Posted by Seth on April 28, 2010 under Book Review | 
Spending as much time as I do on airplanes has done wonderful things for my reading habits. I’m reading more than ever and loving it. The majority of my reading is travel-related. Not necessarily travel guides – those are more fun to write than to read for me – but the stories I’m reading, both fiction and non-fiction, are set in destinations that I’m excited by. They might be places I’m going or places I’ve just been or just places I’m intrigued by. I often find inspiration for my travel obsession in the stories being told in these books. Most recently I’ve been reading about India. I got started late last year when I thought I’d be going back this spring thanks to a great sale offered by British Airways. That fell through, but my desire to read more about the country didn’t nor did my desire to return for another visit. In fact that desire continues to grow, based mostly on my reading of two books during the intervening months.
Maximum City is a collection of stories told by a Bombay native who returns to his hometown from New York City twenty years after having left as a teenager. His return finds the city reborn as Mumbai and many differences but also enough similarities that he is able to settle back into the routines and find his way. During the couple years he spends with his family in Mumbai he follows a few main story lines and characters around town.
There are stories of gangsters responsible for extortion and contract killings – they come as cheap as $10 on the street – and there is the story of the police commissioner responsible for tracking down and prosecuting such criminals. Whether taking a meeting with men responsible for dozens of murders and inciting riots around town or with the man who ultimately broke open the case of the riot organizers and drives the prosecution, the story is engaging and riveting. There are movie stars and producers under the protection of the governments from the extortion schemes of the criminal organizations which are run by leaders who are based in foreign lands and there are occasional efforts to actually reign in the crime waves, though mostly the efforts focus on just keeping enough people alive and financially sound so that there isn’t a revolt in the communities.
There is the tale of the beauty queen, working in one of the many dance clubs that Bombay has to offer, trying to break out of that world and into the realm of professional modeling and acting. And there is her counterpart, a man who dances as a woman and who is known for the energy and excitement she exhibits while dancing. The story tracks her home life where she lives as a relatively normal man, married and eventually a father. These two stories surround a world of women being exploited and, when successful, turning that exploitation back on the men who effect it, becoming rather wealthy at the expense of the men who would take advantage of them.
One story follows a family seeking enlightenment. A successful diamond merchant, the patriarch of the family ultimately decides to devote his life – and that of his family as well – to the pursuit of moksha, the Jain concept of enlightenment. They are millionaires who divest themselves of everything, literally throwing their money and possessions out into crowds, as they pursue this spiritual cleanliness.
The author gets invited to help write scripts for movies in Bollywood, rubbing elbows with the star directors and actors and giving a view into the way that industry works, both on the financial and human side of things. The author tells of working with a director to write an “A-level” movie and following the gang-funded development of a lesser film, tracking the hopes of an aspiring actor and the stories of woe of the thousands who move to Mumbai each year in hopes of breaking into the business.
There are other stories as well, each its own tiny piece of the whole story that makes Mumbai such a magnet for immigrants from the countryside. And each of the stories makes me want to discover just a bit more of Mumbai for myself. I know I’ll never get close to most of the people described in the book, but I want to see the city and experience my version of the life that can be had in those neighborhoods.
Were this simply a novel built from the imagination of someone who decided to disappear into the underworld of Mumbai the story would be fascinating. Considering that the tale is loosely based on the author’s actual experiences, it is simply phenomenal. I didn’t know that it was a mostly true story until I was about 80% of the way through (sorry for the spoiler if that ruins it for you) but once I found out I actually spent a couple hours just remembering some of the crazy situations that the author recounts. Even if they are only half true the fact that one man experienced so much is awesome.
Shantaram is the story of an escaped convict living on the lam in Mumbai. He did time in prison in Australia before escaping to New Zealand and eventually to India, a great place to get lost in the underworld for a few years if you’re willing to make some sacrifices. Unwilling to risk living in guest houses and hotels – locations where passports must be registered – the protagonist befriends, or is befriended by, a local who lives in one of the many slums around the city. He moves in to the slum, living on what he can drum up in various gray and black market businesses. And those are the least crazy parts of his time in town. His time in town starts with meeting a guide as he comes off the bus from the airport. That brief moment in time, a gutsy decision to trust a random stranger, turns out to define most of the rest of his time in Mumbai.
Of course, he falls in love with a woman; there is the long chase of that love. There is also his indoctrination into the true underworld of crime in Mumbai. He becomes an expert in black market currency exchange, the smuggling of gold into the country and the production and sale of false passports and other documents. He breaks into the movie business, arranging for funding of some films and working to cast extras – westerners he initially meets for drug or currency deals – in others. He sets up a small medical clinic in the slums based on his limited first aid training, eventually becoming the initial doctor for thousands of folks living in the neighborhood, people who otherwise would never receive medical treatment. Oh, and eventually he travels off to Afghanistan, smuggling huge caches of weapons along the way, to become a fighter in the war there, fighting along side natives who had previously transplanted to India and set up shop as gangsters.
