So I am in the market for some new ski gloves this year.  After roughly 12 years I feel it may finally be time to replace my Reusch Racing gloves.  I love my old gloves, full leather and they held up forever as you can tell.  I may go with another pair of Reusch but I have been looking at the Hestra offerings.  Anyway, check out this review on the Hestra Heli 3 Finger glove, raw, uncut and unedited.  Enjoy!

These gloves are just crazy. I use them for skiing but they would be great for snow boarding because you get the pointer finger unlike mittens but they are way warmer than gloves. The hestra people are just genious! So what you look like Yoda, you will stay warm and alot of people think these things look sick (like me). I’m only 13 (well I’m 14 now but when I was using them I was 13) and when you’re younger your hands get colder and my hands got cold only once on a chair lift going to the very top in Utah when it was crazy windy but seriously, any grown man would still be warm. They are really long which is good because when you bite the dust, you won’t get snow in your gloves. The leather palms are really nice and really really tough and pretty grippy. These are well priced for the quality but blowing 100 on gloves can sound crazy to some people but these were sooooo worth it. These are all you need unless your in like the north pole. haha well I love these things and anyone and everyone who skis or snowboards should just buy them.

The next day we were back on the road with our shortest leg of the trip.  We drove from Louisville to Memphis.  Our one goal in Memphis was to have an authentic Memphis BBQ dinner.  After asking several local people we finally decided on Interstate BBQ.  This location was the original one that started the now famous Neely’s BBQ name.

Dinner was great, beef ribs with cole slaw and a Bud (not even Bud Light).  Jason got Rib Tips and Pulled Beef with potato salad.  After dinner we headed to Beale St. The area around Beale St. can be a little dicey but nothing too bad.  Again the main section of Beale St. was off-limits to cars and had an open-container policy.  The street is basically lined with bars, places to get drinks (you know the yards with lanyards and live music.  I don’t know if it is the original but there is a Coyote Ugly bar towards the end of the street. We didn’t stay out too late as we were really tired and needed to get up early the next day for our final leg of the trip.

The next morning we had an early breakfast and then headed out for Dallas.  The trip wasn’t overly long but we had to get to Dallas in time to pick up the keys for the apartment.  The drive went really fast, we made in there in plenty of time.  Here are some observations from the portion of the drive from Arkansas to Dallas:

• They are not very original with naming towns.  There is one town called TexArkana.  I imagine the naming of the town went something like this:  “we are in Texas”, “no we are in Arkansas.”  OK, split the difference and call it Texarkana.
• There are also towns called Arkadelphia, Bald Knob, and Beaver (I found the last two on the Arkansas Wikipedia page)
• There are long stretches in Texas where there is nothing around Rt. 30 (the main highway from Arkansas to Dallas).
• People are very eager to stop and offer assistance for other cars on the side of the road.  Perhaps because of the previous bullet point.

We finally arrived at Jason’s new apartment.  We picked up the keys and unloaded what we had in the car.  We had a hotel room for that last night as the movers were coming the following morning.  By the point both Jason and I were beat, we grabbed some dinner at Bone Daddy’s then went to bed.  We didn’t get much rest the next day.  The movers were at the apartment bright and early.  After everything was unloaded I helped Jason start the unpacking process.  We also went out to pick up various things he needed for the new place.  While driving around town I did notice an REI store less than 10 minutes from his place.  We definitely made a stop there to pick up some stuff.

All in all we had a great trip.  I remember September seemed so far away during the summer, then all of a sudden I was packing up for the trip.  The next thing I knew we were waking up before dawn to get me to the airport for the flight home.  Good luck Jason, and enjoy.

Here are some additional pics from the trip.  I took some footage, I am trying to get a small movie together.

Some of you  probably know that my brother is moving down to Texas  to accept a promotion at his company.  The time has finally come, he will be leaving in a week.  Instead of letting him drive down straight through I decided to turn it into a little road trip and make the drive down with him.

I haven’t been to this part of the country so I figured I would make the most it.  We are planning on extending the trip by a day or two so we have some time to stop and enjoy sites along the way.

Here is our tentative schedule:

• Depart Albany Tuesday after work
• Drive to Buffalo and spend the night.
• Depart Buffalo and drive to Louisville, KY.
• Tour Louisville at night and spend night.
• Spend early part of day in Louisville then depart for Memphis, TN.
• Arrive in Memphis for dinner.
• Nightlife in Memphis then spend the night.
• Tour Memphis until early afternoon then depart for Dallas, TX.
• Arrive in Dallas Friday night.
• Nightlife in Dallas Friday and spend the night.
• The movers will have all my brother’s stuff ready in the apartment Saturday morning.
• Fly back to Albany, NY Sunday morning.

