If you know someone about to hit retirement age, like your parents maybe, here’s a good travel book for them that has a chapter from yours truly.

65 Things to Do When You Retire – Travel is a collection of essays on various aspects of travel for the older set. Yes, there are 65 essays in here and the list price is 20 bucks, so a great deal. (It’s only $11 at Amazon as I write this.) All the profits go to cancer research charities too. (We submitted our work pro bono.)

It’s broken up into sections on prepping, deciding where to go, ways to travel, voluntourism options, and much more. It’s a primer on the possibilities and how to get the most from travel in the golden years.

My essay will not be a surprise to readers of this blog or my books. It’s called “Pick the right place and traveling is not expensive.” Hopefully I’ll convince a few seniors to go beyond Western Europe, RV travel, or a Caribbean cruise.

I was happy to appear alongside some other writers I know of and respect. Ed Perkins actually has a guest section in one of my books. Here he does an overview of senior travel deals.

Janice Waugh heads up the Solo Traveler blog and does an essay on traveling alone.

Rick Ingersoll writes the Frugal Travel Guy blog, one of my favorites for finding points/miles opportunities and he shares some advice on leveraging good credit for lots of frequent flier miles and free hotel stays.

I was on a trade show panel once that TV host and author Richard Bangs was moderating  and here he talks about the bucket list topper Machu Picchu in Peru.

Donna Hull of the boomer travel site My Itchy Travel Feet contributes a piece on being so taken by Montana when visiting that she moved there.

Barbara Weibel of Hole in the Doughnut talks about making local connections when traveling.

I met Judith Fein at an adventure travel conference and now she writes for me sometimes, including this Azores public art story recently in Perceptive Travel. Her story is on finding a spiritual connection in Israel.

As you can tell just from these examples, it’s a delightfully mixed bag, without repetition. Editor Mark Evan Chimsky did a nice job of picking people with something interesting to say and then keeping them from ranbling on for more than six or seven pages. Get 65 Things to Do When You Retire – Travel for the friend or relative who can use it. This is a thoughtful gift that won’t set you back much and it’s helping a good cause.

Get it at Amazon U.S., UK, or Canada. Oddly, there’s no Kindle version so far.

Want a copy for free? Sign up for the new RSS feed or e-mail version top right of this page—rss icon or e-mail box—then leave a comment below on why you would want the book. (I’ve switched from Google Feedburner to Feedblitz, so you can delete your old feed and keep the new if you end up with both.) Deadline April 15.

The February issue of Perceptive Travel is out, with more of the best travel stories from book authors on the move.

Once again it’s fair to say “best travel stories” because for the third year in a row, the publication I edit placed for “Best Travel Journalism Site” in the annual awards from the North American Travel Journalists Association. We got the Bronze this time, but first was National Geographic Traveler’s website and I think theirs is actually produced in a real office with a water cooler. (Two of our stories won too—see the home page for details.)

This month we travel to three distinct places and go beyond the usual tourism brochure fluff.

Chris Epting has a story on where the Rolling Stones spent their early years while touring around the U.S. David Lee Drotar finds the dark side in Costa Rica, looking at what all that tourism and real estate development is doing to howler monkey habitats. I’ve got a piece on a place few people seem to visit, but should get onto their radar: the eastern half of Slovakia.

Susan Griffith highlights new and noteworthy travel books, including a biography of legendary travel writer and adventurer Redmond O’Hanlon. Laurence Mitchell is back to spin some new world music albums worth checking out from troubled Mali; Persia via India; and Bollywood and Havana via Canada.

As usual, one of our readers will get something new by entering the monthly gear contest and winning. Last month’s winner is getting decked out in a travel clothing outfit from Mountain Khakis. This month we’re giving away a small portable battery pack for your quick-dying iPhone or other gadgets. If you’re on the monthly newsletter list, you already got your chance to enter. If not, sign up here for next time and get a shot at this month’s by following Perceptive Travel on Facebook.

And between new issues, don’t forget to check out the cool PT blog!

Each year I’ve participated in the Passports with Purpose charity drive, giving away some cool piece of travel gear generous readers can bid on. This year I’m proud to be aligned with the luggage company I always keep coming back to in my travels: Eagle Creek.

One lucky bidder will score a new Digi Hauler Backpack. Designed for today’s digital traveler (or if you prefer, “flashpacker”), the Digi Hauler features convertible carry options and maximum carry-on size with dedicated features for electronics, so your stuff stays in its place. The capacity is 2700 cubic inches, or 44 liters. It weighs in at less than two pounds and will work as a carry-on for most airlines: it’s 14 x 22 x 9 inches.