He serves time in the Indian prisons, accused of a crime that he might have committed. But the accusations are secondary to the corruption in the prison system. Although he eventually manages to bribe his way out – the fingerprints taken at his initial processing return his true identity as an escaped convict – the stories of the treatments inside the prison are harrowing.
There are heroin dens and hashish bars, great meetings of the mafia dons and trips to meet with the lepers who can provide him with black market medicines for his clinic in the slums. How do you stop an epidemic from spreading through a community where an eight foot by eight foot room is home for a whole family? You simply hope to contain it and isolate the sick long enough that the others can survive. Such tales are heart-wrenching but also tell the story of the communal spirit to survive that permeates the poorest of the Mumbai communities.
And then there’s the fact that he actually wrote the book more than once. The notes, scribbled on random slips of paper accumulated over the years and eventually committed to a manuscript were all lost after he returned to prison for real, his history finally catching up with him. Still, with everything lost he wrote the stories again and weaves a tale that, while probably not 100% factual, is close enough that it is easy to feel yourself alongside him as he tries to move past the previous life and simply reinvent himself in a city that seems built for such a task.
The story is incredibly long but reads quickly. It is a page turner that is hard to put down. And the stories are compelling.
Related Posts
Posted by Seth on February 23, 2009 under News |
A few tidbits of news concerning flights to Australia this week, all of them good for the consumer.
First up, V Australia is finally ready to start operations. They were originally supposed to start up a few months ago during the peak southern hemisphere summer season, but thanks to the Boeing strike they couldn’t get their plane delivered in time. But that’s all behind us now, and they have their first 777-300ER fully loaded with three classes of service – business, premium economy and economy – and ready to fly. They are starting service this Thursday, with 3x weekly service between Sydney and Los Angeles. Service will go to daily in a few weeks when they receive their second plane. Additional service between Brisbane and Los Angeles will start in April and Melbourne is coming in September (both also dependant on receiving additional planes).
If that isn’t enough to drive some competition on the USA-Oz routes, Delta’s planned start of service between Los Angeles and Sydney on July 1 is certainly going to do so. Delta is going to be flying with a 777-200LR. The plane certainly has the range, but they only have 276 seats on the plane. A 777-300LR has 75-100 more seats on it, and the 747s that United and Qantas use have close to 400 as well. And then there are the Qantas A380s that are running on the route, with 450 seats and even more cargo capacity. I have no idea how Delta is going to be competitive in such a market. They have fewer seats to spread the fixed costs over and the fixed costs on such a route are VERY high. But the net result remains the same – cheaper prices for customers and now all three alliances will have service between the USA and Oz.
Last up on the this this morning is an interesting report that came out yesterday regarding potential changes in trans-Tasman service. The New Zealand and Australian governments have apparently agreed to streamline the operations for immigration, customs and quarantine for the short hops between their countries. This is apparently expected to help ease the travel experience and, according to some carriers, cut ticket costs by as much as 30% on those routes. From the article:
Quarantine, security and immigration issues have to be addressed to make the route a common border, The Sydney Morning Herald website said.
An Open Skies bilateral agreement is already in place, relaxing the rules for carriers flying between the two countries.
After two years of discussions, Australian and New Zealand Customs are planning trials to clear passengers before they board flights between the countries.
Sure, none of this is as cool as the crazy Los Angeles – Honolulu – San Francisco – Sydney round trip flights for $600 (I really wish I had bought one or two of those), but it is still all great news for folks headed to or from Australia. Oh, and there are still plenty of great deals to be had for flights ex-Sydney, thanks to the V Australia fares. Enjoy.
Tags: A380, Airbus, Australia, Boeing, Delta, Mileage Run, New Zealand, New Zealand Trip, Qantas, United, V Australia
Posted by Seth on April 13, 2008 under News |
Travel + Leisure magazine has an article in this month’s issue (and online) about some of the scariest runways in the world, including pictures and why they are considered to be so scary. Looking at the list, I’m actually surprised by a few of the included sites, and completely in agreement with others. Matekane air strip in Lesotho (pic in the link), for instance, is very short and drops off into a ravine at the end. Pilots report that airplanes aren’t always actually flying when they hit the end of the runway, and they have to continue to gain speed during their drop off the edge of the cliff. Others on the list, like Washington’s National airport and JFK in New York City are on the list simply because the approach procedures require some “difficult” navigation. In the case of those two, however, the difficulty is regulatory, not real. If a plane on approach to National is a bit off they veer into restricted airspace, not a mountain. And LaGuardia has water at the end of two shorter runways than what JFK presents.
Based on the metrics that they use I’d consider adding Queenstown, New Zealand and Quito, Ecuador to the list. Both have mountainous approaches and some serious banking involved. And both are fun destinations to visit!
