy of it just took the back seat. A few years ago, though, I decided to intentionally read for fun again and I’ve never looked back. While I have personal reading goals and a massive TBR list, I’m not in competition with any speed readers out there. The StoryGraph keeps me organized in ways I never could on my own and the colorful data tracking is quite satisfying.
• Star Trek: The Next Generation: A few months ago, I created a 50 before 50 list of affordable and achievable experiences I want to complete before I turn 50 in November of 2026. As soon as I started my list, I knew I had to add in re-watching every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Not only because I’ve been wanting to do this for ages and just never have, but also because, in order to watch all 178 episodes, I’d need to get started right away. I’m now 13 episodes in and loving how 1980s fantastic it all is. Truly a blast from the past. And yes, Counselor Troy and Wesley Crusher are still my favorite characters.

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INVISIBLE

There But For The Grace

It could have happened.

It had to happen.

It happened sooner. Later.

Nearer. Farther.

It happened not to you.

You survived because you were the first.

You survived because you were the last.

Because you were alone. Because of people.

Because you turned left. Because you turned right.

Because rain fell. Because a shadow fell.

Because sunny weather prevailed.

Luckily there was a wood.

Luckily there were no trees.

Luckily there was a rail, a hook, a beam, a brake,

a frame, a bend, a millimeter, a second.

Luckily a straw was floating on the surface.

Thanks to, because, and yet, in spite of.

What would have happened if not a hand, a foot,

by a step, a hairsbreadth

by sheer coincidence.

So you’re here? Straight from a moment still ajar?

The net had one eyehole, and you got through it?

There’s no end to my wonder, my silence.

Listen

how fast your heart beats in me.

~Wislawa Szymborska

These words have lived on the pulse of my heart since I first came across them decades ago. It is not lost on me how our lives can be seen as a series of happy (and not so happy) occurrences and, when you look back on the journey, our survival through the mosaic of it all is quite miraculous.

10/1/25

Trees of Life / Where Discovery Sparks Imagination

Issue No. 86

TREES OF LIFE – THE MOST UNUSUAL AND BEAUTIFUL EVOLUTIONARY TREE MAPS FROM THE LAST 200 YEARS

Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution
by Theodore W. Pietsch
Johns Hopkins University Press
2013, 376 pages, 8 x 10 x 1.1 inches (softcover)

Buy on Amazon

The primary metaphor for visualizing evolution is as a tree. The trunk is the oldest ancestor species which branch off newer species, which branch further leaves of the newest species. Ever since Darwin, biologists have been drawing trees to attempt to capture the complexity of evolution in various domains. These evolutionary trees are not only scientifically useful, but works of art. Over the years, many approaches to the trees have been tried – some minimal, some ornate, some abstract. This tome collects the finest, most unusual, most beautiful evolutionary tree maps produced in the last 200 years. They not only inform biology, they are fantastic examples of great design. – Kevin Kelly

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WHERE DISCOVERY SPARKS IMAGINATION: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF RADIO AND ELECTRICITY

Where Discovery Sparks Imagination: A Pictorial History of Radio and Electricity
by John D. Jenkins
American Museum of Radio and Electricity
2009, 224 pages, 8.2 x 10 x 1 inches

Buy on Amazon

If you’re ever up near the Canadian border in the little college town of Bellingham, WA make time to check out a gem of a museum there: The SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention. It’s fully charged up and literally crackling with excitement (and a 4-million volt Tesla coil!). SPARK showcases all manner of fascinating artifacts all about the history of electricity from early static electricity generators to advanced vacuum tubes that went to the moon. Can’t make the trip? Then get this wonderful book!

And even if you do go to SPARK in person, you’ll also want to read Where Discovery Sparks Imagination. It features lavish color photographs of hundreds of the items on display together with the interesting stories of the people and places that go along with the things. I learned even more about Alessandro Volta and volts, Andre-Marie Ampere and amps, and Georg Ohm and ohms. See the recreation of the Titanic’s radio room. Learn how an undertaker in Kansas City invented the first dial phone to short circuit his competitor’s switchboard shenanigans. Anyone who has used a phone, listened to a recording, or turned on a lamp will enjoy seeing the primitive but clever inventions that predate today’s smart phones, PCs and LED lights. Fans of steampunkery will geek out at the endless array of 19th-century wonders like Wimhurst generators, telegraphs, “electro-magnetic motive machines,” as well as a forest of vacuum-tube devices, handsome wood-burl radio cabinetry and brassy mechanical sound players.

