hilli.dk » USA/05

Las Vegas is a funny place

Hilli — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 08:38:35 +0000

Just wanted you to know :)

SeaWorld (San Diego) visit

Hilli — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 21:07:33 +0000

Americans must be picky about the weather. Fine by us, as we made it to the San Diego edition of SeaWorld on what probably is the only day this year with grey clouds, hanging over the whole state – And with an apparently very low turnout in the theme park. All good as we could go around without beeing boild, and no queues to any of the shows.

Killer Whales, Dolphins, Seals and Gentoo Penguins in the gallery.

Edwards Airforce Base, open house and airshow day

Hilli — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 21:03:02 +0000

This was a good one. EAB is about 130 miles from Fullerton, and is one of those black holes on Google Maps. Apart from that it is a US Airforce and NASA test facility. And this week it was open for different kind of public relations, ending in an airshow open to the public (And free too).

So they had pulled what seemed to at least one of every thing they had, able to fly, out in the open. There was everything from A-10 to F-117. That is:

A-10 tank killer
B-1 long distance bomber
B-2 stealt
B-52 huge (and old, but still the biggest) bomber
F-16 Fighting Falcon
F-22 Raptor (Hardcore fighter)
F-117 Stealth fighter

Some guys called Tora Tora Tora made quiet a spectacular show, trying to make it look like the bombing of Pearl Harbour in 1941. And a bit of dogfighting to go with that. The pyrotechnics they had to go with it was ok (Although the result was looking like LA smog). What was a bit annoying was the nationalistic narration of the hole thing.

The gallery has the pictures.

Arrival

Ryan — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 21:32:42 +0000

The flighttime from CPH to LAX via LHR took about 14 hours. PHEW!

To our luck, the Entertainment Centre onboard the Boing 747 from LHR to LAX provided 16 channels of TV and 4 of these showed a continous loop of movies (Batman Begins, Kingdom of Heaven, Madagsgar, Outbreak (kind of an old movie…), and a lot more). If you haven’t seen Batman Begins yet, I would definitely recommend it!

We arrived at LAX at 19:30 (local time) and about an hour later (due to Customs and Imigration…) we met Ulrik outside the Transit Area. I don’t if that was pure luck but there seemed to be a lot of EXITs where we came from :)

After a 45 min. drive to Ulriks place (229 E Commonwealth Ave, Fullerton => try hitting the satellite button) we decided to go for dinner. Of course, Ulrik already knew the perfect place: Heroes. Below you can see a picture of Jens having a double pint of Anderson Valley IPA

Jens has uploaded a bunch of pictures from the flight and the first day here including a picture of our preliminary CAR (a Cadillac Deville). We will swap it tomorrow for a Pontiac G6.

Off we go

Hilli — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 07:33:53 +0000

We got the Bluez (And hence GPRS) and decided to upload one of our pictures (Yesss, we are at it allready ;-).

DSB is in the process of moving us from Århus to Kastrup (CPH).

As the picture shows: We are doing fine (Send more money though, the DSB coffe is as expensive as it is bad :)

USA, here I come

Hilli — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 11:49:07 +0000

On tuesday I will be taking off on a two week vacation in (mainly) The State of California, USA, visiting Ulrik.

This is gonna be a new experience – Or deffinatly a quiet different one – to my useual vacations. Over the latest years I have been to Kazakhstan, Russia, Australia, Nederlande and Spain. That would all be place with a more relaxed attitude towards themselves (OK, I don’t know about the first two, since I don’t speak russian), so I’m a bit excited to see how the americans will take a bit of “abuse”.

Anyho – The schedule goes like this:

18/10: Flight to LAX
22/10: Open house and Air Show at Edwards Airforce Base
23/10: Seaworld in San Diego
29/10: Las Vegas
30/10: Las Vegas
1/11: Flight back

Somewhere in between we (I’m traveling with Michael) will go to San Francisco to have a look at the place. With a bit of luck we will be saying hello to Poul, who is working on his Ph.D. at Berkley. If you know your UNIX history, you will also be aware of this site’s involvement in the matter.

Other TODOs involve getting a Mac mini and the new iPod video – Can’t wait to get to fiddle with those toys.