Lapland skiing holidays Travel Finland holidays Finland skiing holidays
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Dawn Patrol: Powder and Wine Hangovers
The cubical can make you crabby when the storm track favors weekdays. There is no excuse. If accessible skiing exists within an hour's drive and a reasonable hike, ski more. A stiff cup of coffee will shake off that 4:30 AM alarm. Dawn patrol pow turns, no matter how low angle, always make the day more bearable. Berthoud Pass action from February 15th.Dawn Patrol at Berthoud Pass - Backcountry Skiing from Skiing Magazine on Vimeo.
Heathrow Terminal 2 offers faster transit and more room for planes
The �2.3bn development, which will open to passengers in 2014, will handle up to 20 million passengers a yearWhile the Norman Foster vision for a shiny new airport in the Thames Estuary is still fantasy, his design for a brighter, better slice of Heathrow has now taken full shape. The shell of Terminal 2, a glass-walled, undulating counterpoint to Terminal 5 across the airport, has been completed, an impressive feat of construction made doubly so for having been achieved in the middle of a fully functioning, groaning-to-capacity hub airport.The �2.3bn development will handle up to 20 million passengers a year, and is, says Heathrow's boss, "part of the process of making the whole airport just more efficient". Colin Matthews, CEO of owners BAA, says that while he believes that passengers using the terminal will have "a great experience" with quicker streams from check-in to departure gate and from arrival to clearing customs, the project also goes some way in unpicking the jumbled layout planes face.He says: "The west end of the airport is laid out [so] aircraft can taxi efficiently... If you look at the east side we've got these corners, cul-de-sacs, bends, that can block planes." The "toast rack" layout of new stands around T2 will, like T5 at the far end, make it simpler for all planes, including the massive A380s, to manouevre.Terminal 2 is scheduled to open to passengers in 2014, though the full transformation of Heathrow may be some years off. "We know what the masterplan is - but how fast we progress towards that depends on airlines view of what's affordable," says Matthews. A second phase will extend T2 into the old Terminal 1.The mammoth project is some way from completion, with even more construction staff set to join the thousands working on T2 to fit out the interior. As much work as possible has been done away from Heathrow, to minimise deliveries and disruption. Factories in Liverpool and Wolverhampton have assembled panels and frames; John Holland-Kaye, BAA's commercial director, makes the proud claim that every single British constituency has had some hand in manufacturing parts, producing materials or otherwise contributing to the new terminal's construction.The old Terminal 2, demolished after 54 years of service, was Heathrow's first terminal, originally called the "Europa Building". Designed to deal with 1.2 million passengers a year, it had to handle 8 million annually by the time it closed in 2009. That kind of statistic goes some way to explaining Heathrow's dismal reputation in decades past - a reputation that the continuing investment in handsome new terminals must surely change.Airline industryBAAHeathrowTravel & leisureTransportGwyn Tophamguardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Finland hiking holidays Kuusamo hiking Kuusamo hiking holidays Ruka
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Photo finish for Eastman Kodak
The company that brought photography to the masses more than a hundreds years ago has announced it will be getting out the business all together.The iconic photography brand, Kodak, who invented the hand-held camera, will stop making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames during the furst half of 2012 in a bid to reduce its costs.Eastman Kodak said it will phase out these product lines and look for companies to license its brand for those products.Once the digital camera business is phased out, it will concentrate on printing. Since 2005 the company has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into new lines of inkjet printers.Japanese competition in the 80s put pressure on the company and then when the digital revolution came they company found it hard to keep pace.Snap Shot of Kodak- Eastman Kodak was founded by George Eastman in 1880-�the Kodak brand was known world-wide in particular for its instamatic camerals and yellow and red film boxes.- The market value of the company has fallen to �100m from more than �20bn 15 years ago.- A decade ago, the firm employed 70,000 people but the payroll has shrunk to below 19,000.�
