Some of you might remember my Superman roller coaster video from Six Flags. I got this email about the video today:
Dear tochivideo,
Your video, Superman: Ride of Steel @ Six Flags, may have content that is owned or licensed by WMG.
No action is required on your part; however, if you are interested in learning how this affects your video, please visit the Content ID Matches section of your account for more information.
Sincerely,
- The YouTube Team
:( WMG complained about my use of Superman Theme song as background music. This was my most popular video with 12,888 views, and was the subject of some funny comments (a lot of bashing between Wonderland and Darien Lake).
I didn’t particularly like the tone of YouTube’s copyright dispute notices:
There are very few valid reasons for disputing a claim. Submitting an invalid dispute can result in penalties against your account.
Ironically, I can still watch the embedded video from my earlier post. It was a fun run while it lasted.
I have always had bad experiences flying with United, the last of which involved juice being poured onto me. Understandably (word bunny!), I was not at all pleased to find out about this $15 surcharge for checked baggage. Especially when even Air Canada, of all airlines, rescinded their fuel surcharge and reinstated their two free baggage policy. I have since found out UAL lost $5.8B in 2008, but that still doesn’t justify charging for checked baggage.. grr.
Anyway, I was flying UAL back from Vegas, with a stopover at windy, delay-prone, O’Hare. I managed to sleep through most of flight from LAS to ORD, mainly because there was no personal TV monitor. You’d pretty much expect all aircrafts to be equip with these things nowadays, sigh.
Now in Chicago, I got a little nervous when they made repeated announcements about the FAA regulation for allowing only two carry-ons. I had my tripod, camera bag and roller suit case. :( While lining up to go through the gate during boarding, the lady in front of me was forced to stuff her hand bag (3rd item) into one of her other bags before they let her through! Crap! I got up to the agent, and he pointed at my tripod and asked if it was an instrument. I blindly answered yeah! and he waved me through. Even the flight attendants re-juggling the overhead compartment took extra care of my tripod. Tripod bag saves the day! :P
During the flight, the lady (from Hamilton) sitting beside me just came back from a 4 week stint in Japan. She told me about her 30 hour ordeal to get into Osaka due to weather delays (She was offered to be flown to Tokyo, but Osaka has a NEW airport that she wanted to check out!). I too had my share of bad flight stories to tell. She climbed 4 different mountains while travelling through Japan (a bit disappointed that a 90 year old Japanese man could climb faster than she could!), ate tons of food of questionable origins. lol.
So I get to the main point of this post. I’ve never had such an enjoyable time on a flight before. The flight crew on UAL 1112 decided to spice up the traditional intercom exchanges. Every statement was a gem.
Welcome to UAL flight 1112. We’ll be heading head to Toronto tonight, flying over Detroit. The weather in Toronto is pretty much the same as Chicago, only 10 degrees colder. What else would you expect from Canada?
Please sit back and enjoy our quick flight to Detroit, I meant Toronto!!
We are a bit delayed here as a couple late stragglers made this flight. We want to make sure their checked baggage are on this flight. We don’t want them to be grumpy when they find out in Toronto.
Ladies and gentlemen, in preparation for takeoff, please bring your seatbacks up to the most uncomfortable position…
As required by FAA regulations, so I must do this…(sigh). I’ll be playing the safety video…
Please do listen to where the exits are on this plane. It’s one of those things you don’t really need to know, but good to know when you do need to.
(After a 5 minute taxi to the runway, the captain comes on to say) Ladies and Gentlemen, you must be thinking we are driving to Detroit, I mean Toronto. Sorry to disappoint! Flight crew, please be seated. (in really excited voice) We’re number one on the queue for take off!
Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to be keeping the seatbelt lights on for a little longer, as there are some RED STUFF on the radar…
(On his way to collect the passenger’s garbage from the drinks service, one guy handed a dinner (non-plane) container to the flight attendant) Sir, United institute this new policy that came into effect on Jan 1. As part of our environment initiatives to offset our carbon footprint, we now charge $3 per pound to dispose extra garbage. I’ll have to take this box to the back to weigh it, but I’m guessing it’ll cost about $8 to dispose. (The guy grabs the container back and says he’ll keep it!!) I’m kidding I’m kidding! (Everyone bursts out laughing).
(Right after we touched down in T.O., which was not a smooth landing by any means, the flight attendant comes on)… After that AWESOME landing by our captain, WELCOME TO TORONTO!!!
(Captain then comes on) Well, we’re here now. Welcome to DETROIT!!! I mean Toronto! Hope you all had an enjoyable flight, and thank you for flying United!
I forgot so many other good lines. I’d never looked forward to hearing what the flight crew might say next. What a difference a little humour can make to a flight. :)
Cucumber mentioned we need to fill in some holes in the plot, so I guess I’ll cover Death Valley.
Day 4 of VO: V. Lemon left MGM before anyone else woke up to grab the official Veggies mobile at McCarren. The rest of us eventually got up and everyone was ready by 9am. After two days of Vegas, we decided to take a day trip to Death Valley National Park. Cucumber, PP and M&M’s opted to remain in Vegas to do some shopping.