I want to document the trip by taking pictures of the places we visit and the people we meet.  My original idea was to take my new Canon 5D Mark II and only a single prime lens, something like the 35 1.4L or the 50mm (either the 1.4 or 1.2).  I haven’t pulled the trigger on buying either of these lens yet so for now the plan is to take my 24-70 2.8L and a Canon 580 exII flash.  There may still be a last minute purchase, we’ll have to see. I’ll see if I can post some pictures here during my trip, worst case I will get to it on Sunday when I get back.

We are looking for places to eat and visit in Louisville and Memphis.  Let me know if you have any good suggestions.

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As you may have saw in a previous post I stayed at the W, Montreal.  What a great hotel.  It was right in the heart of downtown.  It was a very easy walk to the main festival grounds, Old Montreal, St. Catherine Street and basically everywhere else you want to visit. 

I will try to get a gallery of images I took from the weekend up soon.  Here is a preview of a movie I took with the Canon 5D Mark II.  I have only played around with the video capabilities a little but I am starting to get the hang of it.  Not having auto-focus takes a little getting used to.

Here is one image that I liked how it turned out and posted it to Flickr.

Here is the original text once again.

E887p OhyRg bnEgv rNd80 NeA
ZJbgR y9Fhe IpbvZ aenDr rUM

Remove spaces and line breaks

E887pOhyRgbnEgvrNd80NeAZJbgRy9FheIpbvZaenDrrUM

Apply rotation, start top right and spiral clockwise

JbgRy9FheIpbvZaenDrrUME
ZAeN08dNrvgEnbgRyhOp788

Combine two line post into one line

JZbAgeRNy098FdhNerIvpgbEvnZbageRnyDhrOrpU7M8E8

Apply ROT13

WMoNtrEAl098SquAreVictoRiaMontrEalQueBecH7Z8R8

Add Line breaks

WMoNtrEAl
098SquAreVictoRia
MontrEalQueBecH7Z8R8

Inverse the numbers…0 goes to 9, 1 goes to 8, etc.

WMoNtrEAl
901SquAreVictoRia
MontrEalQueBecH2Z1R1

Fix case and add spaces

W Montreal
901 Square Victoria
Montreal, Quebec H2Z 1R1

There you have it, we are staying at the W Hotel in Montreal.  You could have solved the puzzle a couple of different ways, the two major tricks used were the Post Rotation and a simple ROT13.

There was another article that I also found very interesting, it talked about the Kryptos artwork installation at the Central Intelligence Agency.  As a quick background, the CIA commissioned an outdoor artwork installation for the New Headquarters Building (NHB).  The Kryptos, as it was named, was dedicated on November 3, 1990.  The two part sculpture is located at the main entrance to the NHB.  The main structure has four panels of ciphered text.

The mystery of the Kryptos puzzles is very fascinating.  The artist, James Sanborn, has stated that he thought all four panels of text would be solved within 7 years.  It has now been almost 20 years and only three out of the four panels have been solved.  To further complicate the mystery, the piece actually contains a riddle within a riddle.  Only after the fourth panel is deciphered can people then attempt to solve the main riddle using the plaintext of the four panels.

In the spirit of these ciphers and puzzles, I created one of my own.  Below is the name and address of a place I am going this summer for vacation.  Good luck, let me know if you figure it out.

E887p OhyRg bnEgv rNd80 NeA
ZJbgR y9Fhe IpbvZ aenDr rUM

The four panels of the Kryptos art installation

After just getting back from my trip to China I can saw that though these plans may have been scrapped, or are least put on hold there is still a tremendous amount of development occurring right now all over China.  China’s building spree for the 2008 Beijing Olympics commissioned several well-known international architectural firms to design new buildings.

There is one passage from the article that I find particularly amusing.

In the case of Dongtan, as Paul French explains in a podcast posted on the Ethical Corporation web site, one problem was a feud over who would actually fund the project. “Both sides — Arup, on one side, who call themselves the ‘master builders’ of the project — and Shanghai Industrial Investment Corporation (the Chinese government arm that owns the land) —thought the other was going to pay for it. So Arup thought they were brought in on a project that they would then be able to design, the Chinese would build it, and pay them a large amount of money. The Chinese thought that Arup was going to build the project and that they would get themselves a free eco-city.”

Check out the story here.

I tried to pick out images that captured the country we were visiting, from the tourist destinations to people in their everyday lives.  For most of these images I did very basic edits:  crops, straighten, adjust levels.  I also made use of the Lightroom presets in the Develop module along with some presets I downloaded from Camera Dojo.  I used the free Lightroom Essentials, though they also have additional presets you can purchase.

Now that I have these up, I flagged a bunch of images that I want to revisist and spend some more time with processing them.  I will post some of these to my flickr stream.

Without further ado, please head over to the gallery and check out the pictures.  Please post your comments about the pictures or the trip.

I think I am now just getting back to my normal routine.  Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were crazy at work with trying to catch up for a missed week and a half.  I was able to go through most of my emails on my blackberry on the busride back from JFK to Albany so that helped a little.