10 February 2012
Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Store | Android Game | Wordpress Tutorials
10 February 2012
Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Store | Android Game | Wordpress Tutorials
Where?s Andrew? Exploring the Mexico of the Maya
Our Digital Nomad, Andrew Evans, is on a journey to explore the most significant sites of the ancient Maya in Mexico — and finding (mis)adventures along the way. Read about how Andrew broke into a museum in Camalcalco, cracked the code of the “Maya doomsday prophecy” (it’s shorter than you’d think), and visited the place…
Glam Town
I don?t care that Aspen is a 60-some-year-old resort in the heartland of American ski country. I don?t care how old-school it is. There are still things Aspen does better than any other ski town. Beautiful people, for one. This year and every year, Aspen lays claim to the most attractive people to live at altitude. Sorry, Caucasus babushkas, but too many of you have steel teeth. Then there?s the social life. People forget, due to last year?s ?tiger blood? meltdown, that Charlie Sheen?s first arrest happened in Aspen. The place flat-out knows how to party. That became abundantly clear late last April, when Aspen Highlands hosted the resort world?s Best. Closing. Day. Ever. In 2011, closing day fell on Easter.A bunch of friends and I celebrated the traditional way: dancing on tables with squiffy strangers in various states of undress. Easter occurred abnormally late last year (April 24), persuading Highlands to stay open three weeks longer than usual, punctuating one of the resort?s longest seasons ever. While no one at a Highlands Finale has a problem with indulgence, there?s no shortage of travail, diligence, and hardcore skiing. That Sunday morning, hundreds of skiers and boarders slogged up the nearly 800-vertical-foot path to the apex of Highland Bowl, beckoned by 22 inches of fresh snow. Kicking step after endless step, one could smell various ventilatory systems expelling the previous evening?s toxic vapors (a Saturday night in Aspen is no Girl Scout meeting, either). At the peak, dozens of people milled around, passing flasks and joints. To our right, rocky cliffs fell off into the Maroon Bells Wilderness Area. Peaks as pretty as their name, the Maroon Bells look like, well, maroon bells and are said to be the most photographed peaks in Colorado. To our left yawned double-black-diamond ski slopes as steep as 45 degrees. My buddies and I dodged girls in bikinis and guys in bunny suits to milk face shots. Then we skied to retro, wooden Cloud 9 restaurant and engaged in more madness. There were pirates and wenches. Cowboys and Euros. Waynes and Garths. Cows and leopards. All of them dancing crazily to a DJ who, over six hours, never faltered?on narrow tables that hadn?t been cleared of glassware. We actually took a break from the Cloud 9 chaos and schussed down to the Merry Go Round, where folks were pond skimming and a band of local high schoolers rocked absurdly good Led Zeppelin covers. We then repaired back to Cloud 9 and shimmied for hours. Highlands didn?t officially close till 6:30 p.m. that day?the latest sweep I?d ever experienced outside the siesta-loving Spanish Pyrenees. I found myself in the orbit of a guy in a powder-blue leisure suit carrying a bottle of Jack Daniel?s instead of poles. He straightlined a steep rollover, lost control, blitzed another 100 yards attempting to recover, then ragdolled violently but managed to pop up without having spilled any whiskey (the bottle was corked). I laughed as hard as I?ve ever laughed on a ski slope, affirming Homer Simpson?s timeless truism: ?It?s funny because it happened to someone else.? At the base, a giant shindig in the Highlands plaza churned patrons into a roaring, seething mass. A woman clambered onto a pedestal and gyrated in ways that seemed anatomically impossible. She stripped down to her thong. She began to fiddle with her bra. The crowd surged with anticipation of bare breasts. Then, hurtling through the late April sky, came a flurry of snowballs. One drilled our go-go dancer. This enraged her, and she stormed off the platform. What kind of genius chases off a disrobing girl with a snowball? The mob should have throttled the thrower, but we didn?t. I think we were having too good a time.
Backcountry Packs
Why endure an ill-suited pack? Get organized and stay safe, comfortably. haul these packs up the hill; they?ll carry you through the day.
Finland hiking holidays Kuusamo hiking Kuusamo hiking holidays Ruka
Monday, February 20, 2012
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)