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If you’re traveling this weekend through through one of the 31 airports that has a Borders bookstore on site,be sure to print out and take along a copy of this Help Borders Help the Gulf Coast coupon.

From June 11 – 14, 2010 Borders will be donating 10% of its weekend sales (up to $50,000) to Gulf Coast relief efforts through the non-profit Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL).  So if you’re going to pick up some reading material for your flight, keep this in mind. (The offer is good at all Borders, Waldenbooks and Borders Express outlets, but some chains specifically exempt airport locations from special promotions, so I checked to make sure.)

Borders will also work with CRCL to recruit volunteers and host info sessions in some Borders stores.

And if you’ve been thinking that you want to fly down to the Gulf Coast to help pick up oil or wash oil-soaked birds, hold on a bit.  As I learned while researching this article for msnbc.com, Volunteers needed…just not quite yet, CRCL and pretty much every other volunteer and environmental organization is asking everyone to register their interest and availability, but to sit tight for a few weeks until they can figure out what exactly it is that volunteers from out of town can do.

Here’s an excerpt from my story:

Local, regional and national conservation and environmental organizations are also being inundated with offers of help.  While these groups anticipate that volunteers will soon be needed for everything from shoreline clean-up to Web site management, groups are currently asking that volunteers simply register their interest. “We will contact registered volunteers when an appropriate opportunity is available for you to assist,” reads a message on LA Gulf Response, a consortium Web site made up of the Nature Conservancy, the National Wildlife Federation, The Audubon Society, the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, and the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.

“Good idea,” said David Clemmons of VolunTourism.org. “There’s this desire to go help right away. But if you’re not a professional and not prepared for the conditions you might encounter, it may actually be better to stay away for a while.”

Clemmons interviewed researchers and tourism professionals about the role voluntourists played after events such as the tsunami in Southeast Asia, Hurricane Katrina, and the earthquake in China. “Let the professionals go in first to assess needs and set up systems,” he concludes. “Voluntourism shouldn’t start until at least six months after any natural or man-made disaster.”

That gives you time to mark your calendar, register with a volunteer agency and get trained locally before you head for the Gulf.

Categories: Airport shops, Uncategorized
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If you’re going to get stuck at a German airport, try to make it Düsseldorf International Airport (DUS) on the first Sunday of the month.

That’s when DUS has is its “Airlebnis” (air-experience) events and if you were there yesterday, Sunday, June 6, 2010, you would have seen athletes and visitors literally bouncing off the walls – and everything else  – as DUS became the obstacle course for the  German Parkour Championship.

What’s Parkour?  Take a look at this:

There area oodles of other parkour (freerunning) videos on the web, but you get the picture… this is a really zany, potentially dangerous, but really fun-looking sport. But what kind of sport exactly?

According to Parkour US:

“Parkour or l’art du déplacement is NOT an extreme sport, rather it is a physical discipline that allow one to overcome their obstacles to get from point a to point b in the most efficient using the possibility of human body. Such movement may contain running, jumping, climbing, vaulting and other movements that may help the efficiency.”

At DUS, Parkour competitors – traceurs – were tested in two categories: speed and style, including “execution, flow, creativity, level of difficulty, and overall showmanship” and participants included the current world champion, a 15-year old from Germany.

The men and women who perform parkour make it look easy. So for novices who wanted to give it a try, there were professional instructors on hand to give lessons.

I’m waiting for the results of the championship and some photos from the day, so please be sure to check back. But in the meantime, I’m heading outside to practice.

Categories: Airports, Contests, Entertainment, Events, Fun Stuff, Uncategorized
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For my At the Airport column in USATODAY.com this month I offered a fun round-up of items being recycled by airports and airlines in an effort to be help save the earth and, in some cases, to save some serious money.

You can read the full column, For airports and airlines, creative recyling  brings cost savings, on the USA TODAY website but  briefly, the list I included ranges from airports that recycle, reuse or re-purpose everything from old metal detectors, used de-icing fluid and concrete from old runways to creative partnerships between airports or airlines and local non-profits and green businesses. 

Two examples:

Jacksonville International Airport is working with the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens on a project to turn tree clippings into food. The zoo needs a reliable year-round source of fresh “browse,” the natural vegetation eaten by many of the zoo’s large mammals. The grounds around the airport are full of browse-worthy trees and shrubs that could do with some regular clipping.  So browse harvested at the airport in the morning now becomes dinner for giraffe, elephants and great apes at the zoo;

And old seat covers from Delta and re-branded Northwest airplanes that could have ended up in a landfill somewhere were instead donated to Tierra Ideas, a small North Carolina company that is recycling the bags as messenger bags, laptop cases and other travel accessories with patterns that will very familiar to frequent fliers on those airlines.

A Delta spokesperson says so far Delta has donated about 5,873 pounds of fabric from an estimated 20,000 seat covers. “…Enough fabric to cover 92 of Delta’s 767-300ER aircraft.”

And – here’s something that didn’t fit in the column: On May 17th, Purdue University Airport, in West Lafayette, IN will be recyling this 737 aircraft.

“Shredding it,” is the term Betty Stansbury of Purdue University uses:

The aircraft is a 41 year old Boeing 737-200 donated to the University by United Airlines fifteen years ago for research and training purposes in Purdue’s  Aviation Technology Program. 

“The plane has reached the end of its useful life, and will be shredded starting on Monday May 17th. ….We use a large cutting device, called a shearer, to chew the plane into smaller pieces, which are placed in metal containers for transportation, melting and recycling.”

Categories: Air Travel, Aviation history, Environment, Free Stuff, Recycling, Uncategorized
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Each Sunday here at Stuck at The Airport we take a look at some of the fun, ideally offbeat, items for sale at airports for about $10.  This week, Claire Stern sent along some items from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX). My favorites include some of the candies made by the Phoenix-based Cactus Candy Company which makes saguaro-shaped lollipops and this sweet, chewy Prickly Pear Cactus Candy.

And these three-legged chonchitos, which hail from from the village of Pomaire, Chile. They are supposed to bring good luck and are traditionally given to friends as a token of goodwill and love, but since they’re only $5.99 a piece, I’d probably buy a few for my friends and make sure to keep one for myself.

Have you had the good fortune to find a great souvenir while you were stuck at the airport? If so, please take a photo and send it along. It may end up featured on a future edition of Souvenir Sunday.

Categories: Shopping, Souvenir Sunday, Souvenirs, Uncategorized
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Poke around on some airport websites and you’ll find some fun, surprising and educational stuff.

Case in point: the Oakland International Airport (OAK) site, which has a link to the Exploratorium’s instructions on how to fold a paper airplane, information about the Oakland Aviation Museum, which sits on the airport’s North Field,

and a great historical video about the history of the airport and its connections to Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart and other aviation pioneers.

You can watch the entire 20-minute video, or see bite-size segments of the film on the OAK website.

Categories: Airport guides, Aviation history, Free Stuff, Fun Stuff, History, Kids, Uncategorized
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