h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Flying at twice the speed of sound with a glass of champagne and looking at the curve of the earth.

A Saturn 5 launch

Diving on the Barrier reef

Please feel free to groan, but....... I was given tickets for an Elton John concert for a big birthday. The concert was postponed for a year due to him being ill and I really wondered what I was going for anyway. But when it came to it, the show was really really good - brilliant entertainment. He sang all the songs people wanted to hear and made them all sound original and different. Enjoyed it far beyond my expectations.

I'm not groaning. I would have enjoyed that..just to hear 'Your song'.

And tickets are always good.

I concluded a while ago that thee is quite a lot of value to seeing older bands/ singers live.

We went to this concert at the Royal Albert Hall of this Russian underground band, Aquarium, four or so yeas ago. I'm not a huge fan of Aquarium, they are a bit too hippy world music for me, but it was outstanding. They did every musical style going in little groups (all the rock together, all the reggae inspired ones together, all the jazz ones together and so on and it was absolutely consummate musicianship.

And as a bonus it was free, because it was sponsored by the lead singer's new religious interest, some kind of Hari Krishaesque religion. At the end a whole bunch of really ethically people got up on stage chanted too, which was practically the most amusing thing that happened to me that year.

Oh and because it was free we got to sit in one of those really cool boxes rather than being stuck behind a pillar in the gods, or promenading, which is how I usually experience the RAH

Anyway, the point is, they've been around for a long time, Aquarium. I used to see a lot of indie bands back in the day, and a lot of them really needed to spend more time gigging, or at least locked in a garage somewhere practising.

Is yours as fictional as my two?

(post 21)

Yup!
It is what I would imagine the most amazing things to be

I went snorkling on the barrier reef when I visited Australia. There are so many tourist boats doing it in that area.so it wasn't so great. But I did see a turtle underwater and watched it come up for air...that was completely brilliant.

Best snorkling for me was as a child off the coast of northern spain...watching the squid darting around and then going into rock crevices.

Sevilla (seen through the eyes of someone who lives there- Az!)

The Canadian Rockies (cross-country skiing on top of a mountain)

Kauai (it's where Hawaiians go for a vacation)

Hanging off the outside of a helicopter taking pictures of the world's biggest controlled forest burn (that was the mid 90's and it still holds the record- a double mushroom cloud into the stratosphere!)

Seeing David Gilmour play a tiny open-air benefit for the Dalai Lama in the grounds of the Alexander Palace in 1996 or so. I hadn't expected to see him at all, and ended up with not one but two living gods in one day.

Still on the Pink Floyd theme, hearing Roger Waters in Munich; just being inside the four notes R 2:30 into Crazy Diamond blew my mind.

Being in love.

The Ice Hotel in Sweden. I was braced for -10 (colder than my freezer) and surprised to find it pleasantly warm when I got there. It was indeed -10; it was just that it was -25 outside. We were lucky with the weather: clear blue skies, bright days, winter-wonderland snow, and a pony-trek through the forest under a full moon. Narnia.

The desert in Australia. You want silence? You've got silence. Horizons? Emptiness? Stillness? Heat? Yep, yep, yep and yep.

Jump jets. Being near an aircraft that's so loud you cannot hear yourself scream.

B

>Being in love. <

One can never over expect this. It will always exceed.

Man's stupidity?

>The desert in Australia.<

Yes

But...we spent a day driving around at one point...not a single car all day...and suddenly the guide leader suggested. I think we should stop here and have a cricket match. I kid you not. In the most away from civilisation place..we played this match..and I got a brilliant run out aiming at the stumps.

But sleeping out in that place was incredible...and our stupid cricket match didn't really touch it.

these things are hard to put into words.

"Being near an aircraft that's so loud you cannot hear yourself scream."

Thank you, thank you, thank you, so much, for reminding me of something.

The Royal International Air Tattoo. So many cool things. The Jordanian Air Force doing a display in a single biplane. How is this cool? How about the guy commentating on it... is the pilot flying it. "Going into a tight loop now, pulling approximately seven g. And a 180 flip to exit straight into an outside loop, negative five g there." Spoken as though he were describing the pattern of the tablecloth over dinner.

The B-1 swing-wing nuclear bomber. The undisputed loudest noise I've ever heard of any kind ever.

Two French Super Etendards that appeared to be bolted together about five feet apart, except they were able to slide around one another liquidly at four hundred miles an hour a hundred feet off the ground.

The single F-15 that pulled a nine g turn as the man commentating (but very definitely not flying) said the words "if you can't turn tight, you can't fight".

And finally, and by far the most coolly... the B-2 Spirit. All it did was fly past. And in order to fly past it had taken off from its home base in the US, flown most of the way across the Atlantic, refuelled in mid-air... done its flypast... flown out over the North Sea and refuelled again... then flown most of the way back across the Atlantic, and refuelled AGAIN, then got home. And as it flew over, it was surrounded by a diamond formation of F-15s. Why? Because if it wasn't, air traffic control WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO SEE IT.

And the coolest part of the day? Watching Mrs. Zen screaming at the absolute top of her lungs... and not being able to hear a damn thing over the sound of jet engines.

America, specifically the non gambly bits of Las Vegas which is the only place I've been in the US. The strip was amusing, but there was desert! How cool is that! And the edges of the town sort of merged into the desert and there were scubby little palm trees everywhere. And the convenience stores had those big boards strapped to the front telling you everything the sell in big black block capitals. It was fab. Just like on TV.

Sadly the reason why I was there was a wedding and I can't be bothered to nip back to the other thread, but while it was pretty good as weddings go (I like weddings), if *I* wee getting married in Las Vegas there would have been an Elvis impersonator involved.

Which reminds me. For this thread, my wedding.

I dearly love a good tattoo. And it was the good ole boy accent of the commentator that got to me: "if you cayen't turn tight you cayen't fight". I love the Tricolore (who fly on jet fuel and what you have to call "testoste-roney") and the Jordanians are always stunning. The best and most impressive though was 16 (count them 16) Hercs flying in formation. These are huge transport planes and their pilots are not trained for formation flying; they are however trained for landing in impossibly short airfields in the tops of mountains or the middle of jungles.

Talking of which, driving south from the Arctic Circle, I took the wrong turn and ended up on a very narrow road, still southbound, through mile and miles and miles of Swedish pine forest. Single track. When suddenly it opened out to the width of a motorway with no central reservation. And narrowed again. An unofficial landing strip left over from the Cold War.

B

Zoomer's post on team work here: F19585?thread=8266934&show=20&skip=0#p110034484 reminded me just how ing cool it was and has been to take a bunch of random folks you know a bit on line and buy a blood website from the BBC. It really has been astonishing, and the experience hugely exceeded my rather bleak expectations.

Oh. And the Internet. And my expectations were high High HIGH.

B

ECT. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it - it's a buzz!

My electric blanket. A friend gave me 50 quid's worth of Argos Vouchers, and I didn't really want anything from Argos so that was what I got. Not quite life transforming, but certainly life-enhancing every single winter's night. Snug as a Ben in a rug with my under Ben heating.

Life transforming stuff though has been the combination of beta blockers and triptanes. I've gone from migraines every 3-6 weeks to a vaguely bad head and a fuzzy brain every 3-6 months. Astonishing.

B

About the migraines. I used to get them and they are hell.

But really how could you not want anything from Argos? I bought one thing from them, 2 outdoor chairs which amazingly are as good as ever after 15 years. Mind you they are just a bit of moulded plastic. But I hadn't reckoned with their longevity when I bought them.