Travel

Wednesday May 22nd 808pmNo Land in sightKind of a boring day today. The first order of business was to try and find some washing machines to do laundry. It took me about 10 minutes but I found them and most of them are broken so I think I will get Dwight my room steward to do it for me and give him a little bigger tip next week.I then had guest services call me twice I think guests think

Cape Spear. The eastermost point on the North American continent.WE ARE HERE WE DID IT Mission accomplished Completion of our goal to ride a LONG WAY THERE from Victoria to St. John39s Mile Zero Victoria BC to Cape Spear St. John39s NL. Some may feel we completed our journey upon arriving in Bonavista NL. But for us we weren39t quite there even when we arrived into St. John

By Rich Klein Last weekend, I attended a local show near my house in Richardson, Texas. The show was promoted by Awesome Collector Shows and from reading the promotional material I guessed the promoter was formerly known as JIMV Enterprises based on the similarities between the verbiage used by JMV and the verbiage used by Awesome. When I arrived at the show on Sunday, my guess was correct as sure enough James was collecting the admission and at least there were free old SMR magazines at the door. One thing that absolutely shocked me was every table was occupied. If you have ever read my reviews of previous JMV shows, you might recall the declined credit card episode that shut one show down almost before it started. That incident actually led to what we now call the Craig Ranch card show in McKinney, Texas to a room in which perhaps half the dealer tables are sold. It’s always good to see show tables occupied and buyers making the rounds. One aspect that really helped the attendance at the most recent show was the appearance of Pro Football Hall of Famer Mel Renfro (who is among the nicest retired football players you will ever meet) and former boxing champ Reggie Johnson.  Reggie was displaying some of his World Championship belts and I will assure you those belts were incredible looking. I asked him who he fought during his career and he said he fought such luminaries as James “Lights Out” Toney and Roy Jones Jr. He said although he was not awarded the decision, he actually beat Toney and when I checked BoxRec.Com and saw that was a split decision I'm willing to believe he has justification in thinking he won that fight. Johnson fought all the best from his era and was competitive in almost any fight. In fact this weekend, I will probably watch some of high fights on you tube because now I'm curious as to his abilities. In between the two guests was the Beckett booth. I spent some time talking to Advertising Director Bill Dumas about hobby events past and present and discussed some of my recent Ramblings that involve Beckett memories from years past….like flying to an east coast card show that wasn't. You see, unbeknownst to us at Beckett, the dates posted in our Convention Calendar were incorrect and this show had actually taken place the weekend before.  I had flown from Dallas for a show that had packed up a week earlier. Fortunately, I knew the area well enough and had a back-up plan in place.  So, I called our “travel coordinator”, explained what happened and asked her to cancel the hotel reservation. Luckily, there was a back-up plan:  a two- hour drive to the always successful White Plains, N.Y. show and I knew exactly how to get there.   Staying with my dad in my old stomping grounds would mean not having to pay for a room. Needless to say, my father was shocked when I dropped my bags off and explained the whole situation but he was also thrilled to see me and realized we could spend a little bit of time together. The White Plains show always featured some market makers in newer cards and there were always many dealers and collectors on hand so any excuse to go was welcome. I spent all day Saturday at White Plains and then left Sunday morning. And in case anyone wondered why I never moved back to New Jersey even after leaving Beckett, the 6 A.M. news on New York’s CBS-FM clinched the deal. There is nothing like hearing these words to begin your day:  “The morning temperature Is three degrees with a wind chill of 30 below,” said the announcer.  I thought that temperature was only that bad when I used to go to the Albany show. Other than that little weather issue (which thankfully did not include any precipitation), having a back-up plan again helped to save the day, even though it wasn’t as famous as the “Puerto Rico” back-up plan discussed here yesterday.  Thus, a good lesson is if you are thinking of going to any card show always have another plan ready in case option number one does not exist. I know in today’s wor

