Travel

Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers

2011-04-30T21:40:00.001-07:00

Last night we traveled to Las Vegas to see Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers. It was a great show, we were especially impressed with Woody's voice and Nicky Sander's fiddle playing. Everybody on stage was truly talented.

The question we had before going was would it be mostly a music show? It was lots of great music mixed with jokes that had the audience laughing out loud for most of the night. Steve Martin is still an incredibly funny stand up comedian.

Having seen a lot of bands performing old standards, I was happy to spend the night listening mostly to new music. Your mind gets sluggish and lazy when you listen to the same stuff all the time.

They did play a fun version of orange blossom special to end the night with Nicky showing his talent as a fiddle player. Go see this really fun show you'll enjoy every minute.

Jim

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Las Vegas

Train ride

2010-06-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

After flying into Orange County airport in California, spent the night in nearby Costa Mesa. The next day I needed to travel to LAX as I was on call for another day. Not being in a hurry decided to take the train up to downtown Los Angeles.

I went back to SNA on the hotel van and caught a shuttle to the Santa Ana train station where I purchased a ticket for fifteen dollars. After waiting for about 15 minutes a train arrived. The upper deck had plenty of open seats that were comfortable and provided a great view of the areas that we passed through. The storage areas above the seats were a bit on the thin side so a thick or overstuffed bag wouldn't fit. No one was seated next to me so I left my bag on the floor.

The train accelerated smoothly and was very quiet. The ride was fairly soft and pleasant. It may not have been as comfortable.if the train had been full but today we had plenty of room. The station announcements were easy to understand so it would be hard to miss your station unless you were sound asleep.

The bus from Union station to LAX was seven dollars and took less than a half an hour. The trip took longer than the shuttle van would have but we didn't have to sit in rush hour traffic nor did we have to go through security as on a plane. In the past I had taken a United Express flight but no flights were available today and I don't know if the route is being flown anymore.

Diving Kauai

2010-02-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

For our first vacation of 2010 we traveled to the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. We did our diving with Fathom Five Dive Shop in Koloa. It's very close to Poipu beach where we had rented a condo.

We did a shore dive at Koloa Landing to start as we had my cousin's teenage son who wanted to do a padi discovery dive. Our instructor James did a great job and we all had a great time. We couldn't get too deep on the discovery dive but the area was very interesting in the shallow water. We got to see a dragon moray eel, a scorpion fish and other very beautiful animals such as Hawaiian sea turtles.

We would like to do this dive again as there's much to see and Fathom Five is a great dive shop.

Sea Turtles in Hawaii

2010-01-22T16:41:00.001-08:00

I'm amazed at how many turtles we see when snorkeling at Waikoloa on the Island of Hawaii. They are supposed to be left alone but they seem to be everywhere and will sometimes swim up to you to say hi.

At home when paddling Black Canyon from Hoover Dam the birds and land animals are the most interesting with the large herd of big horn sheep that are commonly seen.

In Hawaii being in the water is really fun at there are lots of interesting fish, turtles, and whales.

Snorkeling in Maui, came upon a leatherback sea turtle sleeping on the bottom and left it alone. I was impressed by the size sea turtle and later read that they can reach 2,000 pounds.

The above image is of a Hawaiian Green Sea Turtle.

Japanese Food in Waikiki

2010-01-05T15:48:00.000-08:00

There are many great Japanese places to eat in Waikiki.

Today I had a great katstu-curry at Tonkatsu Ginza Bairin at 255 Beach Walk. Their phone number is 808-926-8082. I heard both English and Japanese spoken there.

Tonkatsu is a breaded deep fried pork cutlet, very popular in Japan.

The restaurant is very beautifully decorated looking like it could be in Japan. The tonkatsu was as good as the best that I've eaten at in Japan. I really love tonkatsu, when in Japan, my uncle Mamoru and I seek out the best places to have tonkatsu for lunch.

Winter Paddling near Las Vegas

2009-12-14T19:58:00.000-08:00

The weather has turned cold in Southern Nevada, the kayak tour business, near Las Vegas and Hoover Dam, has slowed. This is actually our favorite time to paddle from Hoover Dam as the hot springs are wonderful when the air is cool.

What we consider cold isn't all that bad as it stays above freezing most of the time. The sunny days, with the temps sometimes getting into the 70's, actually feel warm, especially for someone who went to school in Nebraska.

