I'm not usually impressed by corporate videos, but sometimes a corporation gets behind a story in a video that is unshakably touching. When I caught wind of this video made by the Hampton Hotels' Asheville branch, I wanted to check it out for myself. Featuring a boy named TJ who is better known as TJ Elevator Fan, this hotel went above and beyond to make TJ feel welcome when he visited their location. TJ has Cerebral Palsy, so everyday situations aren't always as easy for him as they would be for you or me, but this Asheville hotel went way out of their way to make sure TJ's stay was as easy and special as possible. Check it out.

Luxury flash sale website Jetsetter.com launched a same-day hotel product this morning, dubbed Jetsetter Now.

Offering discounts of up to 60% off standard rates, the hotel deals will be available in New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco to start.

Utilizing a similar concept to HotelTonight, Jetsetter Now offers deep discounts beginning at noon each day. A limited number of hotel rooms in each category are available, but booking, similar to Jetsetter's "mystery" sales, is opaque, meaning that travelers will know if the hotel is "hip" or "contemporary" but not where exactly it is located or what its name is.

To participate, the hotels must already be Jetsetter-verified (meaning that an editor has personally visited and reviewed the property) and have a member review rating of 85% or above. If available, guests can book up to four nights through the app at a special rate.

Inventory will display as available or "sold out" as hotel rooms are booked. Like Travelocity's lastminute.com, payment can be completed by scanning your credit card and the app is fully Passbook integrated.

Rob Deeming, Jetsetter.com general manager, spoke to us yesterday about the application, discussing how it is a logical extension of the brand, where travelers are excited to book verified and reviewed inventory at a reduced price, but are often frustrated that their counterparts offer only two to four-star "mystery" hotels.

He doesn't worry that the mysterious nature of hotels booked will bother travelers, as he says many are already flocking to the site's existing mystery flash sales. The opaque nature of the booking process encourages luxury hoteliers to share their unused inventory with Jetsetter, he explains, because they are often reluctant to showcase a discounted rate for fear that travelers will grow accustomed to waiting until the last minute to book.

In our trial case, we "booked" into the Surrey, an upscale uptown hotel that can charge upwards of $1,000 for a one-night stay. Through Jetsetter Now, the price was just $290 per night.

We also loved the scan and go credit card feature, which made booking simple while on the go.

What do you think? Will this new development spur you to book a last minute escape? The application is free in the app store for iPhone and iPod touch.

The Red Bull Rampage is an annual downhill mountain bike race that pits some of the best riders in the world against one another on a course that mere mortals should never even think about attempting. The competition features massive jumps, flips and other aerobatics that are definitely not for the inexperienced or faint of heart.

The scariest moment from the 2012 edition of the race, which was held this past weekend in Virgin, Utah, comes our way courtesy of rider Cam Zink, who took an 80-foot tumble after overshooting one of the jumps. Fortunately, Zink wasn't seriously hurt, but his trusty helmet cam caught all of the action, which is pretty much guaranteed to make your stomach drop. Check out Cam's ride from the perspective of his helmet cam in the first video below, then watch the second video to see how it looked to spectators on hand. Either way, it wasn't pretty.

Thanks to our friends over at the Adventure Journal for sharing these great videos.

According to this recent release from the Independent, a woman from Georgia has documents, which claim she passed away at the tender age of 132. Contrary to what you might think, however, Antisa Khvichava didn't live a long life thanks to eating buckets full of peaches. Mrs. Khvichava instead spent her years in the village of Sachino, a remote village in the Caucuses Mountains in the country – not state – of Georgia.

Allegedly having spoken Mingrelian, a language that is classified by UNESCO as being endangered, relatives unfortunately hold no legal documents that date back to Mrs. Khvichava's actual birth. Instead, all of her legal birth documents were destroyed during times of civil war, and those legal documents which remain – including the one stating her birth as July 8, 1880 – were created long after her actual birth.

Nevertheless, everyone from townsfolk to relatives all vouch that Mrs. Khvichava was, in fact, 132 years old. Furthermore, they claim she attributed her longevity to a daily dose of brandy.

The U.S. state of Georgia, on the other hand, has the ninth worst life expectancy of any U.S. state, with the average resident living for 77.1 years.

Nevertheless, the world's oldest verifiable living person at the time of this writing was Besse Cooper, a 116-year-old resident of, you guessed it, the U.S. state of Georgia.

[Image courtesy of justin_vidamo on Flickr]

To experience something out of the ordinary on your next trip, check out some of these bizarre natural phenomena.

