Jon wants you there

The hype is building around this Saturday’s Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington, DC. You’ve been wanting to jump on the bandwagon, but you’ve been holding off because you’re just a little sick of all the Tea Party talk, heresy denials and non-political gatherings on the National Mall lately. Of course, now the day’s almost upon us, and you’re catching the fever… but your best friend gave your seat away before you made up your mind and you missed that Daily Show episode where Oprah gave everyone a free trip to the rallyyyyyyy. So how the heck are you supposed to get to DC to show your sanity in an insane election season? Your options are limited this late in the game, but all hope’s not lost. Here’s what it’ll take to get down to the Mall and back again in time for Halloween.

Your first thought, BoltBus, was everyone else’s first thought… last week. That’s why it’s completely booked both ways until well after the weekend (unless you’re content with getting in late Saturday to hit up an after-party or two). However, its less-flashy competitors still have some open seats in time for the rally. Megabus, Peter Pan and the Chinatown buses offer slightly more expensive fares—around $30 each way. Of course, seats are filling up fast there too. BoltBus’s parent company, Greyhound, also has lots of room. Tickets to DC are fairly inexpensive, but a ticket back in time for your Halloween party is going run you upwards of $70. Better prices can be found if you can take Monday off and come back then.

Amtrak is an option if you’ve got money to burn. The cheapest trains, round-trip, will cost you $150. The Acela commuter trains, $600. Like we said, Money. To. Burn. If you handle it, though,you’ll certainly be riding in style.

If you’re broke and desperate to impress that cute redhead you’ve had a crush on for a year who’s definitely going to be there this weekend, one option is ride-sharing. Craigslist has a few offers for one or two seats going south. Private ride-share websites, which you can read all about here, show a few open seats as well.

Or, if digital hitch-hiking isn’t your game, there’s on last choice: renting a car. You can find a car as cheap as $50 per day on carrentals.com. This may be your best bet if you split the cost with a few friends, even with $25 in tolls (both ways) and gas. But parking in DC is an expensive hassle even on quiet days, so the convenience of a car will lead to lots of work once you get there.

No matter what your means of getting down to D.C., you’ll need money for the Metro, food, water, and, of course, beer money for the after-parties in Adams Morgan. If you’re truly dedicated, this could be one of the coolest rallies you’ll ever brag about.

Rally to Restore Sanity, Oct. 30, Noon to 3 p.m., The National Mall, Washington, DC

Read all the details at Jauntsetter, but the place is a two-bedroom, two-bath with all modern amenities (cable, wi-fi, 42-inch TV), located on the north bank of the Thames. Nearby attractions include Westminster Abbey, Parliament and the Tate and, of course, access to the Tube.

Apparently, says the London traveler, flights are cheap and the British pound is down. So it’s a good time to hop over and hit up Harrod’s. Find out all about the swap here.

I meet Squirrel during a five-day experiment in couch surfing through Brooklyn, which takes me from a shag rug in Bed-Stuy (not all couch surfing is done on couches) to a plush white sofa with a view of McCarren Park.

The practice of couch surfing—crashing at a stranger’s home for free rather than at a hotel or hostel—is growing among thrifty travelers both here and abroad, many of whom find each other through the five-year-old web site of the CouchSurfing 2.0 Project (CSP). Here some 1.3 million road trippers and prospective hosts (many of them one-time couch-surfers themselves) post detailed profiles listing their occupations, travel experience, personal philosophy and interests, along with action shots from the road.  As on eBay, members review one another, a practice that usually—but not always—encourages good behavior.

While couch surfing is on the rise, it isn’t entirely new. One of the earliest known attempts dates to 1949. While living in Italy, American Bob Luitweilera created Servas, a (still functioning) foreign-exchange home-stay service for adults. Snce 2004, CSP has given anyone with an Internet connection and a good back the opportunity to find a sleeping surface in a willing stranger’s home, and according to Wiki lore it’s now the most oft-visited travel site on the Internet.

As it happens, Brooklyn is something of a couch-surfing hub, with more than 1,000 registered overnight hosts. I joined the CouchSurfing Project and set off on a surfing trip across Brooklyn to find out who they were.

Couch A, Greenpoint
Modern gray ultra suede, chrome frame futon

Jeff and Jen are a hip couple who came to Brooklyn from Cincinnati roughly a year ago.  Their apartment’s bipolar decor, part West Elm mod and part DIY/flea market, hints at their transition from travel bums to successful creative professionals—he a graphic designer, she a freelance writer. Dog-eared travel guides filled a homemade wood-beam-and-cinder-block bookshelf. They’ve been around. And like most hosts, they surfed while traveling and now offer their couch as a way to keep the practice alive.

