Most likely one of the greatest accomplishments one can achieve in travel is to have a story (a positive story at that) done on you and have it appear in the Sunday Travel section of the New York Times.

This was my claim to fame: Hot Sauce and Cash. It was reported that I travel with hot sauce on airplanes to mask the often hard-to-eat meals provided by the airlines. I remember when Joan Hammond called and said she was interested in my frequent flyer story and hence I was selected for an interview and story because it was reported I travel with hot sauce. I remember reading the article hot-off-the-press while I was on business trip in St Thomas. With stories like this in the travel section, you never know if they will ever be printed. I knew that Sunday morning it had been printed because I was getting emails from around the country from friends that subscribed to the NY Times.

I purchased my copy of that day's Times at the Frenchman’s Reef Holiday Inn on St Thomas; The cost was $7.50. There I was on the front page of the travel selection. I read the article interview while having eggs and tobacco at the pool restaurant. For those that missed the article and would like to see it: click here.

The second greatest anecdote to this article was about two weeks after it was published, the owner of Tabasco sent me a case of the tiny hot sauce bottles to travel with.