If there was one thing I took away from my trip to Japan that will stick with me forever, and no, it's not an STD, it's that Japan goes to show that a country can actually work, and work well. I'm sure there are problems (Tokyo is TOO big, for one) but simple good service, courtesy and respect remain.

So, how is Japan better than the rest of the world?

1) SHINKANSEN - they take the French TGV, make it faster and say 'non merci' to French Unions and their notoriously annoying strikes. This means that in 2006, the Shinkansen was on average 36 seconds late. THIRTY-SIX SECONDS! Plus they look cool, like you want to stroke it, and the ticket inspectors and pretty trolley girls bow when they enter and exit the carriage. And of course the environment smiles as domestic aeroplane flights are reduced. Smashing.

2) LOCAL PUBLIC TRANSPORT - it goes where you want to go, you can set your watch by it, nobody uses their phone and bellows to their Mrs that they are going to be late 'because Tony at work shredded the docs', they are clean, safe and in Naha (a city of only 300,000) they have a MONORAIL. Cool!

And look! They are already building for the future...(NB Teleport machines are carbon neutral)

3) TOYOTA - Toyota world in Tokyo, kind of a giant theme-park/Toyota/Lexus dealership. You can try out ANY Toyota/Lexus on the test track - just purchase a ticket from a vending machine and your car will be lowered down from the elevator... Or maybe sir would welcome a pew in an electric car that drive itself? No need for a chauffeur... Al Gore has been warned not to visit - the amount of hybrid vehicles on offer would lead to a fatally large wet dream.

4) CRIME AND DISORDER - With knife crime in the UK running at an all time high, drunken louts bashing each others heads in and anti-terrorist security measures infringing upon basic human rights the Japanese show it need not be that way. Police are ever-present (real ones, not CCTV), drunken violence is not a problem and security in their airports is both strict and yet efficient. One can check in for a domestic flight 15 minutes before departure and make it onto the plane. Only 30 mintues for an international flight - a point we proved after taking the wrong train to the airport. If only Heathrow could be 10% as good... Just make sure you watch out for these unsavoury characters when in Kyoto:

And just a reminder that terrorism IS a problem outside of the USA/Europe (a fact western media often ignores) a fantastic wife-beater top commemorating the Bali bombings:

5) TRUST - two English people walk into a scooter hire shop. The owner does not speak English, we do not speak Japanglish. We show our driving licences, point to where we are staying, write down how many days we want to hire the scooters for. And we are off. No deposit, endless paperwork or other such tripe. Trust - where has it gone?

Somehow I managed to make this snazzy hog look all YMCA...

6) IT'S THE little things THAT MATTER - as fat boy Andy below shows, why should bollards be solid, so that when you reverse into one by accident it smashes you rear bumper?

They also make convenient seats when waiting for a bus. Don't worry, the bus was on time.

7) BEER - none of this low percent, lesbian beer nonesense in Japan. Nothing but 5% alcohol content plus. Sure, the Japanese aren't the heaviest of drinkers but they do like a pint or three. And beer also elicits an unknown Japanese skill - the skill of being able to speak English, invite you to join them in a (what later turned out to be gay) bar and hit on Andy (who ordered a cocktail to make it worse). They have cans as tall as Western people - that's almost double the size of the average Japanese! And also they make fantastic posters. Really, really, bloody good.

So, UK, USA. If Japan can do it - why can't we???

Earlier this week a friend invited me out to Utah for the closing weekend at Snowbird. On Thursday, I scored some tickets to SLC with points and the surprise adventure was under way. I will be riding tomorrow and Sunday and partying with the SLC snowboard crew. Photos and tales to come. Now back to this $7 warm Bud in JFK.

Ride hard, curve large - BECK

French Spiderman" Alain Robert, who has become famous for illegally climbing buildings across the world, scaled a top Hong Kong hotel on Tuesday, eyewitnesses said.

The 45-year-old urban climber scrambled up the outside of the 46-storey Four Seasons Hotel before being detained when he reached the roof, said one worker in a skyscraper close by who saw him reach the top.

The feat drew onlookers from nearby office buildings, including the neighbouring Two International Finance Centre, Hong Kong's tallest building, which Robert had been expected to climb once he announced his visit.

Robert was in Hong Kong to publicise his book "With Bare Hands," which looks at some of his climbing successes, including the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Sydney Opera House and many of the world tallest skyscrapers.

He has declared his guerrilla climbing activity his "philosophy." On his website he boasts that he has made it to the top of 70 buildings and monuments around the world in his 12-year career.

