Introduction

by Jennifer L. Leo

Men. We love them for making us smile, and hate them for breaking our hearts. They’re good for carrying our bags, and I swear, one day, we’ll invent a way to convert their natural gas into useable power for our hybrid cars, laptops, foot spas, and anything else we’d rather be using than an air freshener. I know some of you would prefer to live without them, but I never could.

I entered the travel writing world because of Tim Cahill and have since made room on a bookcase for signed Bill Bryson books, driven from San Francisco to Santa Barbara for a Pico Iyer reading, and gotten drunk with Rolf Potts on three different continents. In short, I love our traveling smellier half. That’s why, after Bra, after Panties, after Thong, those with the bulge in their pants asked when they would be able to write for one of my books, I couldn’t say no. In fact, everyone at Travelers’ Tales thought it a fabulous fun way to complete this scantily clad underwear empire.

Boxers and briefs weren’t going to cut it. Heck, I wear those to bed. But I’ve never worn a jockstrap, and since we had so much fun playing with a Hemingway title, we thought we’d put a cheeky spin on a modern-day career classic. Hence, What Color Is Your Jockstrap?

Inside you’ll find a diverse cross-section of misadventures. Some share the bizarre stories of travelers who went to the ends of the earth only to have the cosmos spit in their face, while others are the tales of typical travel challenges—just the sort of thing even rookie travelers can relate to. There are even plenty of laughable journeys that were taken on purpose. We did not separate the women’s’ stories from the men’s, but you’ll find the front half of the book occupied by gross bodily function mishaps, and the back of the book holding the sweeter, more reader-friendly stories. Whether they’re about suffering through diarrhea in Cabo San Lucas or figuring out how to get along with French women while working in Bordeaux, these travelers are globetrotting super heroes!

Eavesdrop on Jim Benning’s phone call with a Chinese prostitute in “Lust in Translation,” spend all your money shooting off heavy weapons with Eben Strousse in “Guns and Frivolity in Cambodia,” hit on a smoking hot Argentinean with Elliott Hester in “Love and the Bad Empanada,” or fight a mob of Nepali taxi drivers with Rachel Thurston’s mother in “Mama Chihuahua, World’s Fiercest Travel Partner.”

There are so many outrageous accounts of vacations gone wrong that by this fourth book, you just have to wonder, do all trips go bad? No, of course not. But I guarantee that if you are someone who wants to return with a brag-worthy story to amuse your friends or write up for the press, it’s best to hope that the tarmac does get pulled out from under you. After all, if you’re crying on your trip, someone else is laughing about it later. Bottom line, get out and get lost. There’s a great big world out there—just waiting to fart on you!