I wonder if that is what makes us so fussy and impatient when it comes to the rare occasion - such as getting on a plane - when we have to leave the controls to someone else and are at the mercy of forces (other humans) who haven't been bookmarked in advance.

This holiday season we're going to hear endless stories of travel nightmares from our families, friends and the press. So I'll start with a contrarian statement: Air travel is in fact as comfortable and reasonable today as it's ever been.

Travel blogging is becoming popular with both those documenting their travels and those who want to sample foreign countries before they set off. Newcomer Trippert, based in Palo Alto, doesn't want to be a totally open travel blog platform: instead, they're focused on users offering expert travel guides, with more focus on timeless content than the passing observations of travel bloggers.

Tagging makes articles easier to find, and profile pages aggregate your articles in reverse chronological order: it's essentially a blog. Users can also write articles together in a wiki format. For us geeks: RSS feeds of a writer's posts.

In one blog entry, Heald tells of a passenger who was upset that the shops in Naples, Italy, refused to take U.S. dollars. "I explained that in Europe the euro was the accepted currency, but this lady was adamant that the dollar is accepted all over the world," Heald writes.

In another entry, Heald recounts a passenger's anger that John would encourage tours of Istanbul's mosques. "The passenger felt that for various reasons it was wrong and that I was promoting terrorism -- he left by calling me "the Sperm of the Devil." Heald says he's seen a lot of things over the years, but was unprepared for both this man's wrath and his reasoning.

It turns out Heald is a multi-media guy, and some of his best blog entries recount stories from his daily TV show, which is broadcast each morning to all the staterooms aboard ship. In addition to shipboard news, the show features passenger requests and questions. One such request came from a passenger whose luggage had been lost by her airline. The woman, who was quite large, was able to find some clothes that fit, but she couldn't find a comfortable pair of plus-sized underwear. She begged John to help, so he put out a panty call to everyone watching the show. Result: seven pairs of underwear from sympathetic fellow passengers. Heald sent each of the kind ladies champagne with a thank-you note.

The weather was fine today but the smell was not. No, you do not need glasses, I did say smell. There are natural gas reserves in this area of Greece and today those reserves were being...well...less than reserved. The sea smelled like it had eaten 1 million eggs for breakfast and was giving our guests the resulting good news.

This Just In began April 12, 2007. The blog offers timely insights and practical tips for budget-conscious leisure travelers. Editors from Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel magazine and BudgetTravelOnline.com weigh in every day. Readers are encouraged to post comments.

If you have a holiday travel horror story, this is the place to discuss it. Every year during the holiday season, travelers gear up to enjoy some of the worst experiences the airlines have to offer. Yet year after year, nothing ever seems to change. Perhaps it's because they aren't held accountable, or because airline travel is a necessity. But perhaps it's because they just never hear about it! After all, who wants to spend 4 hours on the phone complaining to an airline voice-mail after you just spent 4 hours waiting for your bags?! What a headache. Skip that mess, and instead kick back with a nice glass of eggnog and let the whole wide web community share your pain.

Well, the eye of the travel hurricane is above most of us. We at Aircomplane.com hope you are all safely where you're supposed to be. The storm returns to shore Sunday when we all begin to return, and we look forward to hearing from you (and helping when we can), then.

Every Wal-Mart employee that Laura and Jim run into, from store clerks to photogenic executives, absolutely loves to work at the store. Sound like a great Wal-Mart publicity campaign? Anyone familiar with Wal-Mart and its reputation for being quite stingy with wages and benefits will roll their eyes at such a rosy picture. In fact, some critics are so skeptical that they wonder whether Jim and Laura are real or whether they were concocted at the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Ark.

"Wal-Mart has hired fake people," says Jonathan Rees, a labor historian and associate professor at Colorado State University at Pueblo, who has also worked as a staff researcher at the AFL-CIO. In a blog posting for the Web site The Writing On the Wal, Reese published an open letter to Laura and Jim challenging them to reveal themselves and asking who paid for their RV and gas.

In spite of the ever growing echochamber the blogosphere lives in, it never astounds me what gets missed from time to time; in particular, there's a leading story in Businessweek about how a travel blog about Wal-mart (that is unabashedly positive about Wal-Mart), has in fact been sponsored by Working Families for Wal-Mart. What's wrong with that? Well, it turns out that WFWM is an organization that was launched by Edelman about 10 months ago, as a PR move to counter negative press about Wal-Mart.

Even these personal attacks won't sour my feelings about Wal-Mart. I've met too many great people in Wal-Marts across the county. I've met too many people - real people, not imaginary Internet people - who've told me about all the good Wal-Mart has done. I've camped in Wal-Mart parking lots. I've met these people and heard their stories firsthand. Which is something the people who attacked Jim and me haven't done and don't care to do.