Another great reasons for visiting Black Canyon this time of year are that there are few people on the river for a nice wilderness experience.

Desert Adventures is using this slow period to sell used tour and rental boats to make way for the new canoes and kayaks coming in the spring. These boats are a great deal as they sell for half of the retail price of a new one. The boats have had many trips down the Black Canyon of the Colorado river and on Lake Mead but have lots of life left for a private owner.

Our store is a 1647A Nevada Highway in Boulder City, Nevada 89005. Phone number is (702)293-5026 email: info@kayaklasvegas.com.

Flying, Lake Mead, Colorado River

2009-10-31T16:28:00.000-07:00

My friend Joe Kahl and I flew a Cessna 170B borrowed from friend Doug Mueller to Pearce Ferry today. Joe works with birds and other animals for the Bureau of Reclamation in Boulder City, Nevada. His field work takes him along the Colorado River between Lake Mead and Yuma, Arizona.

Joe also hosts an American folk music program called patchworks on Sunday afternoons with KUNV 91.5 for the university of Nevada-Las Vegas radio station.

We flew over Iceberg Canyon and ended up at Kingman for breakfast. The airport restaurant is a popular place to fly into for a meal. We met with up with Paul Gaines that owns a composite aircraft repair shop at the Kingman, Arizona airport.

Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia

2009-09-21T03:01:00.000-07:00

We flew into Siem Reap, Cambodia from Bangkok on an atr72, the flight was less than an hour and uneventful. We processed through immigration by getting a visa at the airport, we forgot to get a passport size photo for the visa but they took care of that for an extra $2 usd.

It's interesting that everything priced here is in U.S. dollars, they take the local currency but there's no need for it. Sometimes you get the local currency as change. We had a one hundred dollar bill, a lot of money in Cambodia that was hard to spend, so best to bring $20 bills or smaller.

We had our hotel, the viroth, arrange transportation and our car and driver was waiting for us when we were done with immigration and customs. The hotel is moderately priced, the rooms and service is very good. They don't have a tour desk so we went to the neighboring soria moria hotel. The staff there was great and we booked a full day tour of the Angkor area with them.

The next morning we had breakfast at the viroth at 7 a.m. then met our tour guide and driver, then off to the temples in a car that I think was a toyota camry. Our driver didn't seem to speak much english but the tour guide's english was outstanding as was his knowledge of the area and it's history. He reminded me of our guides at desert adventures in Las Vegas who do a great job for us day in and out.

Our driver Tony and guide Lee took us to Angkor Wat first. The temple was originally built in the 12th century as a hindu temple, it's now Buddhist with two monasteries. It took hours to go through the temple as it's very large. Our guide explained the stories that were carved into the stone walls of the temple, mostly of battles fought and folklore. One wall was about the sea of milk story of hindu creation.

Much restoration work is in progress, some of the damage was from natural causes such as water, other damage, bullet holes and artillery hits, were obviously man made. The blocks of stone are quite large and heavy so the work must be very difficult as building the place must have been in the 12th century. Holes were drilled into the blocks to insert pieces of wood so that elephants could drag them from the quarry from a quarry 40 km from the northeast. More info on the history and construction can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angkor_Wat

We visited another temple that was used for the filming of tomb raider, had lunch then visited Angkor Thom, the big city. There were once a million people living within the 3 km square area.

The temple we visited there is called bayon. It was very beautiful with many stone buddha faces all over the building. It was later converted into a hindu temple and many of the buddha images were destroyed or converted to hindu gods. It's interesting that the large faces remained mostly intact.

We took the next morning off and spent lunchtime at the Angkor Museum. The museum was well done and worth a couple of hours to see the all the great art work and displays on the history of the area.

Diving in Thailand

2009-09-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

We traveled to koh phangan island in the gulf of siam, thailand to do some diving. My wife Pam is a new diver, I haven't done much diving since high school in the 1970's so we were looking for an easy but interesting place to dive.

We flew United Airlines from Las Vegas to Bangkok via San Francisco and Tokyo. The new business class bed seats are pretty awesome slept well on the flights. From Bangkok to Ko Samui on Bangkok Airways then a ferry to Ko Phangan. There are two ferries that run to the island, a normal one that leaves from a dock near the airport and a faster catamaran ferry that is a little longer bus ride to the dock. We took the normal boat to the island and the catamaran back. The cat was considerably faster but the longer bus ride made the travel time to the airport about the same.

