7 Stories to read this weekend…. via GigaOm
March 25, 2012 Leave a Comment
Got a small mention on GigaOm this weekend too. 15 minutes of fame is over.
http://gigaom.com/2012/03/24/7-stories-to-read-this-weekend-15/
Thanks @Om Malik!
Attending all F1 races reposted to Forbes Blog
March 22, 2012 Leave a Comment
My answer on Quora was reposted to the Forbes Quora Blog.
Original blog post here . I’ll write something about my experience pending permission from Quora.
Update: 3/22/12.
Just got the ‘ok’ from Quora to speak about how I was approached to have it posted on their Forbes Blog. Nothing special, other than I received an inbox message from an employee at Quora about how they liked my answer. They wanted to repost it to their Quora blog on Forbes’ website, which I had no knowledge of its existence (now I know). Thought it was interesting, so I agreed to it.
I had originally put a little more context to the trip stating that it would be a good way to do a Round the World trip in conjunction with the Formula One schedule as seen on my site. I removed that part since it wasn’t technically answering the question on Quora, and just stated what it would cost if you just went full fledged and never came home. In retrospect, maybe I should have added that part into the answer.
Back to the story. I went back and forth Steven E. Johnston from Quora about the post. He suggested some edits, and I approved them. None of the edits were grammatical (shocking), but it was more along the lines of how it looked when I cut/pasted it into the answer. Quora does not support tables at this time, so the list of the flights and destinations were not displaying very well. I would have hoped that they tablized (not a word) that list so it looked more aesthetically pleasing. Another one of them was the removal of the reference to this site (no big deal), but also the horrible screen shot of the map I had originally put up. That’s ok, since it was a pretty bad image anyways.
From the social media side, it’s interesting to see how people reacted on Facebook, and to see it reteweeted, although I did help Helps feed the ego!
Full disclosure: Quora did not pay me to write this, nor did they compensate me for my time to answer the question. It was never my intention to make a big fuss about this, although I can honestly say I was stoked and got a bit over excited! I did this purely out of enjoyment. w00t!
Round the World trip via Formula One Schedule
March 19, 2012 4 Comments
My wife and I always wanted to be able to take a trip around the world, non stop. Basically leave our home in the Bay Area and disappear for about a year. Sure, we’ve traveled quite a bit together, but there are just so many places that we still have yet to discover. Me, being a big Formula One fan, thought it would be an incredible experience to travel the world via the Formula One race schedule. Actually answering this question for myself came from an inspiration from a question posted on Quora, that I was asked to answer.
So, what would it take? How long will we be gone? How many flights do we need to purchase? Do we have enough time to visit all the tourist spots and still have time to watch the race? There are breaks in between race weekends, sometimes just 4 days, sometimes 4 weeks. There will be back and forth flying between continents. You will have to return to the states at one point, the depart again. I’m going to make a lot of assumptions as to make the calculations easier.
Formula One travel flight path.
(horrendous screen shot above)
The F1 race schedule for 2012 consists of 20 races, starting from Melbourne, Australia and ending in São Paulo, Brazil. The total miles traveled will be approximately 100,000 miles. Yes, you can probably get some frequent flyer mileage out of this and pick up a few free flights here and there, but we’ll leave those out. You’ll need hotel stay for each location you are at. You’ll need a budget for food for each location. You’ll need transportation to and from the track, and in/around town. There are 254 days starting from the start of the season on March 16th, 2012, through November 25th. We’ll use this number for daily rates.
Accommodations: Let’s account for expensive locations (Melbourne, Bahrain, Japan, Montreal, etc..), and less expensive locations (Kuala Lumpur, New Dehli, Austin, Brazil), and average out each night’s stay to be approximately $150. This is assuming you don’t stay in $12 hostels since F1 is a luxury event! 254 days x $150 = $38,000. Yikes! This is already a lot of money.
Food: You’ll need this to survive. I don’t think the typical work paid per diem of $40/day will work here. It might in some locations, but may not in others. Let’s up that to $50 to be safe so you won’t need to eat at Mc Donald’s every meal. We’ll eat the free continental breakfast at the hotel to save a few bucks and allow for a couple of nice restaurants. 254 days x $50 = $12,700.
Flights: One would think to assume that this is the most expensive item for your trip. We will fly coach the entire way, and will pick the cheapest flight. To make life easier, I’m going to use Expedia and plan one-way flights starting from our point of origin of San Francisco. Here it goes:
| Origin | Destination | Price |
| San Francisco, CA | Melbourne, Australia | $997.00 |
| Melbourne, Australia | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | $553.00 |
| Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | Shanghai, China | $311.00 |
| Shanghai, China | Bahrain | $884.00 |
| Bahrain | Catalunya, Spain | $604.00 |
| Catalunya, Spain | Monaco | $212.00 |
| Monaco | Montreal, Canada | $1,765.00 |
| Montreal, Canada | Valencia, Spain | $1,781.00 |
| Valencia, Spain | Silverstone, England | $884.00 |
| Silverstone, England | Hockenheim, Germany | $290.00 |
| Hockenheim, Germany | Budapest, Hungary | $245.00 |
| Budapest, Hungary | Spa, Belgium | $320.00 |
| Spa, Belgium | Monza, Italy | $424.00 |
| Monza, Italy | Singapore | $560.00 |
| Singapore | Suzuka, Japan | $498.00 |
| Suzuka, Japan | Seoul, S. Korea | $390.00 |
| Seoul, S. Korea | New Delhi, India | $624.00 |
| New Delhi, India | Austin, TX | $1,038.00 |
| Austin, TX | Sao Paulo, Brazil | $1,006.00 |
| Sao Paulo, Brazil | San Francisco, CA | $1,485.00 |
| Total flights: | $14,871.00 |
Ah ha! Thought wrong. It’s almost the cheapest item. Might be even cheaper if you go through a booking agent to get a ‘package deal’ .
In town transportation: I’m going to make this easy. $20 day? At 254 days, that’s $5,080.
F1 ticket prices: Don’t forget you need to pay for this too. There isn’t a ‘season’ pass for Formula One. We’ll assume you want a grandstand seat. Most grandstand seats start in the low $100′s, and can be as high as $800! Let’s take an average of $350 assuming there are tracks that you wouldn’t need a grandstand to have a great view of the race such as Australia, Monza, and Monaco (since you have a friend that has a condo located there, right?) At 20 races, $350 x 20 = $7,000.
So, there you have it. Adding all this up results in over $77,000 USD as your final cost. Whew. Double occupancy should save you $17,000 since you would not want to travel alone. It’s huge money for the 99%. There are incredible destinations that you will cover and it would be an experience of a life time. Anyone want to sponsor me ?
We’ll cover what attractions at other locations some other day.