The fact that news of this probably has never reached you attests to what an impossibly distant and godforsaken place Bouvet Island is. Only a few dozen humans have ever left their footprints on it, and it’s a safe bet most of them would happily have passed on the honor.
But there is a small and obsessive group of people scheming, plotting, cajoling and ultimately trying to buy their way there. They are known as country collectors, and they spend their lifetimes journeying to the farthest and most obscure reaches of the globe, from Abkhazia to Umm Al Qaiwain, filling their passports with rare and exotic stamps. Bouvet Island is to them what Everest is to peak baggers, what the British Guiana 1c magenta is to philatelists, what the Apple Tree Girl 141X is to collectors of Hummel figurines.
Only a tiny handful of country collectors — precisely eight by one estimate, “not quite 20” by another — have ever managed to cross Bouvet off their lists. The most recent is a 40-year-old dot-com millionaire from San Francisco, Charles Veley, and he believes this, along with all his other peregrinations, qualifies him as the most well-traveled person in the history of the world.
Category: Travel
Airline Bankruptcies
Their problems were that they got caught in the headlights by fuel prices that went up a lot faster than they could adjust to quickly. True, both were in the process of getting their labor costs down – something that American, Continental, and United have already done. When jet-A went to over $2 a gallon, the immediate need was to conserve cash while labor and other cost reductions were achieved.
Lots of “experts” go into diatribes about how these legacy carriers have unsupportable cost structures and route systems, dating from the days of regulation in the 1970s. Sounds great, but it is more nonsense. It’s missed by these grand prognosticators – most of whom have never worked within the airline industry – that if oil had stayed right where it was at the beginning of last year, as most of us expected, these filings would not have taken place.
Ansel Adams’ Autumn Moon Arrives
As the moon rose in the evening sky, a crowd gathered at Glacier Point to relive an iconic scene captured by photographer Ansel Adams more than 50 years ago.
About 300 amateur photographers, astronomers and other spectators came Thursday to watch conditions align to repeat the scene in the famous Adams image “Autumn Moon.”
Astronomers nailed down the exact time and date that Adams snapped the photograph in Yosemite National Park in 1948 — and determined that the sun and moon would return to the same positions Thursday.
Road Trips: Dylan & Bono on Minnesota’s Highway 61
Back on the highway, Doc and I followed the Mississippi as it curved wide and muddy between skyscraping bluffs sculptured by glaciers and smoothed by wind and water. We passed through Wabasha, where posters remind visitors that the town was the setting for the “Grumpy Old Men” films and the National Eagle Center offers tips for birders who flock to the surrounding bluffs to watch bald eagles make their seasonal migrations.
At Lake City, where the Mississippi widens into Lake Pepin, strollers on a two-mile riverfront walkway can look out upon waters where an 18-year-old Ralph W. Samuelson is said to have “discovered” the sport of water skiing in 1922.
New Orleans Photos
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I last spent time in New Orleans in 2002 with several previous visits in the ’90’s. The place was in many ways beautiful, but I could always sense tension in the city. I’ve posted some photos from this visit here. A more recent set of photos, Five days with Katrina provides quite a contrast with my 2002 digital images.
We bid adieu to the Summer of 2005
Another Glorious Wisconsin Weekend
One of my Favorite Places: Mendocino, CA
The Road Not Taken
Sometimes, it pays to leave the Interstate for the Road Not Taken. Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County is well worth a visit. Life does not have to move at 100Mbps… Satellite view.
Northwest Machinist Strike: Well Laid Plans Kept Their Planes Flying
Over the last 18 months, the airline analyzed every job represented by the mechanics’ union at every airport and calculated the skills required to fix each of its planes. It then decided how many of those workers it actually needed and what kind of replacements it would require in the event of a strike.
Some differences between the airline’s old and new approaches began to appear.
Before the strike, union rules specified that only members of the mechanics’ union, known as AMFA, could deliver planes to airport gates. But on Saturday, the pilot of a Northwest 757 in Detroit, upon discovering his plane was not ready, hopped into a pickup truck and went to the hangar to fetch his plane, rather than keep crew and passengers waiting, airline officials said.
Meanwhile, members of the machinists’ union, which usually handles tasks like baggage handling and customer service, took on the task of cleaning Northwest’s cabins between flights at its hubs here and in Minneapolis, a job that was previously done by the mechanics’ union.
Northwest is the Dane County Regional Airport’s (Still without WiFi!) largest airline. More.