They’re not married, but—guessing by the DVD sleeve on the counter—have reached the NetFlix stage of their relationship. We spend a mellow Friday night with beer and a “pro-logically good things” conversation. In some cases, hosts will want you to chip in on expenses, but things like frothy beverages are often offered for free. I repay the favor the next day, which turns out to be Jen’s birthday, by making my breakfast specialty, chilaquiles, a recipe from my time volunteering in Mexico.

Couch B, Bed-Stuy
White shag area rug

James has a wide grin and a bold red-orange goatee. He’s approaching 50, but seems much younger owing to his cheerful disposition and the wiry frame of an admirable metabolism.  He spends his days educating newly arrived foreign high schoolers, a job with ties to his ESL days in South America.

His apartment, listed on CSP as a gay-friendly place to stay, is a clean, cozy dwelling; with the home office, living room, and bedroom combined into one space.  Instead of a couch, he offers me a spot on a shag rug next to his bed, but it isn’t as strange as it might sound. He goes through his morning work ritual and yoga warm-up, and I sleep right through.

Couch C, West Williamsburg
Classic wooden frame with dense tan cushions

My third couch is at an alcove studio sublet tucked among the corpses of half-completed waterfront condos in (West) Williamsburg.  My host Jill, who is finishing up a fine arts masters at NYU, is working late, but another couch surfer will be there for a key with me.

Jill rescued Squirrel from the SOS board, a forum for short-notice hosting to help surfers in a bind.  He said he’d come north to the city, got robbed of everything while sleeping on the docks of the Hudson (to save on a hotel), and turned to the kindness of strangers until his family could send money. She let him stay for a week and a half (2-3 days being the surfing norm) in exchange for an offer to build an online portfolio for her paintings and mosaics. To accomplish this task, he asks to borrow my laptop for a few hours, fidgeting and murmuring as he works.

When Jill returns from her art studio, he unveils an amateurish site that in no way resembles her instructions, and Jill and I wind up spending most of the night discussing the incident. But she’s had worse. Prior to Squirrel’s arrival, Jill hosted a Turkish man who behaved courteously when he stayed with her in a different city. This time he smoked in the apartment against her wishes, dirtied the kitchen, and left the shavings of his thick beard in the bathroom sink. “I’ve had some negative experiences,” she explains, “but very few compared to the over 100 incredibly cool people I have met through couch surfing.

I leave mid-morning, and Squirrel throws his few belongings in a duffel bag and leaves with me. When we part ways, I give him $20 for a MetroCard. Later that afternoon, I open iTunes while returning some emails and receive an alert from a defeated virus scan, remembering that only after I loaned him my computer did Squirrel boast about his virus-building prowess. When I try eradicating the virus, it triples.

Couch D, East Williamsburg/Bushwick
Twin air mattress

Ginny is deep into preparations for going abroad for a few months and wants to acquire hosting references. (Some hosts won’t even consider surfers unless they have opened their own homes to travelers.) The encounter is dutiful rather than social, but the accommodations are comfortable.

Couch E, McCarren Park
Plush white three-cushion sofa

When Kimberly opens the door, I’m taken by her unexpected good looks.  She has dark, Mediterranean features and a worked-out physique whose virtues are evident in her exercise clothes. The apartment is also attractive, in a stylishly modern way, and the whole package feels like a carefully crafted presentation, all aspects casually at their best.

Kimberly is a professional publicist who invites me to join her at dinner with two of her friends. She’s a one-time surfer who’s just starting to host. It speaks to the Couch Surfing Project’s strong sense of community that a beautiful young woman—seemingly the least likely to participate out of safety concerns alone—is willing to open her home to a stranger. On the way to dinner, she describes one of the creepier surfer requests she’d received (and declined) since joining the site two weeks ago.

“There was this guy, he was talking about some really strange stuff,” she said. “His name was Squirrel.”

She brings me to a barbecue at a friend of a friend’s house, and we laugh watching wealthy white kids blast gangster rap music, bastardize Ebonics, and shoot dice against a graffitied living room wall. Someone even uses the word shizzle.