Our first dive was at Ko Tao, the island just north of Phangan. We took the normal ferry and ended up diving off the big boat as it's used as a dive boat before it's next run to the South. There were many divers and even more snorkelers but our small group of 5 including instructor Don Dunlop were able to find an area we could explore without too many divers. I was amazed that the coral in Thailand seemed darker and more intricate than the ones in Hawaii. There are also many large sea anemone with clown fish living within.

Our next three days of diving was at Sailrock. We kept going back in hopes of seeing a whale shark. There seemed to be millions of fish, so many that you couldn't see the some of the other divers in the area through them. One of the videos that Don shot of our dives is at http://www.youtube.com/user/lightwatertv#p/a/u/2/i5RFLBYXI1E

Some of the fish that we observed were groupers, lion fish, clown fish, and barracudas. One barracuda looked like it was 2 meters long, the groupers were very large as well. Don is a great instructor with photography as well as diving and I learned much about shooting pictures underwater from him.

In the future, we would like to dive the nearby national park and the areas out of Phuket.

Ko Phangan's north end is very quiet and a great place to relax, the hotels and beaches are very nice, we would like to go back again.

Tourist?

2009-09-11T00:27:00.001-07:00

Our friend Lynda who is working with the Peace Corps in Thailand said that were "doing the tourist thing". I replied that we are tourists, so we booked an all day tour yesterday on Ko Phangan island in the Gulf of Siam.

Pam got to drive me around on an elephant. It was amazing that such a large powerful animal can be so gentle. The elephant walked up to me and I hugged his trunk as suggested by the Mahat (elephant trainer). Pam rode on the neck of our elephant, named Zoe, with me in the seat on her back. She seemed very hungry as she wanted to stop and eat quite often.

When we were done, Pam fed an elephant a basket of bananas, they were eaten very quickly.

We also rented a pair of scooters rode around and went snorkeling. It's good to be able to get away from all we have going on at home. The hotel that we stayed at was on Salad Beach called Salad Hut. It's a great place, we had a beautiful air conditioned cabin just steps from the beach. http://www.saladhut.com/

There are a number of nice hotels and restaurants up and down the beach. We had dined at most of the places over nine days and enjoyed them all. Our favorite was on the south end of the beach up the hill. Cookies Resort had the best food that we had the entire trip and a great view as well. http://cookiessaladresort.resort.phanganbungalows.com/

Japan

2009-09-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

Pam and I got to Japan to spend a day with my uncle. We were lucky enough to get a couple of lay-flat business class seats on the united 747-400 from sfo to nrt. Almost no turbulence for the entire flight, late summer and fall is a nice time to fly.

My uncle, who is a retired electrical construction company owner, picked us up at narita baggage claim and took us to a hotel in Itaka, Japan. The hotel was the itaka hotel and on a river in a rice farming area north of narita. We rode a boat on the river and soaked at the hotel bathhouse.

The next day we toured the large standing budahh near narita and a very nice shinto shrine not too far away from the hotel.

We took the 6:30 p.m. united flight to Bangkok and checked into the queens garden hotel near the airport for the night.

San Francisco to Tokyo

2009-09-05T09:37:00.000-07:00

We're at San Francisco airport trying to fly space available to Tokyo. As airline employees that like to travel, we sometimes get stuck at an airport when the airplane is full. After factoring in extra nights at a hotel, it's sometimes cheaper to buy a full fare ticket. An advantage of space available is that you can change your mind about where and when you want to go. On this trip we are probably returning through Hong Kong instead of Tokyo but that may change if the flights out of hkg look like they're filling up.

We took the 6 a.m. flight out of Las Vegas giving us 4 hours between flights at sfo. We chose to take the early flight as the later flights didn't have as many open seats.

This three week trip will hopefully take us to Tokyo, Bangkok, Ko Phangan (island in the gulf of siam), Siem Reap (Angkor Wat, Cambodia), and Hong Kong before returning to Boulder City, Nevada.

The above shot is of a B777 parked at sfo scheduled to fly to Beijing.

Sandy Nelson and the Sin City Termites

2009-08-15T21:07:00.000-07:00

I've had the pleasure of getting to know our neighbor Sandy Nelson who is known for creating 'let there be drums' made popular in the 1960's. He's really fun as he has a great sense of humor and an interesting take on life.