As the launching pad for surf exploration throughout Indonesia, Bali is buzzing with rumors and stories of where to go. Everyone just got back from 'the most epic surf break' they have ever visited and somewhere that was 'pumping the whole time' they were there. After spending a fair amount of time traveling this country over the years, I've learned to take such stories with a grain of salt; too many surfers are unreliable sources of information, particularly when a few beers are involved. My Friend Clint is not one of those storytellers, so I was immediately interested when he described his trip to this spot in Java last June (Photo above taken of me by Hiroshi Fukuzawa).Clint had just returned to Bali. He and some of New Zealand's best surfers had scored at this spot they dubbed the 'Coast of Faces' (you can read about their trip in NZ Surf Magazine). I had been tracking a swell for a week and talking to Clint about taking a trip to Nusa Tenggara As we followed the charts, it looked like strong winds coming off Australia would push the swell westward. He thought conditions looked for this spot so we cancelled our plans, purchased plane tickets that afternoon, and flew out early the following morning.Java is the most populated island on the planet, home to over 60% of Indonesia's 240 million residents. It is the most important island culturally (the amazing ruins of Borobudur and Prahmbanan, pictured above left), politically (the massive capital city of Jakarta), and agriculturally (a myriad of crops are grown here, including peanuts pictured above right). Once you get outside the major cities, the population density is surprisingly low. Travel in the Javanese countryside is not easy and even short trips take hours due to small, poorly maintained roads carved through thick forests and rolling fields that infrequently pass through clusters of small homes. This is one of the many reasons Java's coastline has remained relatively unexplored.Clint and I arrived at our destination in the late afternoon. I was immediately impressed with the setup when we walked through the small kampung (village) down to the beach. Massive rocks formed a small crescent bay where waves peaked and crashed off both headlands. Beautifully clear water washed over colorful coral reef as a few surfers lazed underneath a cluster of palm trees eating nasi goreng (fried rice) and watching empty waves roll through.We had just enough time to squeeze in an evening surf. We pulled out our boards gingerly walked across the razor-sharp coral reef, and made our way to the lineup through the channel. Clint put has previous experience here to work and paddled straight into a bomb; it sucked off the reef and spit him out into the channel 100 meters away. I knew then it was going to be a good week.Part II coming tomorrow with more photographs so check back!

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We Were Promised Jetpacks will be making another appearance back in the burgh Thursday, June 6th at the Hard Rock Cafe. The Edinburgh, Scotland quartet play a brand of indie rock that is in close resemblance to their label mates Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit (two bands who have traveled through our fair city). They played here almost three years ago at Mr Smalls and put on a fabulous show of which you can read our review here. Again the band was kind enough to answer a few of our questions with regards to what they have planned in the coming year, progress on new material and their song writing process.I saw you are planning to release a live album later this year. What should we expect? Are these outtakes of live shows? Behind the scenes of travel, green rooms and the like? Or?We are indeed! it's the audio and video of show we recorded in philadelphia a while ago. we're still putting together everything, but it's coming along nicely! i like the idea of outtakes in the same way that tv shows put outtakes on dvds. just endless takes of us fucking up and laughing about it. we should do that instead.Your last album was released back in 2011. Should we expect any new material soon?Probably. it all depends on your interpretation of "soon". we're working hard though, don't worry!How are crowds responding to your new material? I am assuming you will be testing this to our US audiences?we've only got one new song that we play and we've been doing it for about a year. people responded really well to that, though! recently we've been saving up the new ones. we'd like to play a few on this coming tour, but we don't want to rush them. not rushing is kind of a motto this time round.What have you all been up to the past few years since your previous albums? Are you working on other projects? Or were you just taking a break?Well we played a lot of shows when the album came out in 2011, then played loads more all through 2012. so we took a couple of months at the start of the year to recharge and get excited again, then started writing.How does your songwriting process work? Do you enlist others to assist with lyrics/structure? Or does one of you bring the lyrics to the table and then you workaround that?The lyrics are always last. adam will bring a guitar part to the room, maybe a couple of parts (this for the verse, this for the chorus for example) then we all jam together and work out a rough structure and try and figure out what we want the song to be. then once we have the idea and know what we want we'll just play it together over and over. the lyrics are usually last!What are your upcoming goals? What would you like to accomplish?To make another album. always to be able to make another album. and to make just enough money from it that we don't feel like we're going to become pathetic 30 year olds who have to ask their parents to buy them things. those are the two! What made you want to dedicate your life to music? Was there a show or album?Like probably 90% of other bands, it was not wanting to have to get a proper job. that and basically just feeling like we could. if we have a bash at this maybe we'll be lucky enough to get away with it for a while? maybe nobody will notice that's what's happening until it's too late to kick us out?Anything you would like to say to Pittsburgh?Erm, hello! uhhh not really. we like pittsburgh, though it's pronounced "pitts-burg" which is one of the reasons people from america (understandably) have trouble pronouncing where we're from, edinburgh. it looks the same at the end, but it's not. we say "edin-bu-ruh". so i guess what i'm saying is that we hold you guys pretty much responsible for that.Show begins at 8p with tickets only $13 and can be found here.

Physicist Marc Millis discusses how close humanity really is to a faster-than-light drive like warp speed on "Star Trek."

This was a tweet that certainly caught my eye this week: @BurjAlArab: “Today we launched exclusive 24 carat gold iPads, designed specifically for Burj Al Arab, for our in-house guests.” ?Yes… that’s right… guests checking at the Burj Al Arab in Dubai are being treated to 24 carat gold iPads for the duration of the [...]The ultimate hotel check-in, complete with 24-carat gold iPad is a post from A Luxury Travel Blog The post The ultimate hotel check-in, complete with 24-carat gold iPad appeared first on A Luxury Travel Blog.

We said farewell to San Jose thankfully for the last time and jumped onto our public bus that would take us to Panama border. Apparently there are only 2 land borders into Panama on the west side from Costa Rica and luckily we were taking the path less traveled.We had managed to download the latest episode of Game of Thrones this morning that aired in the US only last night. As I said yesterday