Are you into “unusual” vacations? From “N. Korea: It’s Their Dream Destination” — in today’s LAT — ” ‘It’s the hardest place to get to,’ said Bill Altaffer, who should know. Altaffer is the world’s most traveled man, according to the mosttraveledman.com website — ‘others look it up, we’ve been there,’ says the recorded message on his home phone.” OPEN THREAD!
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CNN is promo’ing a new special on North Korea … using secretly recorded video. I think it’s on this Sunday (?).
DICK CHENEY IS ON MY TEEVEE SET! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOO!
HE LIVES!
(he’s at Arlington for a Veterans ceremony.)
Damn him — he better not get anywhere NEAR my grandparents!!
They are both interred in Arlington. My grandafather (Navy) donated his body to science so his interment was 2 years after his death (my gandmother was alrady there — she died less than a year after he did) and they were both cremated so their resting paces usually get spared the oportunistic photo ops. Small blessings, I suppose.
When I was little (I was their first grandkid) I couldn’t say grandma or grandad quite right and they ended up being greenmommie and greendaddy (aka the Greenies) for the rest of their days.
With all thoughts and blessings to all who rest in Arlington.
emotional by the typos — when I’m not so, I usually check for them…
I think you can get my meaning anyway, yes?
That’s so lovely. My uncle — a retired colonel — took me on a tour back in 1983. It’s a beautiful, very emotional place.
Every time, on TV, when I see rows of crosses — in Europe, or here — I gasp. So many soldiers died for this country 🙁
(Darth is talking now on tv.)
through the fences at the DMZ.
It was always sort of a surreal experience, especially when your gaze was returned by people on the other side. I took several trips to the DMZ when I lived in Seoul, there’s nothing like it to reinforce the arbitrariness of boundaries and borders everywhere.
When I was a kid, I went to the Berlin Wall a few times, but you couldn’t see through to the other side there….
Hmmm, there is a poem and/or a short story in that somewhere…
The Berlin Wall was fascinating. I took a bike ride with my brother around it one day. At various points, there were platforms in trees which you could climb up on and look over the wall. On the other side was a large wasteland with the drab concrete city buildings on the other side. There were also East German gun posts. On one platform I was on, the East German guards took my picture and pointed a gun at me. I was also able to take a US Military bus through the wall and spent a day on the eastern side. It was like night and day. West Berlin was a vibrant and colorful city with loads of commercialism, while East Berlin stood out in that there was no graffitti and precious little shopping. It was an experience that shaped my views for the rest of my life.
Although I really liked South Korea in the 1970’s…
Define Extreme…
We’re working on this list defined as extreme by some…we are 2 down and 5 to go…Idaho again in ’06 unless water is low then the Fraser in B.C. instead. http://www.oars.com/htdocs/whitewater_wonders.html
Although these aren’t the wildest…a regularly rafting friend has done a summer Sibera rafting trip and an Africa trip also.
I’ve been to some fairly offbeat places, but I do have a problem with people who encourage travel to less-populated/uninhabited areas just to be able to put another notch in the old walking stick.
It’s too easy, in these days of too much money and too many airplanes, for hordes of tourists to follow and totally trample the landscape and sometimes the lives of whoever lives in that remote place.
And speaking of travel to offbeat places, I was thinking about the possibility discussed yesterday of a “convention.” Realized as I saw yet another diary urging support of Yearly Kos that I have no interest in attending such a large and probably expensive event. But I would make every effort to attend a BooTrib gathering.
I’d be willing to go to a gathering of the tribe. A huge expensive convention is not what interests me.
Summer time (warmish) in a place where we can mingle and talk and walk and get to know each other – I’ll be there…
Boo Tribbers on the march, from Maine to Marin!
Good lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, as Lyndon B. used to say.
Personally I want to get that dream vacation to Niger that Joe Wilson got from the CIA.
the guy gets his kicks from posting that on his answering machine?
Call me a kill-joy but I’m not too impressed. It doesn’t say much for him.
I’m sure I deserve a dozen rotten tomatoes thrown at me for the pronouncement, and well deserved at that.. but that just suddenly struke me as an insanely shallow thing to put on the outgoing message