Sandy's latest project is called Sandy Nelson and the Sin City Termites. We have posted a youtube video with the first track of his new album as the sound track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4URuE_iSX74

Snorkeling Maui

2009-08-05T22:35:00.000-07:00

Airline layovers are usually not long enough to allow scuba diving so it's been snorkeling on the Maui and Kona layovers. My friend Matt Ragan also of Boulder City and a pilot was vacationing on Maui with family, joined me one morning in the water near the makena boat ramp where a lot of kayak trips start.

We found a rocky cove with public access just north of the point near the boat launching area. Swam out to the five caves turtle town reefs that are popular with tourists. We only spotted one turtle but there were lots of fish, most interesting was a snowflake eel and barracuda.

I later read that if we wanted to see a shark this would be a good place. We didn't see any sharks, maybe next time.

Snorkeling in Hawaii

2009-04-17T16:19:00.000-07:00

Hawaii is a great place to snorkel and I've been going out every chance I get. Last week near Kona we spotted a dozen or so sea turtles (honu in Hawaiian) while snorkeling. The local kayak operator wouldn't rent us kayaks due to the offshore winds so we swam out and had a great time anyway.

Grand Canyon West

2009-03-03T17:07:00.001-08:00

This Saturday was the 21st anniversary of the opening of Grand Canyon West, the Hualapai Tribe's Grand Canyon viewing area on the west rim. My wife Pam who does some work with the Hualapai Tribe was invited to celebrate with them and I was allowed to tag along. It was an honor for us to join them in this celebration of a very spectacular and popular part of the Grand Canyon.

Pam's co-workers drove a company vehicle for two and a half hours to get to Grand Canyon West, we flew the super cub. Although the cub is one of the slowest airplanes ever built, it only took 36 minutes from Boulder City. The airport is very nice with a long paved runway and a cut out in the special use airspace.

A new road to west rim is being built and should shorten the drive considerably. It's worth the drive as the view from the rim is known worldwide for being incredible. We went out on the skywalk and had pictures taken sitting on the glass. If you have a problem with heights, there's steel below the glass on either side that we noticed a number of people walking over. We were happy to walk on the glass as it's very thick and looked safe.

A number of other tribes from around the country came to celebrate with them, some of them were dancers in full traditional costumes. Some of the dancing was very athletic and we enjoyed seeing them perform.

MDA

2009-02-19T16:26:00.000-08:00

Just finished a stint in the mda lockup, didn't make bail but got more than halfway there. I'm a bit hoarse after running a full battery down on my mobile phone.

As someone that feels less than comfortable asking people for money, my thinking changed after meeting two youngsters that have muscular dystrophy, strength was developed to start calling for donations. Both are named Josh and were very pleasant to be with.

The worst physical problem for me is some back pain, after today no more whining about it. It would be tough to be in a body that doesn't cooperate with what we want.

Got a lot of small donations that were very generous considering the current economic climate.

The following link is to the donation page: https://joinmda.org/2009bouldercity/lasjim

Cold in Omaha

2008-12-23T11:54:00.001-08:00

It's winter in Omaha, Nebraska I'm visiting family for the holidays before going back to work in San Francisco the 26th. It's been very cold here, well below zero F, with lots of snow. It's fun learning how to drive in the snow and ice again. It would be great to be assigned a Hawaii trip on the 26th after freezing in the midwest this week.

I've put together a video of a sailplane flight this summer that took me from Tonopah, Nevada up the Monitor Valley, to Wheeler Peak, to Mt. Jefferson, Boundary Peak, then back to Tonopah Airport. If I had thought about the Utah boundary being so near Wheeler Peak, would have flown a little farther east so that the flight would have been over three states crossing Nevada twice. The lift was awesome that day, cloud base very high, although I've had longer flights, it was one of the most fun trips of my gliding life.

Kayaking in Black Canyon, Colorado River below Hoover Dam

2008-11-26T16:09:00.000-08:00

The first image was taken at Boy Scout Canyon, Nevada on the Colorado River a couple of miles below Hoover Dam. The second image is at a nice camping beach near mile marker 60 a few miles below Hoover Dam.

In the winter, when the gliding is not very good, we paddle our kayaks and go on camping trips often to the hot springs on the Colorado River below Hoover Dam. The hot springs are really nice in the cool winter air and not too far from Las Vegas. Although I guide trips for Desert Adventures most anytime, our personal trips into Black Canyon are in the winter.

