Patch Contributor Picked Up by HuffPo

Local writer and Healdsburg Patch contributor made the big time yesterday when a travel article he wrote was picked up by Huffington Post for national online distribution.

The article, “How The Iran Hikers Could Have Avoided Their Hellish Holiday,”  argued that sometimes technical tools such as Google and GPS don’t provide enough information for trip planning. It had been in the works for several weeks when yesterday morning’s news about the release of two American hikers from jail in Iran provided the necessary news hook to get the editor’s attention.

Sure, GPS is a nice traveling companion when you're just knocking about, but maybe along a high-tension border between two antagonistic countries in a war zone it would be a good time to check with the experts, not the read-out.

The article went on to describe efforts to book a trip to Peru while avoiding the vagaries of weather, politics and other uncertainties, such as the seasonal rains that last year flooded the Urubamba River and isolated thousands of travelers on their way to Machu Picchu.

News reports at the time made it sound like a tourist's worst nightmare. People with money on hand bribed their way onto evacuation helicopters sent for the elderly, some people slept in the street and others were literally fighting for hotel rooms (several of which had doubled their prices), some were faking illness to get medical evacuation. And the ruins of Machu Picchu were closed for several weeks.

Huffington Post was started by in 2005, and earlier this year was , which also owns the Patch website network.

The placement of the article on Huffington Post was not related to Kallen's local work with Patch. He contributes columns on Healdsburg history (), the local arts scene () and other occasional features.

Kallen has a previous career as a travel writer, co-authoring four books on international adventures including “Riding the Dragon’s Back”  and “Rivergods,” the latter for Sierra Club Books.