Welcome to "In Transit," a blog that will chronicle my journey around the world in pursuit of the mysterious "aerotropolis," the cities rising around airports across the globe. My partner, Prof. John D. Kasarda of the University of North Carolina, coined the term a decade ago to describe the cityscapes he saw taking shape in places like Hong Kong, Dubai, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, and Seoul. Some aerotropolises are easy to spot, such as the man-made islands and pre-fab cities rising out of Hong Kong Harbor and off the coast of Korea. Others are nearly invisible, hiding in plain sight around Memphis and Louisville (the respective homes of FedEx and UPS) or Dallas or Detroit. I'll canvass all of them as part of the reporting for our book, "Aerotropolis" (John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay; Farrar, Straus and Giroux). But this blog isn't about the hard realities of globalization or the evolution of cities.

Hopefully, this blog will be a lot more fun than that.

I'll be blogging here about what goes on between the lines of my official mission -- the best tips and amateurish mistakes of a newly minted road warrior. Yes, I've tried something like this before, but this time I'll be roaming far beyond the terminal in order to bring back notes on my choice of gear, hotels, food (think Memphis BBQ, as opposed to airport food), airlines, and of course the airport.

The blog kicks off in earnest on Thursday with a report from one of the first fully-loaded flights of the Airbus A380 "whalejet," from New York JFK to Frankfurt, i.e. the world's largest airborne cocktail party. After that, it's Memphis up first, then Louisville, and then onward from there. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

Read more of Greg Lindsay's travel blog, IN TRANSIT.