There are never any romantic efforts on either end, but when she goes to bed I hear the clicking of a lock. At first, I can’t help but wonder if I seemed “rapey” or something. But I understand the impulse, since I’m her first surfer, and still a stranger.

The duality of sharing an intimate experience with a random person requires some social dexterity.  It’s part of the appeal of surfing, but for others it’s the biggest challenge. That and the occasional computer virus.

Villas near Puerto Vallarta, $266/week and up.

My challenge was this: to figure out how to get a group of four out of town for a week, with a $500 budget for lodging. It was a tall order, even for this frugal traveler. Most choices at that price were slim, and they tended to look like they were furnished for our budget—several decades ago. But a bit of sleuthing uncovered rustic cabins in magnificent park settings and appealing homes advertised at higher rates but available to the skilled negotiator for less. There wasn’t a Sun Valley chalet or a Bora Bora bungalow in the bunch, but I did find some nice getaways for little more than the cost of a staycation.

I started by reaching out to vacation home renters across the country and got pretty much the same response everywhere: they’re flexible. One of my first calls was to Crestone Area Visitor’s Agency in Colorado, which serves a region that’s home to hot springs, Sand Dunes Monument Park, varied wildlife, ashrams and numerous spiritual retreats. “Good news is that we are able to offer a nice two bedroom home near one of our creeks,” said a helfpful man named Cal. “Normally the price is higher but we have had a downturn in tourism over the past year and the owner will honor a rate of $495 for the week.”

At homeaway.com, the largest of the vacation rental sites, there are over 176,000 vacation rental houses, condos, guesthouses, cottages, and cabins in 118 countries, including plenty within our budget (including the 1-bedroom cottage in North Truro, Cape Cod). As is typical of most vacation rental sites, this one connects you directly with the homeowners or property managers, and accommodations can be rented by the night, week or month.

I found some gems amid the offerings at vacationhomes.com’s under $500 section, which listing bargains in the U.S., Costa Rica, the Caribbean, Spain, Ecuador, Canada, Mexico, El Salvador, and Italy. Deals abound in Florida and Mexico, and a beautiful home in a new complex called Playas de las Palmas in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, including a large swimming pool and Jaccuzi is only $80/night. (If you assumed air travel was out of the question, read my article on how to get cheap fares.)

For lodging within driving distance, I spoke to Chris Fotache at nyvacationrentals.com, a web site that offers free listings to any vacation home owner in upstate New York including the Catskills, Adirondacks, Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley and many other 
popular destinations.

There, the under-$500 choices included a lovely 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom guesthouse in the Catskills with 110 acres of meadows and private woods that ordinarily rents for $750 per week. There was also a cabin for $400/week (left) in Walton, NY, while the innkeeper at a  B&B in a historic estate on the Finger Lakes wine trail of Livingston County  is also offering accommodations for a family of 4, with breakfast, for $500, well below the weekly rates quoted on the web site.

Though the site has few properties worth recommending that are listed within our budget, Fotache advised aiming higher. “Many owners are willing to come down,” he said. “Wait just a little bit. As the summer season proceeds, many owners will start to panic and offer big discounts. But don’t wait too much, or the best rentals will still be gone.”

The other option, beyond vacation homes, are cabins in picturesque settings—often with fully equipped kitchens, bathrooms and fireplaces—at very inexpensive rates. Though none would be characterized as luxurious, the incredible surroundings activities often make up for the more spartan accommodations.

Just north of the city in Westchester, there is a web of beautiful parks with a wide range of activities and accommodations. Croton Point Park  offers a pool, beach, boat launching, playing fields, hiking trails, and so on. A “deluxe cabin” for four rents for $350 a week.

A little farther afield, check out the state parks of West Virginia. With its serene yet rugged beauty, Babcock State Park offers 28 cabins (left) for rent ranging from deluxe to economy. In addition to a swimming pool, paddle boating, row boating, canoeing hiking trails and horseback riding, Babcock’s fully operational Glade Creek Grist Mill provides freshly ground cornmeal and buckwheat flour. Weekly rates for a cabin for a family of 4 during the summer season are only slightly over budget, at $532.

South Dakota advertises its state parks as “the largest outdoor museums in the state.” Your family can learn about American Indian cultural history or the Lewis and Clark expedition while renting a cute camping cabin that sleeps four for $35 a night. Though each dwelling comes with heating, electricity and air conditioning, they do not have indoor bathrooms, kitchens or running water. Doesn’t sound like much of a vacation? Think how happy you’ll be to come home.