Descent of Speed

I travel a lot, and I spend a lot of time looking for hotel rooms. Sometimes I don’t care too much, I just need a bed and a shower. When I spent three months travelling through Europe I usually just stopped at the local tourist office and found a hotel. They would find my a cheap, decent one near the city center. Of course there are times when I want a nicer place to relax in, without spending too much.

When trying to find a decent room for a decent price I tend to rely on user review websites like trip advisor. There really isn’t much else to use, but the reviews at these sites are almost worthless. Once when I was trying to find a cheap hotel in London, most of the reviews went on and on about how run down the hotel is, or how cheap it is. Guys, you are spending $50 for a hotel in the middle of London, what did you expect?

A couple of friends of mine started a website that they hope will solve this problem. The site is oyster.com [Oyster Hotel Reviews]. The site offers professional reviews of hotels, with untouched photos. The reviews are quite good. I went to Miami shortly before the site was launched. I found a hotel, that I wouldn’t go back to again, based on reviews from trip advisor. The review on oyster.com was spot on.

Unfortunately their biggest problem is a lack of reviews. Since the reviews are done by professional reporters it takes time to visit hotels in various cities. Last time I looked they had Miami, parts of the Caribbean, Las Vegas, New York and they were working on Hawaii. It will take some time to extend their coverage to many of the major tourist destinations, but I hope they get a chance. The site will really be worth it for someone planning a nice vacation.

While many people consider Labor Day to be the end of summer, it officially ends this weekend. While I still have a few more weeks before my Summer Vacation ends, I’ve had a tremendous summer. I visited 10 countries (adding two new countries), saw the Canadian Rockies, Niagra Falls, and Stonehenge. I went to seven races, podiumed in three (in buttboard) and won the consolation in three others. I will most likely finish the year in the top 4.  I spent some time with some amazing friends, and had a blast.

Now its time to clean my house up and return to work!

I’ve been home for 3 days, so I went and saw 3 movies, to catch up on my summer movies. Of course all three movies were sequels. On my trip I also saw three movies, one was a sequel and two were based on tv series!

Bourne Ultimatum (3): This was probably the best of the three, and a continuation of the storyline, not just a sequel. They did a decent job filling in missing pieces for those that didn’t see, or didn’t remember the previous two movies. The action was pretty good, although not quite as good as the first two. I wouldn’t mind seeing another installment.

Harry Potter (5): I realize that this is the 5th story in a 7 story arc, but the story is really getting lame. Each movie is worse than the previous one. This last one added nothing to the overall arc. And the movie itself was pretty poor. The last two better pick up. I haven’t read any of the books, but it seems to me you could skip this movie and the entire series would still make sense. There was some good special effects though.

Rush Hour 3: I enjoy watching Jackie Chan, and while this movie had some funny moments it was probably the weakest of the three movies. The best part of the movie was the closing credits. Seriously, the outtakes they shown were absolutely hilarious.

 Well now I need to pack and head off to the Great White North and Great Britan.

I was reading an article about a Continental Flight with lavatory problems. This particular article happened to be the number one search result. It was written by KUTV a Salt Lake City CBS Station, with an Amsterdam byline. The story is about a flight from Amsterdam to New Jersey. There were some problems with the lavatories, and the plane made an emergency pitstop in Ireland. Apparently they failed to repair the problem, and well things were bad for the remainder of the trip.

What I don’t get, is King-TV a Seattle New station is the refference for this story! WHY is a SEATTLE News Station the main report for a cross ATLANTIC trip that ends in New Jersey? Doesn’t New Jersey have any of their News Stations?

The KING5 Article interviewed a Washington State man that travelled on the flight. I looked at a few other stories and sites, and KING was usually referred as the one that broke the story! I don’t know if news travels fast, or if it was just a slower news day in Seattle than it was in New Jersey.

Last Sunday I flew back to Seattle from Boston. I took JetBlue, mainly because JetBlue provides every seat with 36 channels of DirecTv.

I was looking forward to watching Game 2 of the NBA Finals, that would take up about half the flight.

I turned the tv on. First channel was ESPN, followed by ESPN 2, ESPN Classic and ESPN News. This was looking very promising! Then there was Fox, CBS, NBC. It must be next. We moved on to CNBC, and a couple of other news channels. The bottom 13 channels was rounded out with The Weather Channel, and then the Flight Map (which is very cool)

But NO ABC! I flipped through all 36 channels about a dozen times. I kept hoping that I somehow missed ABC. Turns out, for whatever reason, JetBlue doesn’t carry ABC! They carry 4 ESPN channels, but not ABC.

There must be some contract issue, but why would ABC allow them to carry ESPN and not ABC? Why would ABC say, sure they can watch CBS and NBC, but we don’t want them to watch OUR network!

Well no Game 2 for me.

Well I finally decided to join the Blogosphere. Its going to take me a bit to get this customized to the way I want it.

I want to write some luge articles, I’ll blog on my travels, mention some of my non luge related activies, and talk about general everyday stuff.

 I will continue to post my pictures/stories of the luge events in the normal place. The blog will just be a supplement, a way for everyone to add comments.

I’ll also come up with some articles on thing like luge construction, safety, how to make brakes, and many other things.

I also need to come up with a better name!

 Welcome! Stay a while, stay forever!