This versatile pack can be your one and only for a quick jaunt or business trip, carrying a full-size laptop along with all your clothes and cosmetics. Basically it’s the same capacity as one of those rollaboard suitcases, but at 1/4 the weight and the ability to pull out the straps and carry it as a backpack. I’ve been testing one of these out for Practical Travel Gear (review coming next week) and I can already tell it’s built to Eagle Creek specs and meant to last. They are confident enough to offer a lifetime warranty for a reason. It’s got lots of grab handles, great zippers with pulls, plenty of internal pockets, and reflective material.

For the winner, they will ship anywhere in the U.S. or Canada.

So go cough up ten bucks to bid on it. Not only are your odds about 100,000 times better than the Powerball lottery, but your donation goes to a very good cause regardless. In the past, Passports with Purpose has built a staffed school in Cambodia, two libraries in Zambia, and a whole damn village in India. This year they’re teaming up with Water.org to make a difference where it’s needed most in this hemisphere: Haiti. See the full details here.

While you’re bidding, there’s a different Eagle Creek backpack up for grabs from The Adventure Post, so double down to increase your chances. Perceptive Travel is in on this too, with that blog arranging a cool weekend package in Granbury, Texas. There will probably be another 100 tempting things for you to check out, from electronics to hotel stays to vacation packages. Give early and often and you could be celebrating bigtime later. If not, the worst that can happen is some Haitians will thank your for finally getting access to clean drinking water. Isn’t that better than buying more crap at the mall?

First, go donate here—check back in a day if the pickings are looking slim. This is day one to get things posted.

Second, say thanks to our sponsors who are kicking in big chunks of that 100 grand goal. I use and trust many of them and they deserve your business.

• Platinum: Expedia
• Gold: TripIt
• Silver: tbex
• Bronze: HomeAway. TravellersPoint, HostelBookers, Go with Oh

I reviewed this innovative Camelbak All Clear bottle in detail over at Practical Travel Gear, but it speaks to such a strong travelers need that I’m mentioning it here as well.

Anybody who has read this blog for a while knows that I put bottled water in single-use plastic somewhere on the evil scale between Darth Vader, Dick Cheney, and Bashar Al-Assad. The manufactured demand for these drink-and-toss bottles of water has led to giant floating garbage dumps in the oceans and the soiling of almost any landscape where people leave the bottles in their wake. Almost nowhere in the world does a majority of them get recycled. Most end up on or in the ground, where they’ll stay for centuries. (The Grand Canyon finally banned them this year, but not without encountering massive pressure from Coca-Cola that led to delays.)

So I’m hoping this Camelbak All Clear bottle is a success. You fill it with ordinary tap water, turn it on, shake it around for about a minute, and drink. That’s it!

In places you couldn’t drink the water before, now you can. So far I’ve only used it in Mexico, but it worked like a dream there: I didn’t buy any bottled water for nine days and drank with this from six different taps. No digestive problems at all.

Sure, this magical technology is going to cost you. The All Clear retails for about $100. But have you ever tracked how much you’ve spent on water over the course of a few weeks or a month on the road? Chances are, that’s about how long it would take to pay for itself. Everything after that is gravy, plus you’ve kept 100+ bottles out of the landfills or streams. It charges by USB, quite handy, and there’s a carrying pouch for the purifier part. (You can put any Camelbak top on it when you’re actually drinking from it.)

You can get the CamelBak All Clear Water Purifier Bottle at REI.com.

If you want something that takes up less room and can be used with any wide-mouth bottle you have already, check out this review of the SteriPen Freedom wand.

From The Economist - Hillary's travels

Do you know of anyone who has traveled to 95 countries since the beginning of 2009?

There is one, and it’s all been well-documented. No, she’s not writing a book about some frantic attempt to land in half the world’s nations in under four years. And no, she doesn’t work on cruise ships or an airline. But many of her stops have been as short as they would be for someone who did one of those two things.

It’s because the woman who achieved this feat is the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. That’s her travel map since Obama took office in January, 2009.

The article in The Economist that this comes from is only presenting it to show how hard she has worked to mend troubled relations after the Bush years and meet with world leaders in places that aren’t just strategic allies or enemies. Sure, some of these stops were just jet in/jet out meetings and photo ops, but it’s got to be a good thing in the end for one of the world’s most powerful diplomats to get views from multiple sides of the world.

It seems to be assumed that she’ll give up this hectic job if Obama wins again, though Democrats are hopeful she’ll be on the ticket as Vice President, ensuring all those currently angry women will have even more incentive to get out and vote.

But my question is, how many passports has she been through? I guess she doesn’t have to pay extra like we do to get them expedited…