Last year, he was deported from China for illegally conquering its tallest building, only to have Chinese officials invite him back in November to legitimately climb a mountain in the center of the country as a tourism attraction.

www.breitbart.com

VIDEO of Alain's previous exploits

This one is for Jensen, I am still very intrigued by the geocoding deal. This looks like a gang of fun. We should talk, I could see a very male friendly vacation coming up at some point.

The project is an organized sampling of the world. There is a confluence within 49 miles (79 km) of you if you're on the surface of Earth. We've discounted confluences in the oceans and some near the poles, but there are still 10,895 to be found.

You're invited to help by photographing any one of these places. Read the Information pages, and contact us if you have questions.

www.confluence.org

Clear® Sets Rules for $500,000 Innovation Prize for Technology to Speed Throughput at Airport Security; Clear CTO: "Proposals Begin to Pour In From Around the World"

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, FEBRUARY 13, 2008 – Clear®, the fast pass for airport security, today hosted an event at San Francisco International Airport to announce the rules for the $500,000 “Clear Prize” to provide faster security lane technology and to answer questions from participating innovators. Clear will purchase the winning team’s technology in bulk, once approved for use by the Transportation Security Administration at three airports where Clear operates fast pass lanes. The detailed set of rules and standards for applying for the Clear Prize is now available at flyclear.com/innovation.

More than 100 innovators from 70 companies – ranging from ambitious start-ups and new entrants to the field, such as EMIT Technologies (a company headquartered in Seattle with research facilities in Clarkston, WA, that has developed a proprietary microwave technology platform), to Trex Enterprises, a large defense contractor – responded to the initial invitation to apply for the $500,000 award. Nearly half gathered today at the Louis A. Turpen Aviation Museum at the San Francisco International Airport to hear the criteria for entry announced by Clear chief technology officer, Jason Slibeck, and to ask questions of the Clear team.
www.flyclear.com

On a cold November night 36 years ago, in the driving wind and rain, somewhere between southern Washington state and just north of Portland, Oregon, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted out of a plane he’d just hijacked clutching a bag filled with $200,000 in stolen cash.

Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? And what happened to the loot, only a small part of which has ever surfaced?

It’s a mystery, frankly. We’ve run down thousands of leads and considered all sorts of scenarios. And amateur sleuths have put forward plenty of their own theories. Yet the case remains unsolved.

Would we still like to get our man? Absolutely. And we have reignited the case—thanks to a Seattle case agent named Larry Carr and new technologies like DNA testing.

You can help. We’re providing here, for the first time, a series of pictures and information on the case. Please look it all over carefully to see if it triggers a memory or if you can provide any useful information.
www.fbi.gov

The good folks at the FBI don't like it when someone commits a high-profile crime and then simply vanishes. They go through the evidence over and over again, wait a while – decades sometimes – and then start investigating all over again. Suspects don't just disappear into thin air never to be seen again.

Well, one man did do that, literally. On Thanksgiving Eve in 1971, Dan Cooper, not his real name, blithely stepped off the back stairway of a Northwest Orient Boeing 727 at an altitude of about 10,000ft. Equipped with two parachutes and clasping a bag of $200,000 in ransom money, he hurtled through the rain clouds to the rugged terrain of Washington State below.

In these post-September 11 days of international terror threats, what happened that night seems almost like an innocent caper. No one was murdered or even grazed and the sum of missing money seems almost paltry. Yet it was an act of derring-do that quickly entered modern American folklore. Songs and books were written about it and a film was shot starring Treat Williams as Cooper. More than that, the seizing of Northwest Orient Flight 305 remains the world's only unsolved hijacking.

And so it is that, more than 36 years on, that the FBI has once again declared its refusal to admit defeat. It has reassembled the few fragments of evidence that it has and made a fresh appeal to the public for help. "Would we still like to get our man?" the FBI said in a release out of its Pacific Northwest office in Seattle this week. "Absolutely. And we have reignited the case."

The public is being invited to visit the FBI's website, FBI.gov, where, for the first time, it has displayed sketches of Dan Cooper – more commonly known as D B Cooper – together with photographs both of a cheap clip-on tie he left behind on the plane before making his mid-air exit and of ragged remains of a few $20 bills found in the vicinity on the ground by a boy in 1980.
www.independent.co.uk

"Some man live his life for profits alone, that very same man, he lives his life all alone.
Well any road to life yes it goes up and down, doesn't really matter as long the music goes on." - Slightly Stoopid

The vast majority of us roll through the years caught in the current of the status quo. We expend our energy and motivation chasing a dream that may not necessarily align with our true desires. Inevitably the balance of life shifts in the wrong direction, leaving us feeling helpless and trapped.