Morning Glory Cloud, Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia

While you can occasionally see a Morning Glory Cloud or roll cloud in other parts of the world, the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia is the only place it can be predicted and observed regularly. A Morning Glory Cloud can be up to 620 miles long, 1.2 miles high and is often only 330 to 660 feet off the ground. Additionally these clouds, which sometimes appear both solo and in groups, can move at speeds up to 37 miles per hour. While this phenomenon is not clearly understood, certain theories do exist, such as effects from mesoscale circulations linked with sea breezes that develop over the area and high humidly and pressure mixed with strong breezes. You can visit Buketown in Queensland for the best chance of witnessing the phenomenon.

I've fussed about the differences between Paris and New York several times in my writing career (hint, nobody is rude) but few things make the comparison better than a side-by-side video. Tony Miotto did a great job with this one on Vimeo. Its beauties, I think, are in the subtleties of the comparisons, the way the design at the Parisian Louvre parallels that of the Apple Store in Manhattan or the ways that Kennedy and Charles de Gaulle are circuitously drawn by wandering airplanes.

There's so much happening that I had to watch the video several times to pick up on all of the quick comparisons. You should too. It's a great video.

The house pictured above is a very drab house. It's cold. It's empty. And no one has lived in it for over 120 years.

Sure, there is a fresh layer of green paint on the door, but that was put there by the neighbors. Why they did that I'm not sure, because this house was abandoned long ago.

This house isn't anything famous, and it isn't in a town you've ever heard of. This house is in Lecanvy, Ireland, a one-pub village at the base of Croagh Patrick Mountain, 3 1/2 hours from the festive streets of Dublin.

Nevertheless, this house is very important to me, because this was my great-great-grandmother's house, a woman who's family one day just decided to leave it all behind and up and leave for America.

Perhaps it's the rise in popularity of websites such as ancestry.com, but for some reason "genealogy tourism" seems to be on the rise in the world's most famous "nation of immigrants," the United States of America. Despite the fact that millions of families took the plunge to move to a foreign land, their children many years down the road have not relinquished the curiosity to learn more about where it is they came from.

I hunted down this house because I happened to be in town, but for many travelers this form of "reverse immigration" seems to be a sector of the travel market that's broadening in scope.

When it comes to setting a mood, sensory experiences are key. Sights, sounds and smells can all contribute to a guest's perception of a hotel's ambiance, and thus, their overall experience. To better understand the nuances of scent-scaping and dayparting (the art of crafting a mood through music), we spoke with Ben Teplitsky, senior director of business development at Mood Media, whose company has worked to craft guest experiences for major hotels and retail brands worldwide.

Read part one and two of this story.

Day Three

On my third morning on board an increasingly hellish train ride, I found a fully intact piece of excrement resting on the train's only toilet seat I could get to. It seemed not to have been an accident; in fact, the feces looked as though it was carefully placed there by some very malicious, or very inaccurate person. I marched down towards car number one to talk to my Western compatriots, Brian and Sherry. Now it was my turn to be outraged. But Brian thought it was hysterical.

"You know they stand on top of the seat," he said, chuckling. "It's just not an accurate way to go to the bathroom."

I had been eating Chips Ahoy, a box of cereal and some noodles I brought on board with me but decided I should probably fast for the rest of the trip to avoid having to move my bowels in the appalling bathroom.

Aside from the fecally ornamented bathroom, the train was becoming even more nasty and unbearable. Ermat, the conductor, dropped by to chat, brandishing a bottle of cheap vodka, around 1 o'clock in the afternoon. He was already piss drunk and sweating profusely. We were passing through the massive Kyzyl Kum Desert and the train was sweltering. He was a diminutive, balding man with too many buttons undone on his short-sleeved uniform shirt.

"You want some grog?" a 20-something Fijian man asks me. He's very fit and is wearing nothing but surf shorts.

It's 10 a.m. and he's sitting with four other local guys on a linoleum floor around a faded wooden bowl the diameter of a large pizza. We're in an elongated, sparsely decorated room with one wall made entirely of open, sliding glass doors and windows. Through the open spaces is a palatial, hammock-strewn wooden terrace, and beyond that blue water spreading to three or four small, fuzzy, green islets. The bowl is on four short, rounded wooden legs and is filled with what looks like dirty river water. I realize these guys are drinking kava, a narcotic beverage that's as famous in the South Pacific for its calming effect and putrid taste as it is for its cultural and ceremonial significance.

I wasn't expecting my first taste of Fijian kava to be in such a casual setting. In my head, kava is supposed to be enjoyed at a chief's house with lots of etiquette in a grand cultural moment. Getting stoned at 10 a.m. doesn't sound particularly appealing, either, but I say yes to the "grog" anyway. Who knows when I'll get offered it again? After 15 years living in Tahiti, where they don't drink kava, I'm ready to give it a go.

I take a seat around the bowl and say hello to everyone.

"High tide or low tide?" the guy at the head of the bowl asks me.

"Um, I don't know. What does that mean?"