There was this little blip of a typhoon down near the Phillippines before I left for Japan when I checked the weather report for the time I was going to be here. No sooner did I arrive did the typhoon pick up speed and power and make a bee-line for Okinawa and barrel headlong into the main islands. The rain it was pushing in front of it made today pretty much a wash for doing anything, so I hung out at the airport from after lunch. My flight isn’t until just before midnight, and it looks like that is about when the typhoon is supposed to be arriving in the Kantou area. Great. I hope I don’t get stuck here overnight! It’s starting to rain like a MF now, but I can still see across the waterway to the next adjacent part of the Tokyo waterfront.
Archive for the 'Travel' Category
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PITA free HND airport internet! At least it’s free though, unlike HNL. It took me about 45-minutes and nearly 20% of my battery life to figure out how it worked. Seems to be a little less buggy than the KIX free internet. Apparently a [space] is not a “one-bit character”…
The track on my GPS from yesterday wandering around in Roppongi, Shibuya, and Azabu looking for art museums while avoiding the suspicious glances of the high keisatsu presence looking for one of the fugitive Aum guys looks like a hanamaru mark. My tacti-geek TAD/Patagucci/Scarpa kit kept me comfortable in the heat though. It’s 90% chance of rain today, and 20C (Chris, I wish I had those softshell pants today!). My darned email gateway won’t let me through on this network for some reason – I’ll have to d!ck around with it later – but now it’s time to find breakfast.
Off to Tokyo this evening on Hawaiian Airlines. I get to see how their new Airbus equipment is like.
The Brown Tree Snake. Hated by many for good reason.
I found this guy on my last trip to Guam, it really creeped the crap outta me! We definitely do not want these things in Hawaii!
Once again, Nagoya’s Jiraiya is back at Shirokiya selling their ebi-tenmusu – mini musubi rice balls built around a small breaded shrimp ebi tenpura. For $7.95 USD plus tax you get six slightly-too-big-to-be-a-mouthful tenmusu and a scant pinch of kyarabuki (a tsukudani made from fuki, Petasites japonicus) – they’ve gotten pretty Chang with that. That’s about the going rate, since a pack of five at the Meibutsu Tenmusu Senjyuu at Nagoya Centrair is around 735-yen. The rice in the Jiraiya ones is a bit on the gummy side compared to Senjyuu, but that could be related to adapting to the loaner equipment in the temporary space. I do actually prefer the taste of the Senjyuu ones, but I’m not flying all the way to Nagoya on a whim for them! Continue reading ‘Jiraiya Tenmusu’
Friday took another day off and visited Antelope island. If your in Salt Lake City with nothing to do for a day and like outdoors & wildlife it’s worth checking out. It’s an island in the Great Salt Lake about an hours drive. Filled with geography and animals we don’t see in Hawaii. Arid, rocky, funky salt water. The shores awash with the dried up bodies of brine fly larvae. In our drive and the couple short hikes we did we managed to see the buffalo, which are hard to miss, mid sized bird of prey, some kind of field rodent, coyotes, antelope, deer, bunny, chukkers, seagulls. Continue reading ‘Antelope island’
Wednesday decided to take a break, or rather bodies decided for us. Visited Cabellas, REI, Salty Peaks, Hobby Lobby.
Yesterday we headed out to Powder Moutain again to pound the few more inches of snow they got. Not epic powder conditions, but way fun and nice stuff. There was still unridden lines to be found throughout the day. Snow showers through the day broke into sunny periods in the afternoon. maybe not so great for snow conditions, but made for pleasant & photogenic riding!
Looks like today maybe another rest day, our bodies cant keep up quite so well anymore, and there was no significant additional snow to make worth it.
Yesterday was a excellent day at Powder Mountain. Snowing, can’t see anything, but full of fluffy snow!
I think our karma from stopping in the morning to help extricate the civic that had run off the road payed off. The girl driver was unhurt & the car looked to be fine, but we did our good citizen deed.
Forgot to add the when we finally made it to Salt Lake & picked up our luggage at SLC airport, the top pocket zipper on my Dakine bag was blown open. Gone was my little first aid kit, packet of quick clog, and my tent & goretex patching kit. My board bag also blew out a section of the main zipper but luckily did not fully open, nothing lost from that.
Despite all this, we did make it to Solitude resort & had a good half day of riding. Not the best of conditions, but it was fun. We shall see today!