The Death of Slate

Slate's travel column must be some sort subsidized vacation program for washed-up 80s writers and their latest wives. First Michael Lewis and his wife and au pair made Northern California sound boring, and now this.

Here's a high point for internet journalism:

Some of the products or services mentioned here were provided at a discount or free of charge.

Which led to this hard-hitting expose:

Oddly enough, when we began training on our Segways outside our hotel, that is more or less what happened. It took us about 20 minutes to learn the basics from three Segway representatives: Lean forward on the machine and you go forward, lean back to stop, keep leaning back to go backward, and twist the left handlebar to turn right or left. The machine has a zero-turning radius�you can spin on a dime, and it's really fun. There were a few small accidents�Christian unhorsed himself, and I took a stripe of green paint off a building trying to thread a narrow sidewalk�but within half an hour we were all able to navigate even the heavy medieval cobblestones in front of the church of Saint-Germain-des-Pr�s with ease. We were flying along at two or three times pedestrian speed. And we were grinning like school kids. Going where you want to go just by following your own inclination is like having a magic carpet.

I'm at a loss for obscenities.