World Record

By Richard Nikoley | July 30, 2006 |
Austrian Manfred Ruhmer has again set a world record in freeflight. For years, he was the unbeatable world champion in hang-gliding cross-country competitions (shortest time to goal, often in excess of 100 miles per round, 4-6 daily rounds in a row). Since he thoroughly and indisputably dominated and conquered that world, he turned his attentions a couple of years ago to foot-launched light sailplanes. He flies a Swift Light, a lighter design variation of the…Read More

Nothing New Here

By Richard Nikoley | July 29, 2006 |
Warren Weyer isn't too happy about a new Arizona ballot initiative designed to get more trailer trash than ever before out to the voting booths come election day. Look on the bright side, Warren; as concerns voting, it just makes explicit what has always been implicit.Read More

Quick Photo Note

By Richard Nikoley | July 29, 2006 |
I figured it would be better to organize my several hundred photos of the Europe trip first, and then I could refer and link to them as I write more about the trip. I've had a Club Photo account for years, but I hate it (too slow, especially since I pay for it) and haven't bothered to look into alternatives. Organizing the myriad photos on three or four computers into one cohesive whole is always…Read More

Well…

By Richard Nikoley | July 28, 2006 |
...I've got no problem with embedding at all, and think it's one of the cleverest ways to deliver video clips yet. So here you go: Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life Clip 1 (Intro) Clip 2 (Interview with Mike Wallace) Clip 3 (Conclusion)Read More

Word

By Richard Nikoley | July 28, 2006 |
What more can I say? I'll say this, though. There needs to be more effort on everyone's part -- from the reporters to the documentarians -- to get names and name them in bold. I just love the idea of some of this shame sticking (thanks to Google) for years and perhaps decades to come. Maybe, just maybe, when these cops start googling their own names and the names of co-cops and find themselves in…Read More

One Less Idiot

By Richard Nikoley | July 27, 2006 |
Yea, I'm going against my oath not to blog political stuff until my Eurotrek reflections and photos are done. So shoot me. Anyway, who said this? "At this point, I rationally chose to abandon the Leftist philosophy of my youth, because it no longer adequately explained how the world really worked. With my Leftist interpretation of the world now shattered, I looked around for alternative explanations for making sense of the world. "I stumbled into…Read More

Eurotrek 2006 – Wrap

By Richard Nikoley | July 26, 2006 |
It's a wrap. Got back yesterday to SFO about 12:30 a.m. Home by about 2 a.m. We had been informed by phone and email that it was 100 deg. F in our condo. I'd left the A/C on, set to 82, so that means my intermittent A/C issues aren't resolved in spite of several things I've done. Dave, my super-brother, was good enough to head over to the condo about 6 p.m. to follow a…Read More

Eurotrek 2006 – Bumped

By Richard Nikoley | July 24, 2006 |
First time ever in all my travels going back over 20 years. We've been bumped and are sitting in wait at Charles de Gaulle, our non-stop to San Francisco having departed. Instead of arriving back on the west coast at noon on Monday, it's now another 5 hours until we leave Paris, on to Washington-Dulles, two-hour layover, and then on to San Fran -- arriving about 12 hours later, at midnight. What fun. The upside…Read More

Eurotrek 2006 – Update

By Richard Nikoley | July 20, 2006 |
We're in Florence, as the photo of Brunelleschi's Dome (Wikipedia article) I sent from my camera phone attests. I got lots of photos, which I'll organize and publish once I return. My last update, over the weekend, was from Nice, which we used as a base to explore the area by car -- Canes, Antibes, Villefranche-Sur-Mer, Monaco, etc. We dined in Villefranche that night. One of my favorite places in the south of France going…Read More

Eurotrek 2006 – Now What?

By Richard Nikoley | July 15, 2006 |
I just now realized that the entry right below this one seems to have gotten itself unpublished after I'm sure I published it. So, if you were one I'd sent a link out to and it didn't work, it's there now, though it applies to what was going on three days ago. Franky, this is a piss-poor travel log. I'd had grand designs of publishing along the way, but I think that desire was based…Read More

Eurotrek 2006 – Où Sommes-Nous?

By Richard Nikoley | July 12, 2006 |
Where are we? Arles, France, at the Bouches-du-Rhône (Rhône river delta). Here's the Wiki-article as well. We headed out from Cadaques, Spain yesterday, hugging the rocky coast, but arrived in France pretty quickly. We then hit a stop or two with the French side being roughly the equivalent geography. That changed pretty quickly as we got into the plains, river deltas, small inland seas and such. Boring. So -- and this is the point of…Read More

Eurotrek 2006 – Week One of Three

By Richard Nikoley | July 10, 2006 |
We're right here now; Cadaques, Spain. I'm quite surprised how much I've been enjoying Spain -- at least this northeastern portion of it: Catalonia. I've got a lot, a lot to write about -- going back to Paris, actually -- but it's been go go go and when we've stopped I've not felt like writing. I had good opportunity back in Sant Pol, with killer WiFi, but opted to spend the day at the hotel…Read More

Eurotrek 2006 – Interlude

By Richard Nikoley | July 8, 2006 |
Been driving hard. Once we left Paris, late in the afternoon of Thursday, the 6th, it quickly became apparent that nothing would suffice except the beauty, peace, and wondrously calming environment of the Med. Like this: We made it to Toulouse that night, scrounging a hotel across from the train station at 1 a.m. The next morning we continued on, over the high Pyrenees, through Andorra, and on to Barcelona. It was getting late and…Read More

Eurotrek 2006 – Day One

By Richard Nikoley | July 4, 2006 |
Random bits So the flight was a little over 10 hours, not 9 as I'd been thinking. I never sleep on airplanes, and it's always odd when arriving in a completely different time zone to just continue on without the benefit of a refreshing sleep. It was hot and muggy in Paris as we arrived at around noon of the 4th. Got through immigration, got the car, and then got lost in the 8th &…Read More

Independence Day

By Richard Nikoley | July 4, 2006 |
I actually read about some well-known conservative blogger nitwit referencing the U.S. Constitution -- the document that rescinded American independence -- in celebration of this day. Anyway, here (in case you've never read the actual founding document of America...).Read More