I was delighted to see included whimsical touches, too, like the mascot characters that put a friendly face on electrical consumer products: sure, they have a “Nipper” (the RCA mascot dog), but also the very cool 1920s Maxfield Parrish designed “Selling Fool” point of purchase display doll (with wooden jointed, posable limbs with slits for holding ad cards – and a radio tube for a helmet!). Until I can go back to SPARK (Science Powered Adventures for Real Kids) in person, I’m digging this book! – Bob Knetzger

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

09/30/25

Visual Reference

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 157

I go to books when I need to stimulate my imagination. Books never fail. I am a visual thinker, even when I write words, so I especially respond to visual books full of images, graphs, and pictures. Over the years I’ve accumulated a pretty good library of visual source books. Today, used books are cheap. You can build a good library of inspiration rather easily and inexpensively. These reference books will be the last to be replaced by digital screens, and they will still work perfectly well in the next century — no obsolescence. If you can find space to keep them, a good reference library is a working treasure. I probably have several hundred visual reference books, so I will list only the two dozen or so that I would truly hate to lose. I am mostly omitting single-artist retrospective books, including my favorites, since these are easier to find than the ones I include here, which are not obvious and less well-known. Oh, the possibilities! – KK

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Secret Museum of Mankind

This hefty softcover is a facsimile collection of thousands of exotic and sensational photographs dating from around the turn of the century when news of any sort from far away lands was rare. It’s sort of a combination of early uncensored National Geographic and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Reproduced without a known author, or copyright, or even authentication of the captions, it was for many years a “secret” underground publication. And for pure gawking pleasures it still can’t be beat. Cannibals, executioners, and fakirs, oh my! Toolwise, it serves as a mighty sourcebook of amazing costumes, body modifications and hairdos, architectural novelties, and extinct strange rituals. (I’m convinced science fiction film directors mine this for alien worlds.) I like to think of this book as the best one volume catalog of cultural diversity on Earth. For the most part these societies are long gone, and remain only in rare books like this one. —KK

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Fantastic Illustrations of Grandville

Surreal and whimsical did not start with hipsters. These book of 266 pen and ink illustrations by the Parisian Jean Grandville in the early 1800s depicts fantastical chimera, and phantasmagorical visions. It’s old-timey hallucinogenic scenes, often switching animals for people. Always guaranteed to wake you up. —KK

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Art Cars

Why are cars so boring, uniform in color, undecorated, unpersonalized when they could be…. covered in pennies, painted in polka dots, or traced in iron? You’ve probably seen an art car on the road and smiled. This is one of several albums of homemade art car culture by Harrod Blank. If you can improve cars this way, you can do it with toasters and the rest of the stuff in Walmart.

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Fantasy Worlds

Sometimes, despite all pressures toward normalcy, people are compelled to construct their own worlds. The old lady who over the years arranges broken bottles into a house, or the man down the road covering his barn with tiny quotes from a channeling spirit–each glues raw symbols into a whole that makes sense for them. This happens all over the world. I’ve collected an entire stack of books about self-made worlds, and this one is the best for sheer exuberance, geographic inclusion, and variety.

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Street Art San Francisco

A deep and wide collection of the best of San Francisco’s murals. A bit of hippy style, plus Mexican, plus punk, plus hipster. Great mix, hundreds of examples. —KK

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1000 Steampunk Creations

Steampunk is a contrarian reaction to the sleek minimalism of modernity and the “nothingness” of an iPod. It takes inspiration from the visible workings of brass pipes, rivets, and gears of Victorian technology and transfers that maximalism — how many doo-dads, filigree, extra decorations can one add? — to artifacts and clothing today. While this extreme counter-style is dated (by definition), it holds many potential ideas. This one volume compendium contains a thousand vibrant examples of excessive transparency. —KK

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Street Graphics India

This book inspired me to begin recording street graphics as I traveled so now I have my own collection, but this modest book will give anyone a good representation of the graphic landscape in India — from Bollywood billboards, to painted rickshaw covers, matchbox covers, wall advertisements, signage, and household symbols. —KK

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

09/29/25

World of Interiors/Elemental videos/Anxiety Toolkit

Recomendo - issue #481

Look inside people’s houses.

