Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Israel News

Take the Train to the Pogo Stick…

Since April 19, 26-year-old filmmaker Boaz Frankel has been traveling across the United States, equipped with all the road-trip essentials — iPhone, camera, backpack and a list of contacts.

All the essentials, that is, except for one: a car.

Frankel is videotaping, Tweeting and blogging each moment of his “Un-Road Trip,” as a way to promote sustainable transportation. He plans to compile the footage of his alternative travels into a documentary film when he has completed the journey. But to Frankel, who is originally from Portland, Ore., “alternative” means exploring every possible non-gas-guzzling option — from pneumatic pogo sticks to camels to amphibious canoes.

The Shmooze caught up with Frankel recently by phone while he was resting on a dock in Labelle, Fla., admiring a lizard. As he does most days, Frankel had trudged through land and water using borrowed vehicles from those eager to contribute to the Un-Road Trip cause. The Seminole Indian Tribe of Florida, just outside Clewiston, lent him a horse for a 9-mile ride down the Lake Okeechobee Scenic Trail, and Uncle Joe’s Fish Shack, in nearby Moore Haven, set him up on a flats boat, normally used for big-fish hunting, to get down the Caloosahatchee River.

But this wasn’t his most rigorous day. While in Los Angeles, Frankel walked 40 miles and biked about 30 over the course of 48 hours. “I’ve always been a walker,” Frankel said, “but it was walking to work and to the supermarket, perhaps a total of 8 miles in a day.”

Whether it’s running in Kangoo Jumps (low-impact, rebound sports shoes); riding a tandem bike with the mayor of Portland, or testing the Pi Mobility, an electric bike, on the Golden Gate Bridge, Frankel can’t anticipate what will transpire from Sunday through Friday on this 10-week trek. Come Friday evening, however, he always knows what to expect: Frankel has mapped out his course so that he’ll end up in Jewish communities like Fort Myers, Fla., where he can cease all traveling and observe the Sabbath. “It’s really nice to have one day a week where I get to unwind a little bit,” he said. For Shavuot, Frankel is headed to a Kehilat Hadar retreat in upstate New York. To get there, he’ll take a train to New York City’s Penn Station from Charlottesville, Va., and travel onward to the town of Wingdale. He’ll then embark on a 5-mile bike ride (assuming he’s able to find a bicycle to borrow).

So what does Frankel hope his followers will learn from the Un-Road Trip? “So many people pop into a car to drive a mile, or 10, because they think, ‘What else can I really do?’ he said. “At this point, I can give you a list of 40 things.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.