A Tortoise Transformation

By Amber Locke

Something magical and very unexpected happened to me while riding with Green Tortoise Adventure Travel for a weekend trip to Yosemite National Park.  After a single experience with this unique style of travel, I learned exactly why the Green Tortoise is still going strong almost 50 years after pioneering group adventure travel in America.  

Sure, they go to amazing places in their living room-style buses.  Yes, you will come away from the trip with photos of beautiful scenery and incredible memories of your destinations. Of course, the food is fantastic and freshly prepared.  But the real draw to the Tortoise? It's the people.  The personalities you can’t help but fall in love with are exactly the types that will happily hop on a bus and sleep curled up next to strangers for days at a time.  The mystery beforehand of the people you’ll be sharing the experience with is part of the majesty of riding the Tortoise bus.

As a resident of the Bay Area, I ride the train to work and look around at my fellow commuters staring at their cell phones or playing Candy Crush on iPads;  I can't help but wonder why we completely ignore everyone around us.  It’s rare that you see two or more strangers engaging with one another on the morning or afternoon commute that we all seem to share.  I’ve come to see us as jellyfish caught in the same current; all moving in the same direction, yet unaware of our connection.

So, when I boarded the custom-built Green Tortoise coach with 30 strangers, I wondered how this atmosphere would be any different.  Within two hours of the ride, I discovered that it was, in fact, very different.  With chatter coming from everywhere on the bus, I heard someone remark, “I feel like I’m seeing my Australian friends, again.  Like, you’re back from a long trip and we’ve reunited.” (He was a solo traveler from the U.K. and made quick friends with everyone on the bus.)  Most of us were in the same situation -- traveling alone, hoping to see as much as possible during our short vacations and willing to share the sights with the people surrounding us.  Our singularity was actually what allowed us to connect so easily.  

When we arrived in Yosemite (after a night drive), we were no longer solo travelers.  We were a huge group of friends, banding together to form groups to tackle different activities.  Americans, Taiwanese, British, Serbians and many other nationalities were walking together in one of the most beautiful places on Earth; I came to understand that we weren’t so different from each other, after all.  

The Tortoise taught me to have a little more faith in humanity.  I discovered that despite our home addresses, we shared a need for adventure and love for travel that transcends cultures.  Our bus was full of diversity and, to me, that evolved into the most beautiful aspect of the trip. How effortlessly we had formed connections was awe-inspiring.  When the time came, I left the trip with a handful of new friends and I was truly saddened to say goodbye.  We had climbed to new heights together, shared meals in beautiful settings, I’d even taught them how to make s’mores.  In return, they had taught me funny new phrases from their countries and about a newly developed part of myself I cannot explain.

When I boarded the Green Tortoise coach in San Francisco I never imagined that one weekend would have such an effect on me.  In fact, the next time I stepped onto the Bay Area rapid transit train, I had the overwhelming urge to shout, “Good morning!” to everyone onboard.  I had a desire to gift upon everyone an awareness; we are all searching for the same happiness in life and if we take a moment to connect with the human being next to us, our daily routine would be infinitely enhanced. Perhaps it would change someone's life, as it did mine, by acknowledging that we are here together sharing this community, our one lifetime, our one world.  

How to Write for a Blog, E-newsletter, and the Internet

When was the last time someone send you a link to their travel blog . . . and you actually enjoyed reading it? Did you read it to the finish?

While there are many good blogs out there - and a few really great ones, the truth of the matter is that the internet is innundated with wordy, difficult to read blogs that fail to capture attention.

Here are a few tips on writing for the internet that will make your blog, newsletter or internet article stand out, drive traffic ro your site, and ease the eyestrain of your readers:

Content on the Internet has to be easily scannable. Thanks to the Internet and broadcast media, people have far less patience and tolerance for large blocks of narrative text. When you create new Web text, make sure it's "chunked out" (broken into smaller blocks of text separated by a break) or "chunked down" (shortened).

Explain your points in short paragraphs. Short paragraphs are easier for the reader to follow. No one likes to look at a long block of solid text. Three, four or five sentences are usually enough for one paragraph.


Use the traditional newspaper structure of "inverted pyramid" writing. Like newspapers, the Internet should be a fast read, involve a lot of content and catch the reader's attention. Make sure your five W's (who, what, when, where, why, and also how) are close to the top. Details of lesser importance should follow, from general to specific (that's why the pyramid is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom). The idea is this: Even if the reader only reads the headline, they should have a good idea of what the article is about. And if they read only the first few lines, they should have a very good idea of the main points in the article

Here is an example of our Green Tortoise Adventure travel newsletter: http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs053/1101592235017/archive/1102949516783.html

Try to use keywords so the search engines can find the article. Also link to our own website with the proper landing page - the page that contains more information. The more keywords, the better. That's because search engines – the “publishers” of the internet - have “spider bots,” which crawl all over the internet looking for just the right websites to recommend to every person who enters a word or phrase in a Search box. The best keywords are ones that are most likely to be used in a search engine and picked up by a "spider bot."


So now, cute and catchy titles are out because the "spiders" don't recognize cute and catchy; they want short and precise titles using those keywords that also must appear over and over in an internet article. Synonyms are out - it's now all about keywords! This is how the people who are out searching for articles on the internet are matched up with the articles an author wants them to read.


When designing the layout, keep in mind the "f shaped" eye pattern that internet users utilize. Click here for examples of this study:
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html

The F pattern's implications for Web design show the importance of following guidelines for writing on the web:

Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.


The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.


Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.


So now what are you waiting for? Start composing your blog and live your dream!

Shaunna
http://www.greentortoise.com/adventure.travel.html