The Colorado River is great this time of year as there are three sets of useable hot springs within a few miles below Hoover Dam. You can easily hike to two of the hot springs, Boy Scout Canyon is most easily accessed by boat. This section of the Colorado River is an easy paddle as it's mostly flat water, many new paddlers make the 11 mile trip to Willow Beach, Arizona from Hoover Dam almost everyday. It's also a popular trip with boy scouts in canoes.

Launching from Willow Beach doesn't require a permit but if you want to paddle downstream you need a permit to launch from Hoover Dam. You can get one by calling Desert Adventures at 702-510-4746, www.kayaklasvegas.com or email at info@kayaklasvegas.com

There is a limit of 45 boats per day at the Hoover Dam launch site and Saturdays usually sell out sometimes 6 months in advance as the park service only books permits 6 month into the future. The $13 fee isn't refundable but the day can be changed if done before the trip date.

Paddling upstream is possible and regularly done, it can be a long paddle if they're letting a lot of water out of Hoover Dam. The good news is that there are numerous places to take a break and or camp and you don't have to do the 8 miles in one day.

Soaring the Great Basin ASH26E Video

2008-10-31T16:25:00.000-07:00

I'm in Hawaii getting ready to fly to Denver, Colorado tonight. Walked the beach for a while, tried to go paddle an outrigger but after waiting for over an hour there were no other customers so returned to the hotel to get some rest before going to work. They offered to round up some friends to go paddling but I didn't want to put them through the trouble. People in Hawaii are great.

Walking in the warm air here made me think of last summer in the great basin. So here's a short video of flying the ASH26E out of Tonopah. The clouds last summer were really high as they looked well above when leveling out at 17,000 feet to cruise.

After School

2008-10-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

I'm in Kansas City on a layover after finishing ground and simulator school in Denver. We fly with an instructor for our first couple of trips until we both feel comfortable with the way I'm flying the airplane. The physical part of flying a new airplane is something that we pick up fast, in this part of the airline business we all have a lot of experience.

The most time consuming issues are working with customers, fellow employees (i.e. flight attendants, customer service, maintenance), air traffic control, and the weather. It seems like there's always something going on as there are a lot of rules to be followed. In spite of the many problems our employees have had they are still very professional and great to work with.

Training was very intense and it feels great to be done and having life return to normal, if an airline pilots life can be called normal. It'll be nice to spend some time at home with my wife Pam and our three dogs.

Today we fly to Denver then Seattle. I'm really looking forward to our Honolulu trip next week. I really love Hawaii, maybe a little biased as that's where my high school is. The people are friendly, the food is great, the weather can't be beat. How can you do better than that?

Dreaming of Soaring

2008-10-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

In the middle of work and school, I've been tormented by the sight of beautiful high based cloud streets perfect for long glider flights. It's difficult to concentrate on the tasks at hand with such distractions.

Sometimes you get lots of clouds in Central Nevada, the 302 glide computer (top middle) is showing 16,133 feet msl, this weather is common here, this summer the bases were usually much higher than on this day. On this 760 km flight, the distance to Tonopah is showing 61.2 nautical miles to the southeast. This shot was taken while flying slow under this cloud to climb a bit just before speeding up for the jump to the next cloud.

Can't complain too much had a great summer.

Tehachapi to Tonopah (the non song version)

2008-09-07T08:57:00.001-07:00

Today I'm in Tonopah, Nevada. Got here yesterday by flying my glider from Tehachapi in the dust devil dash. The dash is a straight out race held every year the weekend after labor day. While , as they say in Hawaii talking story with some old friends, the line up for tows got very long. Went and got the glider out and ended up last in line for a tow.

The lift was very good by the time I got flying and pretty quickly went to 14,ooo feet just south of the gliderport. Flew to the ridge just west of kelso Valley and climbed to 16,000 feet or so. Didn't hit anything until the ridge just west of Inyokern then worked my way along the eastern edge of the sierra nevada mountains.

Near olancha peak the lift wasn't very strong so went west into the mountains a bit to fly under the clouds. It wasn't all that strong there either but climbed to a little less than 16,000 again. Speaking with Pat Rusette (ASW-20) on the radio thought I heard him say the inyo mountains were good but he actually said that they were not good stay on the sierra. Jumped to the inyos and had a slow trip to westguard pass, from there the lift was very strong to boundary peak.

