Beans Around the World

Travel writers read other travel writers - and compare themselves. It's an occupational hazard

I once read how a travel writer dealt with the long loneliness of life from a suitcase. He adopted a cockroach as a pet - kept it in a matchbox and got it through customs every time. He fed it, well, come to think of it, I stopped reading his article before he got to that part. Guess I'm a little squeamish.

A can of beans is my clandestine carry-on. Not just any beans. They have to be black beans ("frijoles negros") from Albertson's supermarket. You see, I am a "Beans Ambassador" for Beans Around the World.

The story of Beans Around the World is one of those fascinating practical-jokes-between-friends-that-got-way-out-of-control and went global. Very briefly, two friends kept passing some leftover black beans back and forth until they got, let's just say "until they got especially attractive to cockroaches and their kin" and we'll leave the descriptive prose to your imagination. At that point, canned beans became the medium of exchange and, before long, the entire office was borrowing the can to take photos of it in front of tourist icons around the world.

My contribution to the Beans Around the World photo gallery includes such classics as a Slovak rendition of "American Gothic" with the beans posing alongside distant relatives in Orava, Slovakia in front of their log cabin home constructed in 1864. Another tribute to my photographic talent and untutored production values is something I call "Amalie Meets the Beans in Japan" where a garden gnome, vaguely reminiscent of the one in the quirky film "Amalie," poses with the Beans.

You may wonder how the travels of a can of beans made their way into a column entitled "Travel & Disability." The connection is straightforward. If I can take a picture of the beans somewhere then that location is, by definition, wheelchair "achievable." I hesitate to say "accessible" because I recall that tracking down some Tasmanian Devils and Wombats in Tassie and negotiating certain paths through the land of the Bunun Tribe in Taiwan made me think that I might be ready to imitate Jesse Owen's feat of scaling Mount Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair.

If ever you want to spice up your travels with a bit of uncommon adventure or you need diplomatic immunity and your credentials don't qualify you for a recess appointment by a vacationing president of the United States, become a Beans Ambassador.

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