Does Your Meter Work?!
Paperback
Perfect bound
8" X 5" X 0.6"
216 pages
Price: $13.50 US/$17.95 CDN
ISBN 0-9734809-0-4

Published by:

Western Publishing
Box 41
Edmonton, Canada
T5J 2G9

It is as clear to me as sunshine that the greatest possible stumbling blocks in the path of human happiness and improvements are these heaps of bricks and stones, consolidated with mortar, or hewn timber, fastened together with spike nails, which men painfully contrive for their own torment, and call them house and home! The soul needs air; a wide sweep and frequent change of it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables(1851)

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

~Mark Twain~

Does Your Meter Work?!
Click HERE to read the title story of this interesting collection of travelogues.

Travel writer Paul Theroux wrote, “Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.” Jim Soliski weighs in with, “Tourists pay what the taxi driver insists, travelers ask Does Your Meter Work?!”

Tourists travel table d'hôte - temple tours on a schedule, then cognac and a rubdown. Travelers travel à la carte, deferring to the sweat and spit of the streets that is on the other side of the glass of an air-conditioned bus.

Does Your Meter Work?! is a crazy-quilted paper-back anthology of Oriental and Occidental wanderings that have been published in fifty-some publications around the world including The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Examiner, The St. Petersburg Times, Travelers’ Tales, Outpost Magazine, most of Canada’s major papers and so on…along with a few yarns that editors haven’t been fooled on yet.

The first story in Does Your Meter Work?! reports on the difficulties in the simple task of taking an airport taxi without taking a bath on the fare. Speaking of fair, keep reading, and you’ll find the adventures aren't always shady. Frustrations pop up, but so do triumph, enlightenment, and erudition.

You can read about: a day at the Philippine cock-fights; debating New York’s delis before white-water rafting through the Nepali Himalayas; diving for cover from time-share sales rascals in Mexico; galumphing over South-East Asia’s highest peak in Borneo; assault rifles up the snoot in Sri Lanka; hitchhiking under a guardian angel's wing from Brunei to Bangkok; immersing a foreigner’s heart and body in the ineluctable mysteries of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

All told, a menu of 44 stories. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll read some stuff you didn’t want to know, and when you’re done, you’ll think, “Whew…that was quite a ride.” For pictures tied to each story, head to “Chapter Summaries and Pictures” on this website. For some snazzy snaps taken along the way, but aren’t necessarily associated with any specific story, click on “Photos.”

Thanks for stopping by. "Does Your Meter Work?!" is available in various places including this website!