I like to enter contests to win free trips. So far I haven’t won any, but I expect my ship to come in any day now. Any time you find a contest for a free trip, you can bet that if I know about it, I’ve entered. Right now the Travel Channel website has a contest to win a trip to Jamaica. Next month’s contest (starting tomorrow) is to win a trip to Iceland. If you win one, you can’t win the other. I’m an excellent probability person, so I totally get the odds, and I understand I have a 1 in a million shot at winning either trip. But part of me (the part that would rather go to Iceland) thinks that maybe I shouldn’t have entered the Jamaica contest because if I win (like that would be so bad?) I wouldn’t be eligible for a free trip to Iceland. The logical part of me knows that either trip would be awesome, given it’s cost (free) and the odds of winning (bad).
Another contest that I’m entered in is the Conde Nast Traveler “Live the Cover” contest where they send the winner to the place featured on their cover. Most recently, the winning vacation was a trip to the Maldives, and the current contest is for Thailand. I haven’t entered the current contest, but I entered the one for the Maldives. I entered nine times. I fully expect to win. Except now I’d rather go to Thailand. But all this is moot because it’s a photo/essay contest. My essays about why my photos are excellent representations of my vacation, if I do say so, are pretty well written, meaningful, and descriptive. But how can someone like me, who has never been to anywhere so-called “exotic”, compete? My photos are miles away from the goregeous photo of St Basil’s Cathedral at Night.
How can I compete with photos of strange, Asian markets selling goats’ eyeballs and whatever experience may be tied to that? And Africa. I totally envy the people whose photos are in Africa because I just don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad photo taken in Africa. An how can one not be having an adventure if one is in Africa. The writeups are killer. That aside, I feel that my pictures of DC and West Virginia can compete. Why? Is it because the judges should feel bad that I haven’t had the opportunity to go anywhere? No. Not because they feel sorry for me, but rather, I feel they should have a vendetta out for all those people who can go everywhere! They shouldn’t want to send the guy who’s been to Africa six times in the last year on yet another trip. Simply put, the judges, themselves, are probably holed up in a windowless office making valuable life-changing trip-giving decisions all while not taking any trips of their own! Those well-traveled contest-enterers should be elimited immediately if not sooner! And that is why I should win, dear judges.
Finally, I enter monthly in the Conde Nast Traveler contests: “Word Trips” and “Where Are You?”. I should have won by now. It’s hard to believe how many people must enter these things, especially given that some of these contests are not easy. Someday (hopefully sooner rather than later) I will win a travel contest. And when I can show up in South Africa with my all-expenses-paid safari ticket in hand, then maybe I will become one of those people who shouldn’t be allowed to win any more travel contests. Until then, it’s like they say: enter early, enter often!
