• Home Improvement - Traveling Along, We're Adventurers

    Yuck, Yuck, Yuck

    Oooooog. I don’t feel so good. I think I’ve got the beginnings of a sinus infection. I’ve been off all week and could have been decently and appropriately sick, but nooo. I’m getting sick at the beginning of the weekend, but not be sick enough to stay home from work next week. And tomorrow, we’re supposed to meet David’s parents downtown and go to the Art Institute. Sunday we’re supposed to get together with Steve and go on an early-spring photo safari to the Botanic Gardens again. And I don’t want to stay home anymore. Bleah.

  • The Never-Ending Bloga - The Road Goes Ever On: 3 Weeks in Britain

    Well, Finally

    There’s a new entry up, at last, under the September archive for the England travel journal. I forgot to set the temporal displacement/flux capacitor thingy but the entry is now in it’s rightful place and time on September 20th. It covers just one day and night spent in Carlisle. The next entry after that will be the one with all the pictures of walking in Yorkshire, and that means (shudder) lots of Photoshop Elements. Fortunately, not too much fixing, futzing, and cropping, just adding frames. I’m regretting (now) using the rather tacky “photocorners” provided with Elements, and will stick to…

  • The Road Goes Ever On: 3 Weeks in Britain

    10,000 Steps

    One of these days, I really have to get started again on the England trip journal entries. The good part is yet to come – walking in Yorkshire and climbing over dozens of stylish stiles. Walking used to be a much bigger part of my life before I bought a car and became a suburbonaut – when I lived in Seattle, I didn’t own a car, and often walked home from work when I lived in Fremont and worked at the top of Queen Anne Hill. It was about a 45 minute walk, mostly downhill, through some of the prettiest…

  • Traveling Along, We're Adventurers

    Transarctic: He’s Off!

    Ben Saunders is on his way across the Arctic at last. Strangely, he’s got company, at least for the first few miles. There’s another expedition on the ice, and they were within sight of each other for a while. He contributes a new word: “Shreezing.” It’s that cold up there, people.

  • Traveling Along, We're Adventurers

    Polar Bear Joke

    How To Survive An Attack By a Polar Bear With An Ice Pick And A Can Of Peas: If attacked by a polar bear, run away while simultaneously hacking open the can of peas with the ice pick. Then use the pick to chop a hole in the ice, and quickly arrange the peas in a single line around the edge of the hole. Polar bears are curious, and he will be intrigued. When the polar bear stops to take a pea, let him have it with the ice pick (no need to kick him in the icehole, he’s quite…

  • Traveling Along, We're Adventurers

    CAPPS-II: Privacy in Travel

    Edwad Hasbrouck mentions something that might have an impact at work: TSA finally starts talking to travel execs about CAPPS-II These same privacy clauses in travel management contracts were almost certainly violated when airlines (including jetBleu and Northwest), CRS’s (including Sabre), and third-party PNR processing firms (including Airline Automation — now part of the Amadeus CRS — and Acxiom) shared PNR data with government contractors and agencies for profiling tests. As recognition of the issue grows, so does the likelihood that all these companies handling, and secretly disclosing, reservation data will face breach of contract lawsuits from corporate travellers, in…

  • Traveling Along, We're Adventurers

    Solo Transarctic Trek

    Polar expeditions have always fascinated me – here’s a new one:Serco TransArctic Expedition Hmm. Makes me want to dig out my old Victory Sings at Sea CD and play “The Northwest Passage.” Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea; Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage And make a Northwest Passage to the sea. (Wow, the CD is back in print! Excellent, excellent, excellent stuff.)