|
|
|
 Travel & Outdoors | January 2008 
The Odds and Ends of Travel
 Gary A. Warner - Orange County Register
go to original
| | UNDERWHELMING: The Grand Canyon Skywalk is getting a makeover after poor initial response. (Rob Schumacher/Associated Press) |
Greenland heats up, Chewbacca is accused of assaulting Marilyn Monroe, the London Underground loses its voice. And that’s not all.
Over the year, I collect little bits of recollections and news ... like one of those giant balls of string in the Roadside America book. Here are a few strands from 2007:
I flew out of airports named after a movie star (John Wayne, Orange County), a rock legend (John Lennon, Liverpool) and a soccer star (George Best, Belfast, Northern Ireland).
The slogan for John Lennon International Airport is “above us only sky,” which in the song “Imagine” is a line about imagining there is no God. Don’t think that would play in the U.S.A. The Airbus A380 had its inaugural flight, with freebie media singing the praises of its lounges and even double-occupancy sleeping areas. Not a whole lot about what it will be like crammed into a seat with 700 other folks back in cattle car class.
Mike Magnell of Mission Viejo has given up his dangerous job of flying small planes across the Pacific for the low-key job of being a 737 pilot for Afghan Airlines, flying out of Kabul. His wife, Iris, came to visit him for a week of vacation in what is officially a war zone.
Global warming has made Greenland a “hot” destination. The same trends threaten to swamp the low-lying Maldives in the Indian Ocean, which literally may be becoming “too hot” a hot spot.
The London Underground fired Emma Clarke – the longtime “voice” of the system whose calm warnings to “mind the gap” was well known – after she posted mock versions of her announcements on her personal Web site. Among them: “Would passengers filling in answers on their Sudokus please accept that they are just crosswords for the unimaginative and are not in any way more impressive just because they contain numbers.”
In Las Vegas, implosions returned to town. The Stardust was blown up March 13. The Frontier followed a little later.
A guy wearing a costume of Chewbacca from “Star Wars” was arrested on suspicion of forcing a Marilyn Monroe impersonator to grope him on Hollywood Boulevard. It’s the second time that the freelance impersonator has had an altercation outside Grauman’s Chinese Theater. He was arrested awhile back for head-butting a tour guide, an incident reported to police by Superman. Or rather a guy dressed as Superman.
Don Ho died. Also, the Honolulu Advertiser did a great multimedia show on the 10th anniversary of the death of Iz (Israel Kamakawiwo’ole).
The Plaza in New York reopened, but as condos (a small hotel within the building is slated to open later). The great Hotel Pattee in Perry, Iowa, a Midwestern gem resurrected by Orange County’s Roberta Ahmanson, closed just before New Year’s.
Taxiway cracks at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport led to its safety certificate being pulled.
A Continental Airlines pilot in January became ill on a flight from Puerto Vallarta to Houston. The co-pilot took over, but the pilot died.
A man tripped and fell through a 16th-floor window at a Hyatt hotel in Minneapolis, but survived with broken bones and bruises when an awning broke his fall.
The last regularly scheduled airline flight using a DC-10 flew from Honolulu to Minneapolis for Northwest Airlines. The Tri-Jet that was a fixture over Southern California in the late 1960s as it was being developed first flew commercially in 1970. It forced Lockheed out of the commercial aviation business by stealing customers from the L1011, but never matched the Boeing 747’s popularity. DC-10s still fly cargo for FedEx and as KC-10 tankers for the U.S. Air Force.
The legendary Arizona Highways magazine said dwindling circulation and aging readership might force the publication that fueled Southwestern tourism into closure or going Web-only.
Australian tourism posters in Britain with the line demanding to know why the “bloody hell” the viewer was not in Australia were ordered pulled by the Advertising Standards Authority after 32 complaints that they included swearing. |
| |
|
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us