DeborahMcCoy's "My Travel Principles"

[The following is a guest post, by one of our top nextstoppers: DeborahMcCoy:]

Being a tourist means stepping out of the comfort zone and taking a chance on the kindness of strangers. Money and miles cannot buy the satisfaction that results from traveling to a new place and figuring out how to get from Point A to Point B when I “don’t speak the language” or when I am clearly “not from here.”

The following Travel Guides most embody my travel principles:

In late November 2008 an out-of-town friend called to ask if I could take a Japanese reporter around Chicago to visit Obama sites. My itinerary for a whirlwind Obama Tour: Hyde Park on public transportation, an Operation PUSH meeting led by Jesse Jackson, and a service at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Church. These places and leaders gave my new friend a sense of Barack Obama as a community organizer and exposed her to a part of Chicago that would have been less accessible without a guide. I found myself visiting churches and leaders in my hometown as destinations and realizing that they deserve to be destinations.

Three years ago the college I attend on weekends relocated from Waukegan, Illinois to the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. In between classes I would walk around the neighborhood with my camera and my notebook and discovered an abundance of cultural treasures and history hiding in plain sight. The department of tourism ignores 80% of my fair city. That 80% is where I want to continue my explorations.

My first preference when traveling abroad is to travel to countries that seem challenging to many. Africa and India are on the top of the list. In 2000 my daughter agreed to visit Africa with me over spring break. After carefully considering time and money limitations we chose Morocco and booked an escorted tour. What a wonderful time and an amazing country. But we concluded that the best way to experience another country is to encounter as an independent traveler on its own terms.

I'm a walker. The world looks different as a pedestrian. I’ve walked the four miles from my home to my job downtown – it takes an hour at a comfortable pace. Biking takes half an hour. The more I bike the easier it gets and the better I feel physically. I smile at pedestrians, drivers and other bikers, and save money that is better spent traveling further afield. Friends see me biking and know that the only special qualifications I have are a commitment to putting one foot in front of the other and following my curiosity.

Back to the subject of communicating, me do speak bad French and bad Spanish. I try to learn a few sentences in the local language. My proudest moment occurred in Beijing in 1999. The first night I traveled down a side street to a little storefront café. I pointed to an entrée. Then I looked at the proprietor and uttered the sentence I had been practicing for a month. "Please may I have a beer thank you.“ He smiled and brought me a beer."

[To see more of Deborah's guides, visit her nextstop profile page]