Headed south for a few miles then flew to Silver Peak, Nevada where I climbed back up to 14,000 feet again and headed for Tonopah. The edge of the north side of the valley with the large lithium mine had me descending at 5 to 6 knots, this went on for it seemed an eternity, zig zagged back and forth trying to get out of the sink thinking that I might be flying along a line of sink. When abut 20 miles out of Tonopah airport got out of the sink and made and easy glide to the airport.

Paul Robinson and his crew Wyatt were derigging his 304cz, we met up in town at the best western and had dinner at the mexican restaurant. I keep a travel trailer in Tonopah in the summer as I really enjoy flying there. My shortest flight of the six that are counted for the olc this year was 660 km. Had a 760 km flight that didn't count as the flight recorder failed. Had that flight been good on the recorder my shortest flight would have been just a few km under 700. With the really good weather and a bunch of great pilots this only got me to 31st in the traditional olc and 10th on the fai olc in the U.S.

Labor day weekend soaring at mountain valley airport Tehachapi, California

2008-09-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

Twin grob over golden hills

For Labor Day weekend, we drove to Tehachapi, California to fly gliders and hike the southern end of the sierra nevada mountains. There is a sailplane homebuilders workshop at the mountain valley gliderport in Tehachapi every year at this time. Met up with a number of old friends that I hadn't seen for some time including Larry and Jane who run the airport. We stayed with our friends Jim and Misti.

Jeff Byard's TG

The weather for soaring was good on Saturday with flights up into the owens valley area and back. We got there too late to take advantage of the weather, rigged and tied down the glider planning to fly on Sunday. The wind really blew on Sunday and we mostly flew the Tehachapi convergence, some wave, and an occasional thermal for a two hour flight. It's amazing that any thermal held together well enough to be useable in the wind. The 302 was showing 29 knots from the west most of the day, the lift was strong and easy to work. The problem was that I could only get to 9200 feet and never left the valley.

Tehachapi from ASH-26E

Most of my flights this year have been in good soaring weather and I had mostly been flying straight. I've had this ship for less than a year so it was good to learn a little more about flying the ASH-26 in the varied conditions of the Tehachapi Valley. Seems that every glider model has it's own personality and it takes me a season to learn how to fly it well.

The soaring on Monday didn't look too good on the forecast so we drove around the mountains to the north of the gliderport. Helped a young couple with a baby get to a auto repair shop near Lake Isabella after we came upon them in their broken down car. Had a great soak at remington h0t springs then back to Tehachapi.

We had dinner with our friend Misti at a very nice Thai restaurant in Tehachapi. After the great meal, we picked up the glider trailer and towed it home to Boulder City. The glider was left tied down at mountain valley so that I could enter the dust devil dash the next Saturday. Will be hitching a ride from Bakersfield Airport with my friend Oscar after he gets off work. We'll see if it was wise to take the trailer home a week before the race.

Ruby Marsh

2008-08-28T11:35:00.000-07:00

In Early August Pam and I traveled to the ruby marsh for some camping, hiking, paddling, and birding. Our truck must have been a strange sight traveling across the middle of the desert with two 17 foot long sea kayaks on top. I've wanted to paddle the marsh for a long time, having flown sailplanes and driven by the place a few times. Pam paddled there a couple of years ago and had a wonderful time.

The day before arriving at the marsh we hiked to liberty pass from the trailhead at Lamoille Canyon, an incredible experience, but that's another story in itself. We drove through Harrison Pass from Lamoille to the campground on the west side of the ruby marsh, pitched our tent then went paddling.

The Ruby Mountains look like a slightly smaller version of the Sierra Nevada and therefore a spectacular sight. Below the tree line the mountains are forested with pine trees and brush, running streams flowing from the snow fields in glacier carved valleys. At the lower elevations there is a transition to more a more typical great basin desert look with junipers and pinon pines.

The Ruby Marsh is fed by the snow melt although there is much less water than in years past. There are about 12,000 acres of marshland administered by the fish and wildlife service with over 200 species of birds.

Toward the south end of the marsh, there are a lot of tall grasses, tall enough to obscure your view from a small boat. It would be easy to get lost there. There are some marker poles there but it would be best to bring a gps as well as a compass in case the gps fails. There were many small birds in the grasses, we really enjoyed the baby coots that swam around the edge of the grass looking at us in our kayaks. Northern harriers were constantly flying above probably looking for baby coots.