This past week I was suffering from sleep bulimia.  I don’t know if that is a real term or not, but that’s how I am describing it.  My sleep schedule from the jet lag is all messed up.  The first night back I stayed up until 1:00am.  I woke up at 5:00am ready to go.  The following night I went to bed around normal time, but I slept until 10:00am.  On Friday night I was exhausted from work and working out at the gym.  I was falling asleep on the couch around 10:30.  I slept until 11:15am Saturday morning.  Finally on Saturday night I went to bed at a normal time, and woke up Sunday morning ready to roll at 5:00am.  I will say that was one of my most productive Sunday mornings in a long time.  I had accomplished a lot of stuff before 11:00. 

I spent a good portion of Sunday morning sorting through all our pictures and videos from the trip.  I had made previous attempts to pick out pictures I wanted to process for the website, Flickr and a few I want to e for stock images.  Each time I didn’t get very far.  After today’s effort I can say that I am about 90% done.  I have all the pictures broken down into collections in Lightroom for each city we were at.  Out of those roughly 212 I have processed (cropped, straightened, level adjustments) about 120.  I should be able to finish up the last batch with one more serious effort.  I need to get the basic pictures posted as I have tons of people asking me about them every day.

I had to take a couple of days off from my triathlon training as I was sick with a cold when I got back to JFK.  I didn’t get over it until Thursday.  I resumed my workout schedule Friday with an hour long spin on the bike.  Saturday I spun for 45 minutes and did an easy 45 minute run (about 5.5 miles).  Today I finally got in a long day, went for a 2 hour run.  I forgot how I enjoy those long runs when everything is going good and you feel like you can just keep on running.  Even though I felt like I was going slow, I was happy to be getting in the time and miles.  This coming week my training schedule picks back up in full swing to make up for the missed time in China.

I probably should have started to do some packing in the last day or so to see if I am missing anything.  Well I didn’t, I did pick up a new lightweight rain coat though in case of rain.

Here is a more complete itinerary for our trip.  I plan on keeping a journal while I am away so I’ll write up detailed posts when I get back.

Day 1: All day travel
We start out with coach buses driving us from Albany International Airport to JFK.
We then catch a non-stop flight from JFK to Beijing.  It will be  around a 13 hour flight, which will put us in Beijing around 6:00pm local time.  We then get our first local meal for dinner and head to the hotel to check-in for the night.

Day 2:  Beijing
We start out with a full day in Beijing.  We will visit the Temple of Heaven, a Jade Factory and the Temple Museum.  That is all before lunch!  After lunch we then head over to the Great Wall.  After climbing the Great Wall we grab dinner and head back to the hotel.

Day 3:  Beijing
First stop will be visiting a Pearl Factory, the Summer Palace, lunch, the Forbidden City and Tienanmen Square.  The day will be topped off with a famous Peking Duck Dinner.

Day 4:  Transfer Day to Suzhou
We depart Beijing early to arrive in Shanghai.  We don’t stay long, we take a bus to the city of Suzhou. We get a quick tour of Suzhou, Dinner and then arrive at the hotel.

Day 5:  Suzhou
In the morning we will visit the Lingering Garden and take a tour of a silk factory.  After lunch we then have an optional tour on the ancient Grand Canal.  We take a boat tour and get some free time to explore the local town.  After this tour, we visit Tiger Hill, which has a tower which leans (like the one in Pisa).  We then learn about silk embroidery.  Late afternoon we catch a bus to Hangzhou where we enjoy a late dinner and then have free time to explore.

Day 6:  Hangzhou
In the morning we visit a tea plantation where they grow green tea.  We then visit the Ling Yin Temple (Buddha Temple).  After lunch we take a boat ride around West Lake in Hangzhou and explore the city on foot.  We then depart for Shanghai.

Day 7:  Shanghai
We have a full day in Shanghai.  We will visit The Bund, Pudong economic development zone and then have an entire afternoon to explore a real Chinatown (in China, does anyone else find this funny?).

Day 8:  All day travel
Our trip will be over, we will wake up super early to fly from Shanghai to Beijing and then Beijing back to JFK.  Once back in JFK we catch the bus back to Albany.  This seems like it will be a really long day.

So that’s the trip, I am really excited and can’t wait to get started.  As I mentioned earlier that although I have not started packing my clothes yet, I do have all my Photography equipment laid out for the trip.

I knew I would be taking lots of landscape shots so I decided to rent a wide angle lens for the trip.  After some quick searching on Flickr I had decided to use LensRentals.com as my source.  I had emailed their customer service with some questions and they answered them right away and were very helpful.  I plan to take some test shots with the lens over the weekend to get comfortable working with it. Missing from this picture is a Sony point and shoot and an HD video camera.  This will be my first time using the video camera for an extended trip like this so I am excited to see what I can come up with.

I think that’s the last you’ll hear from me until I return.  I’ll have lots to write about upon my return, in addition to reviewing tons of pictures.