So I've made the trip. I had a great time. I loved meeting the people we met, listening to the stories we heard. After everything that's happened, I even loved blogging about it all. And if I had the chance, I'd do it again.

In the end, that's all that really matters.

An Internet search for full-time business travelers who write Web logs produces astonishingly low numbers, considering the eight million Americans whom the Pew Internet and American Life Project say publish a blog.

But that appears to be changing. "Just wait," said Steve Broback, a business traveler in Woodinville, Wash., who edits the new blog Inflighthq (www.inflighthq.com) and is an organizer of a blog conference called the Blog Business Summit. "The rush is starting."

Mr. Broback, whose Web journal is sponsored by Connexion, Boeing's wireless division, writes about the plight of the road warrior and offers links to news for business travelers. And he expects a lot of company soon. "In a year or two we'll probably even have blogs focusing on vintage airport vending machines," he predicted.

One business travel blogger noted that after her colleagues began reading her posts about being homeless after Hurricane Katrina, she felt she lost her anonymity. Her quote: "When your boss is reading your blog, you say to yourself, 'Well, maybe I shouldn't be writing about staying at the Ritz-Carlton.'" Another reason business travelers should be wary to blog: competitive intelligence. A blogging specialist in the article noted that business travelers who mention cities they're staying in or about to visit could reveal "enough information for a competitor to surmise what's going on."

Travel Channel has embarked on its journey to select five TJs to participate in the next season of this international series. Those chosen will visit major cities on a 13 week tour for the television series 5 TAKES, which has revolutionized internet/television interaction in real time. Viewers influence their journey by deciding what the TJs do via the Travel Channel web site, and the TJs will document their first-hand experience with video logs (vlogs) and web logs (blogs) while interacting with viewers real-time via the Travel Channel message boards.

The Travel Channel is looking for a group of impassioned 20-somethings to travel the world and chronicle their experiences along the way. The network encourages those with a sense of adventure to log on to the Travel Channel's website from through December 31, 2005 at http://travel.discovery.com/videogalleries/upload/index.html and upload their own vlogs and blogs for consideration by network executives. This is the first Discovery Communications, Inc. program to accept user generated content over the web.

I can't believe that the Olympic Trials are over. This is not the result I was wanting, but I can walk away knowing I gave it all that I could; I have no regrets.

Editor's note: Bridie finished tied for 11th with 4 points; the top five skaters were eligible to make the team.

Reading an online travel blog will perhaps never have the romance of receiving a dog-eared postcard in the mail, but intrepid travelers armed with digital cameras are finding that keeping a blog on the road can be a compelling and viable way of maintaining contact with friends and family.

A travel blog is a real-time online journal that allows users to post text and photographs to the Internet and share the Web address with whomever they want. As travelers have become more comfortable with the Internet and digital cameras have become more affordable, blogging has become increasingly practical and popular. All over the world, travelers can stop in an Internet cafe, upload their photos and share them with friends and family (and interested strangers) instantly.

But while Leffelman's playinthecity.blogs.com doesn't mention it, the 23-year-old waitress and aspiring journalist is getting a little help from Milwaukee's tourism office: a year's worth of high-speed Internet access, $1,700 in computer and camera equipment and free access to many of the outdoor diversions she'll be describing in her twice-weekly musings.

Last month, Pennsylvania's tourism site, visitpa.com, launched six blogs written by "real people" taking road trips across the state. Accompanied by digital photos and videos, the diaries cover such diverse pursuits as antique shopping, mountain biking and attending a NASCAR event. The authors - a family of four, a history buff, and a Harley-Davidson rider among them - receive $1,000 for each of three journeys they'll write about this summer.

Minneapolis' visitor and convention bureau, meanwhile, is soliciting applications for three culturally diverse "online tour guides" - a heterosexual couple, a family with children, and a gay male couple or group of gay male friends - who will post journal entries on the bureau's Web sites at least once a week for six months. The bloggers' payback: a "package of fun" that includes hotel rooms, event tickets and gift certificates.

Travel blog sites provide tools generally not available on generic sites. Some sites allow visitors to follow your itinerary as you write and upload pictures during a trip. Some sites also have a mapping feature that traces your route and let you upload video and audio files.

The vast majority of the 8 million or so blogs currently in existence have few if any ads. Many are run by hobbyists or armchair commentators, some of whom sign up to carry tiny text ads from a large pool of advertisers through a service from Google Inc. The ads generate revenue only when a visitor clicks on the ad. Most bloggers, like Ronni Bennett, a former television producer who lives in New York's Greenwich Village and writes about aging on timegoesby.net, can't even offset the cost of her Internet access. Her site gets between 1,200 and 1,500 page views a day, bringing in all of $50 since December 2004.