Death Valley has always been near the top of my list of must-visit National Parks. The Veggies were good sport when I suggested spending a precious day from the trip visiting this park - an act of kindness for which I will be forever grateful. I was a wee bit worried that Death Valley was going to SUCK, especially this being a repeat visit for some. I didn’t want to waste everyone’s day, especially when it takes 2 hours to drive one-way!
Our first stop was a food stop at In-N-Out for some early brunch. Waited outside for 5 minutes, placed 5 orders, found 5 stools and one fooding photo. We continued on towards Death Valley. Catnip spotted a decoy tree along the way. After some driving on some super flat roads, we eventually got to the sign that marked the entrance of DV.
Of course, we needed to stop and grab a group photo with the entrance sign. Made an off-hand comment about climbing on top of the sign, I didn’t expect everyone to take it seriously!! Ironically, this turned out to be the easiest climb of the day. Tomato and Lemon performed in a duet entitled a-catch-that-was-not-a-catch when disembarking from the sign.
We stopped into the visitor centre in Furnace Creek. Catnip found a little stuffed spider, while the store keeper with a funky moustache presented a bigger one! We got some directions on places to visit from the rangers.
First stop was Badwater, a basin in Death Valley that happens to be the lowest point in North America at –282ft. It was interesting, because we saw out in the far distance (there was a sign on the road) pointing to Mt Whitney @ 14,496ft. Mt Whitney is the highest point in continental US, and it’s only 8 miles crow distance from Badwater.
There was a long path out to the salt crust fields, where we took an awesome single file photo. We tossed around a couple chunks of salt thingies, and tasted some of this really salty flakes. I recalibrated my GPSr at this location, because it initially reported that I was at –310ft instead.
We headed up to artist’s drive, a one-way windy road that takes us through some interesting rock formations and giant DIPs in the road. Yam tried to break apart some rocks looking for magical swords that give +5 power and hidden crystals. The low hanging sun casted some super long shadows on us, so we played some shadow YMCA… only we needed a 5 letter word. Settled on SPACE… can’t remember why. Catnip also tried to trix0r us with red/green rocks.
Next stop was Golden Canyon. We took the main trail in; near the trailhead we found a section of washed out asphalt from years past. Further along, we spotted this side trail that had the resemblance of a stairway. Tomato and Yam decided to climb up to get to the rock above, while the rest of us waited below. I had my camera ready to capture their heads sticking out from above the rock, but after a few minutes, they still hadn’t showed up! No replies from our shouts to them either. We had no option but to pursue. The chase was on!
The climb started off not too bad, but the trail deteriorated quite quickly. It was apparent that this trail hasn’t been maintained in a long time, probably due to rock slides in recent years. Soon, we were scampering up some pretty big steps and clinging on any handholds we could find. The last part was particularly tough with loose gravel and very few handholds. Despite the cuts and bruises and teetering on the brink of life and death, we didn’t need too much motivation to continue the climb. The view of the valley was just breathtaking and the vista just got better and better the higher we climbed!
The sun was setting soon; light was fading. We were forced to climb down, which was mainly sliding on my butt for me. It is times like this when I get into the photographer’s age-old delimma. I’m glad I brought my tripod and TochiCam, but they were unprotected (I hadn’t expected a climb like this) and exposed to all that dirt and sand. I also could have really used both my hands being free. :|
The sun was setting by the time we got back to our car. We had to make one last stop at the sand dunes for Yam to collect his bottle of sand. Along the way, we saw some SUV driving on a dirt road leaving a looooooong dust trail. So cool. It was quite dark by the time we got to the sand dunes. Needed some super long exposures and high ISO to get any decent photos. The sand itself was amazing. Never felt sand this fine, it was almost like velvet/water flowing between your fingers.
Afterwards, we made the mad rush back to Vegas. Tomato and I had O to catch tonight. Stopped at a Shell station for potty break, where Catnip found 5 dispensers, while we found 8.
Went to Fremont Street in Old Vegas to check out the super TV roof thingy, and had some cheap buffet at Plaza Hotel and Casino. While eating, we managed to miss the uber light show that came on once an hour, but C’s M filled us in on the details afterwards.
Lemon dropped Tomato and I at Bellagio for O. We caught the fountain showing of Time to Say Goodbye. Can never get tired of watching this fountain. O was quite awesome, but that’s probably the subject of another post (if it ever happens).
DV and that Golden Canyon climb was definitely a highlight for me on this trip. Thanks again to all the Veggies for such a fun outing.
Vincent Lam. Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures. Random House, 2005.
I remember my anatomy group… We had a communication problem. Men are odd about penises. They don’t want to talk about them but they secretly believe them to be very important, perhaps sacred. So we got to the penis on our cadaver, and the men wanted to skip it. ‘We’ll look at the book,’ they said. ‘No way,’ I said, ‘we need to see the inside of the penis.’ Corpus spongiosum, all that jazz. Besides, the poor guy’s body was lying there. A big man, powerful, and it would have been a shame just to let it go to waste. What did we do? We talked. We talked like professionals, and I saw that it was this one guy’s turn to dissect, and there was no way that this man was going to cut up a penis. So I said, ‘What if I do it?’ and I did it, and I think we all understood the issue better.
>_<
About halfway through the novel. A very fun, light-hearted, most insightful read so far.