I was sitting in Reagan eating lunch on my way to California, the waitress knew me from my countless previous trips, two gentlemen argued the details of their powerpoint presentation to my left as I busily punched out work emails; this was not how it was meant to be, things would change.

I spent another monotonous week in Irvine, eagerly awaiting the weekend and the beginning of my self defined snowboard bender. Friday arrived not a second too early, the southern cali scene had worn my resolve to a tattered mess.

It was a quick flight from Irvine to Denver complete with an appropriate sunset as we flew high above the canyons of the West. I landed in Jackson at around 9:30 pm, greeted by an old rally friend and a few beautiful new boards courtesy of the fine folks at Bataleon. Pat and I spent a whole lot of time in the comfy confines of a Ford Fiestaivus, driving away from the Kazakhstan border alone in the Ford still ranks as one of the more heart wrenching moments I have endured. With good friends, you can pick up instantaneously as if no time has past, it is this way with Pat. He has found his place in this world, Jackson really is his town. I drifted off to sleep dreaming of steeps of Jackson Hole and the opportunity to catch up with two of my better friends.

It was really cold, digit freezing cold, and both Pat and myself agreed on sleep over freezing. By the time we sorted the morning out, paid to park at the mountain, and located the ticket room, it was already 11:30. Chowder ferrets never get to the mountain early. We waited for the midday semi reasonable ticket price. Once all this was sorted, Pat had to leave for the airport to pick up Carrie.

I was left with Jackson Hole to myself. I last rode JH in 99 while on an epic snowboarding trip with my good friend, Vinnie. While the real estate at the base has changed significantly, the terrain above is every bit as amazing as it stood in my memory. I made my way to the summit via three separate lifts. Buckled up, ready to roll, I quickly located my first decision of idiocy. I had found my spot on the new deck and was starting to push it as some very appealing trees enticed me in. Next thing I know I am sitting a top a swell little chute freshly covered in a blanket of goodness.

I could see the line that I wanted, pointed it, and rapidly descended. A rush of adrenaline overtook me as I ran out onto the trail below. Unfortunately, the descent was not without its consequences as the fresh board found some of Jackson's finest rocks. Though damage was light, I learned the lesson and kept it to the trails for my and the board's safety. After a few scouting cruisers, I located a perfect run that I could hit fairly untouched powder along the edge of the trail all the way down. By 3:30 my legs were smoke and I called it.

I was supposed to meet up with Pat at 4, so I relaxed it up in Nick's enjoying a PBR and the Dead. I think I might become a Deadhead, they seem to make me less angry. At approximately 4ish, the slut goggle wandered by the window, signaling Pat's arrival.

Pat and I met up for a few tall boys on the hill before rolling back to his pad to awake Carrie. We did our best to drink it white cruising the Jackson scene.


The next morning came far too early as I awoke with a throbbing head. I dropped Pat off for his day of piloting the Yellowstone Snowcoach and Carrie and I set off for Grand Targhee in the baloney skins mobile. Since Pat's rig rolls slicks through the winter, the trip over TeTon Pass was fun.

Targhee sits about an hour's drive from Jackson nestled into its own little snow nook. I had a hot dog and a Rockstar upon arriving while Carrie screwed up her binders some more. I was instantly stoked on the mountain, it has such an authentic feel and people seemed honestly nice and I got a hot dog. This was to be a good day.

I have long since dismissed the whole "no friends on a powder day" mantra. I have been lucky enough in my life to ride some of the world's most epic terrain and powder. And none of it compares to sharing a good day with good friends. Carrie and I almost instantly found the lift that would define our day. Snow so light, trees so well spaced, crowds so small, damn I love snowboarding. We rode until our legs started to fail, calling it a day with one last run through the Aspens. The Targheeling Unlimited had rescued me from the monotony of work and returned the stoke of snowboarding and friendship alike.

While I have left Jackson, Pat, and Carrie behind on my way back to VT, I am staying aboard The Targheeling Unlimited. There shall be a quick stop in VT to pick up my lovely wife for a few days of demolition in the old haunts of North Conway. It is good to be back.

BIG thanks to Pat for everything, I got your back in VT anytime.

Remember KRS ONE said "try keeping it real and you should try keeping it right."

7YW0708 - Glad to Ride - Seth