Japan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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