Archive for the 'travel' Category
Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy.
Washington, D.C.
You haven’t truly suffered until you’ve eaten Dominos Pizza in India.
That said, this is both amusing and confusing at the same time
aah the joys of the coming police state.
US Customs agent #1: What’s in the box? What kind of camera? How much did it cost? Do you have paperwork for it? I could seize it you know. Make you pay a duty on it. Certificate of origin. Blah Blah Blah. Check the box for commercial merchandise. I’m doing you a favor by letting you in.
Me: … (remember don’t talk to the police).
US Customs agent #2: Form please.
Me: I was told to check the commercial merchandise box…
US Customs agent #2: By who? Number 17? She’s a moron. <quotes seemingly random string of numbers and letters> Tools of the trade.
Me: Thanks, I’ll remember that. <smile>
Every time I travel to Canada I can’t help but think of it as some sort of bizarro world version of the US. Close enough to be familiar enough, different enough to be odd.
Also, I remember people being frendlier. Maybe it’s just Toronto?
Can anyone tell me why Canadian immigration officers sitting behind a desk in the secure zone of an international airport would need to wear bullet proof vests and?
Also, if you feel the need to tell me three times (without prompting) that I have NOT been singled out for harrassment, the odds are good that I HAVE been.
Saw Gunrunners, Smokey Mountain Knife Works, Lodge Cast Iron and, oh yeah, a predicted 3″ of snow in Dickson.
for the record, it sucks to drive by the Blue Ridge Parkway in a truck, at night, when my bike is on a truck somewhere else.
…and a lot to go.
austin, here we come.
must be some of those new fangled “fast” zombies.
Someone warn Canada… oh sh*t, Moral-Flexibility is down… we’re too late!
Put another 60 miles on the bike today (run down to Cross Country and back for service.
Computer readout flashed around 22 degrees F the entire way but damned if it didn’t feel like 10 below.
Did I mention I can’t wait to get to Texas.
As the cold white fingers of pending armageddon bear down on New York, I’m currently in the Capitol of Texas securing our next temporary domicile.
And, oh, yeah, it’s 70 degrees out. 
Sunspots Are Fewest Since 1954, but Significance Is Unclear
By KENNETH CHANG
The Sun has been strangely unblemished this year. On more than 200 days so far this year, no sunspots were spotted. That makes the Sun blanker this year than in any year since 1954, when it was spotless for 241 days.
The Sun goes through a regular 11-year cycle, and it is now emerging from the quietest part of the cycle, or solar minimum. But even for this phase it has been unusually quiet, with little roiling of the magnetic fields that induce sunspots.
“It’s starting with a murmur,†said David H. Hathaway, a solar physicist at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
As of Thursday, the 276th day of the year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., had counted 205 days without a sunspot.
In another sign of solar quiescence, scientists reported last month that the solar wind, a rush of charged particles continually spewed from the Sun at a million miles an hour, had diminished to its lowest level in 50 years.
Scientists are not sure why this minimum has been especially minimal, and the episode is even playing into the global warming debate. Some wonder if this could be the start of an extended period of solar indolence that would more than offset the warming effect of human-made carbon dioxide emissions. From the middle of the 17th century to the early 18th, a period known as the Maunder Minimum, sunspots were extremely rare, and the reduced activity coincided with lower temperatures in what is known as the Little Ice Age.
Maybe now is a good time to think about moving somewhere with a bit milder climate… 
While transiting thru MIA yesterday I had the pleasure of ordering a Cuba Libre from an expat.
Let’s hope it happens…
I haven’t been to DFW in years and years.
D/FW Airport — A 27-year-old Corpus Christi passenger recently found himself in sticky situation.
The disheveled passenger was arrested in Terminal B after police found him sitting on an American Eagle jet bridge covered in salad dressing, according to police reports released this week.
Speaking in a “thick-tongued manner,” the man — who couldn’t stand without assistance — expressed confusion about why he was being prevented from boarding a Halloween day flight, records show. The man also seemed unaware that he was missing a shoe.
Officers figured out pretty quickly where the dressing, also on the jet bridge walls, had come from. The man was holding a food box, which was spilling open with food, records show.
Upon further questioning, police indicated the man told them he had been drinking vodka in an airport restaurant. He was held on suspicion of public intoxication.
this place is simultaneously thrilling and depressing, but I got to see a bit of the countryside this time. now it’s off to Singapore again.
click images to enlarge
this guy was busily shopping knives outside of the Crawford market in Bombay (Mumbai)
a country gentleman
It’s Mumbai, India.
the story behind of the “hint” is below.
Continue reading ‘name that country (answer)’