World of Interiors is a website featuring photos of rooms in people’s homes and shops. It’s exciting and inspirational. Look at these: dining chairs painted like the game pick-up sticks; a pop-art office with a cartoon tiger rug, overflowing books lining walls and staircases, and a collection of Zulu hats on an attic wall. — MF

Elemental videos

I have a thing for the elements – the diverse atoms that make up the world. I think more of them should be better known. I’ve previously recommended Elements ($10), the best book on this realm, but the second best resource is Periodic Videos, a channel of 118 videos arranged in the form of a periodic table of the elements. Click on each box in the grid to get a free, brief, informative lesson on what is special about this unique element. — KK

Anxiety Toolkit

This website offers a helpful collection of tools for managing anxiety, including breathing exercises, sensory techniques, calming visualizations, and sound therapy. Each exercise is just a few minutes long and requires no special equipment. I appreciate that the site also explains the science behind each technique, along with advice on when to use them and what you might notice. — CD

Magnetic necklace clasps

I’ve been replacing some of my necklace clasps with these magnetic closures, and they’re such a time- and hassle-saver. The magnets are strong enough to hold the weight of my heaviest pendant. — CD

Solar trail cam

I installed my first trail cameras in the early 1990s hoping to capture the elusive mountain lion in the hills behind our house. Back then trail cams were cumbersome film cameras with only 36 shots before you had to change rolls. It was expensive to develop and a chore to constantly replenish and keep the film and batteries replaced. Today you can get solar powered digital trail cams that have cell connections and display the images from remote locations instantly on your phone. (These are outlawed for hunting purposes in some states.) There is a whole range of intermediate, inexpensive digital trail cams that will pair with your nearby phone. I use a solar powered Vidvis 4K trail cam ($49) in my pursuit of wild animals passing through our neighborhood. It also works at night with invisible infrared flash. Every once in a while I walk up to it and wirelessly download its stored images. It’s always charged, and I can fit a year of still photos on one card. I’ve caught lots of critters passing through, but alas, still no mountain lion. — KK

Kitchen timer with silent mode

The timer app on a phone is not helpful in the kitchen. You have to prop it up to see the time, the screen goes dark after a few minutes, and if your hands are wet, it makes the app unresponsive to your finger. I use a battery-powered 60-minute Searon Kitchen Timer. The visual analog display is easy to read from a distance. It can be set on the counter, attached to the refrigerator, or mounted on the wall. It also has a mute button — when the time is up, an LED blinks until you tap the top of the timer. — MF

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09/28/25

Guaranteed for Life/Ideal Booking Windows/Overthrow in Nepal

Nomadico Issue #172

Travel Gear and Clothing With a Lifetime Warranty

When I mentioned two weeks ago that I was trashing my worn-out socks that had served me on 100+ hikes, a few readers said, “Return them; Darn Tough Vermont has a lifetime warranty!” They do indeed, making them a rare breed in today’s fast fashion environment. They’re part of an elite club that fully stands behind what they make forever, without pages of legalese wiggle room. There are more luggage companies than clothing ones in that club, but here are 14 brands that make travel products guaranteed for life, plus a few honorable mentions that guarantee some, but not all items they sell.

Real Data on Holiday Flight Bookings

There’s a lot of b.s. info out there on the ideal time to book a flight when most of the time the answer is simpler: be flexible and you’ll find a good deal. Google Flights crunched the numbers though to provide data you can bank on for holiday period deals. Apparently 39 to 51 days out is best, depending on the destination, so you’ve still got time to work out those Christmas plans. The day you book doesn’t matter much, but the lowest fares are usually on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.

Airbnb Ban in NYC Achieves… Almost Nothing

It has been two years now since NYC made Airbnb rentals so restrictive that the move was essentially a ban. The only people popping Champagne over the results now are hotel owners and that neighbor down the hall who doesn’t have to yell, “Turn down that infernal racket!” Rent prices have gone up at the same clip as before, hitting new records, and vacancy levels are still in the low single digits. Hotels have taken advantage of the lower competition and have raised room rates 7% though. “The average rate for a New York City hotel room rose to $283 a night in July.” Average! See the details here.

A Rough Week in the Himalayas

The important news often gets buried, so in case you missed it, terrible floods are ravaging northern India. But that’s not the main story. Nepal has a new government now after anti-corruption protesters violently brought down the former one, with 72 people killed and scores of buildings burned, including Parliament, former prime ministers’ homes, and a year-old Hilton hotel. There’s a new interim prime minister in place that the protestors approved of though, so at least it is ending peacefully and a cleaner government will enter. What sparked it all? The government shut down social media to suppress dissent and that lit up a powder keg.

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A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

09/25/25

What’s in my NOW? — Melissa Willis