by John Higham
•Noisiest city: Panama City with their freaking buses
•Nicest subway: Hong Kong
•Most confusing subway: Paris
•Most elaborate subway: London
•Mean time for solicitation in Bangkok: Twenty minutes
•Worst traffic: Phnom Penh, Cambodia
•Worst drivers: Istanbul
•Most perplexing economy: Thailand. How can things be so cheap?
•Strangest question asked at a restaurant: “Do you want gas or no gas?”
•Worst pencils: Tanzania—the lead breaks if you dare write anything
•Most dangerous thing we did: cross the street
•Most traveled citizens: Dutch. They are everywhere. Twenty-year-old Israelis are a close second.
•Worst Fanta flavor: Belize. We think it is aspirin flavor.
•The most enduring U.S. personality worldwide: Monica Lewinsky
•Most bizarre law: Kids under eighteen can’t use the Internet in China
GOOGLE EARTH!
Google Earth is the perfect backdrop for telling the story of 360 Degrees Longitude. This book has a Google Earth companion on the Web that will enhance the story as it unfolds. Google Earth is free, but it does require a broadband Internet connection to run properly.
Verify that you have a computer, with any modern Internet browser.
Check that you have a broadband Internet connection. This usually means a cable modem or DSL. Sorry, but a dial-up connection will result in little more than frustration. Google Earth is made up of terabytes of data, and while you don’t need to access all of that data at once, you will need to process a couple of megabytes per second to enjoy all there is to offer.
Download Google Earth, at http://earth.google.com
Get the 360 Degrees Longitude Google Earth companion file at http://www.360degreeslongitude.com/concept3d/360degreeslongitude.kmz and save it.
Throughout the book you will see the Google Earth logo when there is more information for you to find online. Want to visit the pampas where Katrina and Jordan fed piranha to Plastico the pet alligator? Fire up Google Earth, spin the digital globe to Bolivia, and drill down to Rurrenabaque and click the icon. That will pull up additional information about Rurrenabaque, along with photos and video taken in the area.
If you are unfamiliar with Google Earth, here are a few basic steps that will help you get started.
Google Earth comes with several “layers” that you can turn on and off. There is a layer for international borders, a layer for populated places, a layer for bus stops, one for ATMs, and so on. The 360 Degrees Longitude companion file is simply another layer.
If you turn on all the layers simultaneously, the digital globe can quickly become overwhelmed, so explore the different layers that come with Google Earth to familiarize yourself with what’s available so you can turn them on and off as you see fit. One of my favorite layers is the terrain layer. With the terrain layer enabled you can see the texture of the surface of the earth when you zoom in and tilt the horizon.
Once you have the feel for how Google Earth behaves, download the layer for 360 Degrees Longitude. After the download is complete, Google Earth will automatically open and you should see something like this:
Clicking on one of the “Chapters” menu buttons (see above) opens a list of all the links from the book. Clicking on one of the links will open a dialogue box with photos, video, and text that describe events in that part of the world. For example, clicking on Chapters 0–4, then “Pingvellir” under Chapter 1 will open the dialogue box shown in below.
There are more features in the 360 Degrees Longitude layer explained in the online tutorial at http://www.360degreeslongitude.com/ge/ge_how2.pdf. If you have a question that isn’t covered in the online tutorial, send me an e-mail at [email protected]. Enjoy!
Google™ and the Google Earth icon are registered trademarks of the Google corporation. Used by permission.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After completing his graduate degree in aerospace engineering, John Higham moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he started his career and accumulated ten U.S. patents for various aspects of satellite design. Although he arrived in the Bay Area single, it wasn’t long before he met September and they became inseparable. John, September, and their two children, Katrina and Jordan, still live in the San Francisco Bay Area where John continues to design satellites to keep the mortgage current.
When he was about three years old, John used to enthusiastically jump up and down on the bench seat of his family’s Ford station wagon, chanting, “Go on a long-long bye-bye!” as the car motored down the highway. Although the days of jumping up and down in a moving car are over, he still gets just as excited at the prospect of going somewhere new.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am the luckiest guy in the world. Not just because I was able to travel around the world with my family and live to write a book about it, but also because of the people who helped along the way. Words cannot express the gratitude I feel for the many people who contributed to making this book a reality.
I’d like to start with Chris MacAskill. If it hadn’t been for his enthusiasm and great connections the train never would have left the station.
A heart-felt thank you goes to my friends at Google, Mark Fuchs, John Hanke, and Melissa Crounse, for their support and encouragement of this project. A big muchas gracias also goes to the talent at Concept3D! Oliver Davis and Matt Brown took the odds and ends that made up all my Google Earth placemarks and turned them into a true work of art.
To Linda Cashdan, who read an early version of this manuscript and gave me encouragement at a critical time, thank you for your kind words and for giving me the drive I needed.
More than any one person, Larry Habegger helped me take what was essentially a pile of e-mails and journal entries and turn it into a book. His assessments were always accurate, insightful, and invaluable. Thanks for your friendship and help in making this project a reality.
If a writer ever needed a friend in the world, it would be his agent. It is impossible to describe how much Jason Ashlock did for this project. I can’t imagine going through this process without his guidance and friendship. I especially want to thank Richard Fumosa for recognizing the potential of this project.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to September’s parents, Dale and Marie Blanchard, for looking after our domestic affairs while we were on the road.
Thanks to the legions of people who helped us find our way around the world. There are simply too many to mention, and many whose names I simply do not know. We will take all the generosity we received during our year on the road and pay it forward.
Most important, thanks to my lovely wife, September. Without her, this book would have never happened. Not only because she let me off the hook for my half of the laundry and dishes all those months I was writing this book, but also because when I asked, “remind me why I’m doing this again?” she knew just what to say to keep me at the keyboard when I really wanted to be riding my bike. It is because of her that I truly am the luckiest guy in the world.