The next day we paddled from the brown dike with our friends Mike and Sherry Payne who drove up from Las Vegas with their kayaks to join us. The great part of paddling from the dike is that there's no place for motorboats to launch and we had that part of the marsh to ourselves. If you paddle there between June 15 and the end of July only human powered and electric powered boats are allowed there for a very peaceful experience. The first part of the year boats aren't allowed to protect the nesting birds.

The water on the South side of the brown dike is more open, no boats allowed North of the dike. There were numerous American pelicans, some grebes, egrets, and most fun of all terns. We also paddled near a few muskrats, Mike started to sing the song muskrat love, unfortunately for Pam she couldn't get the song out of her head for a day. It probably didn't help that I kept reminding her about the song every now and then.

The weather was excellent, good to escape the Boulder City/Las Vegas area summer heat, and we all had a great time. We will probably run this trip next June and July through Desert Adventures, www.kayaklasvegas.com

Jim

Sydney, Australia

2008-08-12T09:20:00.000-07:00

Currently, I'm in Sydney, Australia, we had a nice flight over not too many thunderstorms to dodge, usually there are many of them between lax and syd. It's cold here in the winter the temps are a lot like what we get in boulder city, nevada during the winter. It's actually nice to get away from the Southern Nevada summer and cool off for a day. We stay at the novotel at darling harbour. I sometimes go to a shop near spit bridge and rent a kayak to paddle around, there are many nice beaches to paddle to.

There's a mall with a food court next to our hotel where there's a great thai food place. The eating area is also open to darling harbour and has seagulls and ibis scrounging for food outside and sometimes inside the building. I drink regular soda when not in the states, they taste better here as they use sugar instead of corn syrup.

I'm looking forward to getting home as there isn't much of the gliding season left and it would be great to get a few more long flights in before our gliders turn into expensive plastic art for the winter.

This will be one of my last trips to australia for a while as I'll be switching to the 757/767 in late September. The flying then will be closer to home. I really love australia and will miss flying here but wont miss the jet-lag.

Gliding in Tonopah

2008-08-06T20:39:00.000-07:00

I'm in Tonopah, Nevada getting ready to fly my glider tomorrow. The forecast is for good lift but there will be strong winds. Contrary to popular belief, gliders don't need wind to fly, when flying cross country in thermals wind can actually be bad as they break up the thermals and make it difficult to make much progress across the ground into the wind.

My glider is an ASH-26E motorglider so I can self launch, self retrieve was one of the reasons that I bought the ship but with the density altitude on the ground above 8000 feet getting back across high mountain passes is questionable at best so once airborne I fly it like my old pure glider, an LS-6, I made sure to have glide to a safe landing area.

The gliding this time of the year, August, involves moist unstable air from the monsoon in the southwestern U.S. It's good to fly from an airport at the edge of it, if you're too deep within the monsoon you get thunderstorms and rain and very little flying. It looks like Tonopah will be a good place to fly from for the next couple of days, it was very good today but I didn't get here soon enough to rig and fly, the glider is ready for tomorrow.

Central Nevada has a lot of high terrain with valley elevations above 5000 feet. The image included with this posting is of a mountain in the Ruby Range East of Elko. The mountain is high enough to still have snow on it in August. At www.ssa.org under racing/online contest (olc), you can see where gliders are flying on a daily basis and even create a google earth file to look at the routing.

Jim D

May 2008 Japan Trip, Nagoya, Nagano, Goshiki Onsen

2008-06-25T13:22:00.000-07:00

I had just gotten back from Hong Kong on Friday afternoon into Boulder City, did some chores, repacked the suitcase and flew to San Francisco with Pam to catch the 11 a.m. flight to Nagoya, Japan.

We got to Nagoya about a half-hour ahead of schedule, took the train to Nagoya city to catch train to Nagano, where the winter olympics were held a number of years ago. Nagano is in the Japan Alps, and is qute beautiful. We got some money out of the atm at the 7-11 next to the train station, walked over to the Nagano Dentetsu Line for the train to Suzuka. I speak conversational Japanese but am illiterate. The further you get into the countryside the less you see signs in English. I asked for help in purchasing a train ticket for us. Later I noticed that there was a button on the touch screen train ticket machine that was labeled English. Touching that button would have turned the screen to English and I wouldn't have needed any help at all!

