Yak Flying over Tokoroa (but Only Just "Over")

I'm finally getting a chance to do some Yak flying. Our syndicate chief pilot, John Parker, has been monopolising the plane in practice for the Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow. He's back now and I'm putting in some time.

I'm scared of heights so this picture shows the preferred altitude for cross country flights.

BTW, No it isn't me doing the flying... I'm not that good! (yet)

San Francisco Stopover 2006

On my way home from BrainShare in Utah, I had an overnight stop in "The City on the Bay", San Francisco. I was determined to do all the tourist traps I had seen on TV and movies over the years. I arrived early on Saturday morning during some grotty weather. Luckily for me the showers soon cleared and I was able to enjoy the city in sunshine. I took a bus tour which purported to show the "City Highlights". The double decker bus was crowded but the views were good. The main reason for choosing this tour is that it crossed the Golden Gate Bridge.

This view is looking back across the bridge towards the city of San Francisco. The image was kindly snapped by a couple from Connecticut I met up with (I swapped seats with the wife so that they could sit together) who were very familiar with New Zealand as they travelled regularly to visit friends in Akaroa. The bus driver was an amateur poet and writer named "Welvin" who regaled us with his poems and pitched us to buy his book about San Francisco (US$19.95 with autograph included free - I didn't buy one). If you go to San Francisco, go to the hills called "Twin Peaks". You get great views of the city from there. Unfortunately, my photos just show a hazy blob of city in the background.

The other big tourist destination in S.F. is Alcatraz, so I booked a tour for the Sunday morning. The day dawned fine and cool. perfect weather for a boat cruise to a prison (which is now just a tourist attraction run by the National Park Service). Getting out on the Bay was well worth it. Got to see the cells of Al Capone and "The Birdman". They were just cells, no biggie. The self-guided audio tour was well worth it though, telling the story of Alcatraz up until it was closed. It was quite neat seeing everyone looking in the same directions and knowing what part of the tour they were up to.

NB. You'll notice a fair few photos in my blog featuring my ugly mug extra large in the forground. As a solo traveller I developed a one handed self-protrait mode of photography so that I wasn't constantly bugging strangers to take photos for me. I need longer arms to get more scene and less me.

Other places I visited were "Fisherman's Wharf" where a colony of sea lions hang out at Pier 39 (just behind all the restaurants). I suspect that even though it is illegal to feed the sea-lions, the restaurants do it anyway to keep the sea-lions there (and attract the hungry crowds who come to watch these pinnipeds at play... mostly sleeping actually). You can see the Golden Gate Bridge in the background if you look closely. I recommend the "Seafood Chowder served in a Sourdough Loaf" speciality dish at Fisherman's Wharf. Yum.

I spent most of Saturday night trying to catch up with some other Kiwi BrainShare attendees who were also staying in SF for a few days, but had no luck. They didn't get my messages left at their hotel until Sunday. So I ended up dining alone (sob..)

A trip to S.F. wouldn't be complete without a ride on the cable-cars. (Ding!-Ding!). The streets of San Francisco (a Quinn Martin production) were layed out in a square grid regardless of the terrain. Therefore there are a lot of long, steep, straight streets. In NZ we would just build roads to the contours of the terrain (e.g. Wellington). To navigate these streets they had to invent systems like the cable-cars. I walked from Fisherman's Wharf back to Union Square once just to show how tough I was. I was knackered at the top of the hill and kind of staggered down the other side. After that one time, I stuck to the public transport.

Another well known feature of SF is Lombard St. This is a street with one section near the top of the hill being so steep that they had to build switchbacks to allow horse-carts to negotiate it. I don't think it is quite as steep as Baldwin Street in Dunedin, but it would be close. On Sunday, it seemed to be a very popular pastime to drive down the twisty section of Lombard St.

After finishing up my touristy adventures, I shuttled out to the airport allowing 3 hours to get organised for my flight. The airport was pretty much deserted and I was through the check-in and security procedures in 30 minutes. Wow! I will never travel through LAX again if SFO is an option. It was just so much better than the zoo that was LA. I also met up with yet another group of Kiwi BrainShare attendees who had also chosen to travel home via SF. This gave me someone to talk to for the next 2 hours before boarding the Air NZ 777 fo the trip home. I had a row of three seats all to myself so I actually got some sleep and arrived home at 5:30am in good old NZ. Cleared baggage, customs and immigration in 20 minutes. Excellent. Welcome Home.

Utah trip (BrainShare 2006)

Last week I returned from a 10-day trip to the United States, primarily to attend the annual Novell BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. I've never been to Utah before and all I knew was that it was the origin of the Mormon (Latter-Day-Saints) church. We have a well-known Mormon temple in Hamilton so I had at least an inkling of what the LDS church was all about.

After a 12 hour flight to Los Angeles via Air New Zealand, I arrived tired and haggard at LAX. During my 5 hour layover, I took a taxi (US$25) down to Venice Beach and took in the sights. The brisk sea breeze was quite refreshing and the lifeguard towers look just like they do on "Baywatch". The guard on duty didn't look anything like David Hasselhoff (or Pam Anderson, dammit).

I walked along the beach where there seemed to be a preponderance of blue surgical gloves abandoned in the sand (I didn't ask...) and globs of tar and oil. I stuck my hand in the Pacific Ocean so I could see if was any different on the eastern side. It wasn't.

Got on a short (1.5 hours) jet flight from LAX to Salt Lake City (first experience of shoe removal before boarding) and arrived after dark. I checked in to the Sheraton City Center hotel and dived into bed. I woke up the next morning to find that it had snowed overnight.

Luckily, Helen had just bought me a new possum-fur beanie and gloves just in case this happened and I appreciated the warmth.

I had a walk around downtown S.L.C. on the Sunday. Not much happens in that town on a Sunday. Perhaps we are all supposed to go to church or something.

There are all these statues around the big temple which are supposed to portray wholesome images of the joys of LDS church membership, but some of them are a bit creepy and all figures are distinctly whitebread if you know what I mean...

This one looked particularly funny in terms of the snow globs. The boy looks like a cotton-tail rabbit and the woman needs some famous NZ possum-fur nipple-warmers.

The conference itself was particularly well organised (with 6000 attendess, it has to be) and they just threw food and drink at you the whole time. I don't think I paid for any meals between arriving and departing which means my MasterCard bill was quite spartan for having been away for a week to an overseas location. I won't put in any images of the conference as the official ones are so much better than mine.

However the conference parties were a bit different. I partook of the oxygen bar at the "BrainWash" party. The gas was bubbled through all sorts of different "flavours" with different properties. Perhaps I'm just not in tune with my physiological responses but I didn't feel any different for having breathed any of the flavours of oxygen. Having the nasal-cannula stuck up your nostrils wasn't that comfortable either. It's not something I'd rave over but if you get the chance, give it a go... You never know, you might feel some "buzz"...

The weather did improve over the week and by Tuesday I was happily walking around in just a t-shirt (and trousers of course, hey, this is Salt Lake City, you know). The views of the Wasatch mountains became quite spectacular.

The conference session were mostly pretty good but aimed at a more infrastructural audience. Got to talk to a few product managers and learned some interesting stuff about future directions. However by day 4, I was ready to jump ship. So I took a trip to the Great Salt Lake itself.

I tasted the water and I can confirm it is very salty. Nothing lives in it except brine shrimp (AKA "Sea Monkeys" from the adverts at the back of those american comic books from the '60s & 70s)

That's enough of Utah.

Next stop, San Francisco...