The ride to Suzuka took more that a half-hour as we had gotten on the local train instead of the express. None of the maps on the train were in English so it was not a bad thing to stop at every station. Upon arrival at Suzuka we found that the last bus to the hot spring inn had gone. Tired and hungry we walked into a yakitori restaurant for dinner. Yakitori is chicken on a skewer cooked with yakitori sauce, very good. A local man sitting at the table next to us bought us a bottle of sake which I enjoyed as Pam was not feeling too good. He called the hotel on his mobile phone to tell them that we would be a while. After dinner we took a cab which cost 6700 yen, about $65 dollars.

Once at the hotel we were greeted by a 89 year old man, who tried to help me with my bag. It was pretty heavy so it wasn't hard form me to convince him to let me carry it. It turns out that he's in pretty good shape as he hikes the mountains for some of the plants that they serve as part of the meals at Goshiki Onsen, an older hot springs resort in a mountain gorge next to a stream. The green trees that surrounded the place were a welcome sight for a couple of people that have spent much of they're lives in the deserts of Nevada and California. We were shown to our room, a beautiful traditional Japanese tatami room. We were tired but decided to soak in the hot pools before going to sleep.

The outdoor pool is closed late at night so we went to the indoor section. They're housed in an old wooden building next to the main hotel. Like the structure of the building the walls, floors and tubs are all wood, very relaxing. There are four tubs, two very small ones that would only hold two people, each in it's own room. There were also two larger tubs, we were the only people there and soaked in one of the larger ones for a while. There was the sound of the stream rushing by just outside the building for a very soothing and relaxing experience. There was a full moon that night but it couldn't be seen with the clouds of an approaching storm hanging low in the valley. The water was very hot, we mixed in some cold water from the tap to get it to a comfortable temperature.

We had a very restful sleep that night. Shortly after waking we were served a very nice breakfast much of which were mountain plants collected from the local area by the old man. We then soaked in the outdoor stone tub next to the stream, it's very large so the water temperature is very hot near where the water enters the pool. It was perfect in the middle. The sound of the river flowing by and the wind in the trees was wonderful. During the middle of the day the sun broke through the clouds and shined on the green forest covered mountain slopes next to the hot springs.

We were also served dinner in our room, mostly traditional Japanese food such as tempura, rice, and sashimi. The food was cooked with great care, delicious, and beautifully arranged.

On the last day of our stay at goshiki onsen it was rainy with not as much wind. We were the only guests and had the large outdoor pool next to the river to ourselves and didn't mind the rain, weekdays are a good time to travel in Japan. After breakfast was served we had one last soak before checking out. The hotel staff drove us to the train station and we were in Nagano in no time.

Goshikin onsen is a great place to visit and we would recommend it to anyone wanting a relaxing hot springs experience.

Sleepless in Hong Kong

2008-05-15T11:04:00.000-07:00

It's 2 a.m. in Hong Kong and I'm wide awake. We leave the hotel in a little more than eight hours. My room on the 28th floor of a hotel next to the convention center has a great view of Victoria Harbour across to the Kowloon Side. Earlier in the night the city was brightly lit, including probing green laser beam, but at this hour it's pretty dark, more like any other large city.

Haven't eaten since lunch, may walk around and see if anyplace is open at this hour. Lunch was at a Japanese style Chinese noodle place called Ajisen in Wanchai. Interesting mix of Chinese noodles, ramen, and some traditional Japanese food such as tonkatsu. The seafood noodle soup was outstanding. If you like to eat, Hong Kong is a great place with many excellent restaurants.

In November we had an amazing thanksgiving seafood dinner in Sai Kung. My wife Pam was on this trip, we went kayaking With Paul Etherington at www.kayak-and-hike.com great trip. We paddled out to an island where we hiked up a hill for a nice view. The photo is of Paul showing us tourists how to paddle.

Should be a good night for walking in Hong Kong, it's not as hot as last week. Last week we flew to Singapore where it was extremely hot and muggy, beautiful city but didn't walk around too much.

Should be a quick trip home to Boulder City, Nevada, via LAX and LAS, as the jet stream is across the middle of the North Pacific. We had to fly over Alaska, Russia, and China to avoid it on the way out yesterday.

Next week Japan.