Posted by Seth on February 26, 2008 under News |
Back in December we hiked on Franz Joseph Glacier. Apparently a German tourist wasn’t satisfied with the normal options for visiting the site, so he chose a different approach – tagging it. The guy – caught by some British tourists on camera – apparently decided that the natural beauty of the glacier needed to be jazzed up a bit, so he brought some spray paint with him on the hike in to the terminal face and used it on the rocks as well as on the ice. The cops grabbed him the next morning at the bus stop headed out of town and forced him to spend the next day and a half cleaning up his mess, in addition to enduring verbal redress from the guides and tourists making the hike those days. Having met some of those guides, that wouldn’t be an encounter I’d want to endure (though I’d enjoy watching it). No permanent damage to the glacier, which is good news.
Posted by Seth on January 9, 2008 under Trip Reports |
I’ve started reflecting on some of the numbers associated with the New Zealand trip – and they are rather astounding, at least to me.
We flew ~23,000 miles and drove another 1,000. There was some train time some boat time as well as a couple buses. We flew on five different types of airplanes (Airbus 320 & 340-600 and Boeing 747-400, 737-300 & 737-800) and stayed in eight different hotels (plus the two nights on airplanes).
I carried three cameras (two digital and one film) and took over 2,000 pictures (almost all digital). About 10% of those were actually any good, and the collection of those, along with a bit of narrative, can be found here or (here and here, without the narrative.). And while I was taking pictures Linnea managed to read about 4000 pages in various books. Or, to think of it another way, every time I pushed the shutter button she flipped the page in her book.
I met at least 15 other people in the airports and on the planes who were traveling on the same deal that we got, which was actually more than I expected. On the flight to Sydney we made up ~20% of the business/first class passenger count, and both cabins were packed.
Oh, and there was the one missing digit in the price tag for the flights, which made this all possible 
I can’t really enumerate how fantastic the trip was, but that’s a different problem I’ll have to deal with.
Posted by Seth on January 6, 2008 under Trip Reports |
As was written in one of the guidebooks, the food isn’t great, but at least it is expensive. I think this is a bit of an overstatement and generalization (on the quality side, not the cost side) but the many, many “pub food” meals definitely started to wear on us by the end of the trip.
We had a couple of the better meals of the trip in Auckland. We based our choices in part on the Metro magazine’s restaurants of the year list, so we were pretty much working with a good collection to start with. Christmas lunch at Hammerheads was quite good, and I can see why they are considered one of the best seafood restaurants in town. And the view didn’t suck either:
Once we left Auckland, however, the options slimmed down quite a bit. Te Anau had a pretty good Italian place called Cafe La Dolce Vita where we had a nice dinner one night. We also found a great winery called Amisfield just outside Queenstown on the recommendation of a friend and it was delicious. The west coast was where things really fell apart. There was pub food, “upscale” pub food, and a pizza place where the toppings were more random than Leonardo’s 706 (which is a restaurant in Gainesville, Florida, which means probably none of you have heard of it, but I assure you that the pizza toppings were strange – pumpkin and blue cheese, anyone??). We found a pretty good Indian place in Hokitika called Priya, and a reasonably good Japanese restaurant, Sala Sala, in Christchurch. We also ate well in Sydney, at a restaurant called Aria right on Sydney Harbor. The wait staff seemed to lose interest in us once they realized that we weren’t going to be having the $250/person tasting menu and wine pairings (which was all just options off the regular menu – a terrible choice if you happen to be there), but we were able to linger and watch sunset over the harbor and enjoy ourselves quite a bit there.
The Hilton in Auckland gave us free breakfast based on my Diamond status, which was a great treat. Officially it was only supposed to be a continental breakfast, but it was Christmas day, where the breakfast in the restaurant was a special event, so we were allowed to take the credit for the continental breakfast for two and apply it to any room service breakfast order we wanted. That was a great deal. We had breakfast on our waterfront balcony and thanks to the Hilton HHonors credit and a possible clerical error didn’t have to pay a dime for it. Just about every other breakfast we had on the trip was overpriced and not particularly great. Fortunately we had a refrigerator in almost every hotel room, so we were able to find our way to a local supermarket and stock our own breakfasts for most of the trip. Fresh local apples and PB&J sandwiches were a frequent occurrence.
So, with a few exceptions, the dining wasn’t all that great, but that’s no reason to skip the trip. The rest of New Zealand more than makes up for it.
Posted by Seth on January 2, 2008 under Trip Reports |
With about 1400 kilometers under our belts in the past 10 days (~900 miles), I’ve spent a certain amount of time behind the wheel driving and I have to say that it is absolutely nothing like driving in the USA, and not particularly similar to anywhere else we’ve been either.
For starters, driving is on the “other” side of the road. That’s actually not a significant issue for me it turns out because I drive so rarely in the US that I pretty much forget how to do it at all. So when I do have to drive on the left or the right it pretty much means just figuring out what the rules are in whatever town we pick up the car and going with it. There was one wrong turn late one evening when I was the only person on the road, and a mix-up in terms of right-of-way at one point, but no major problems and no real damage done.
There are also a number of road signs that seem to exist here but not elsewhere I’ve driven. The signs include Sneezing Mountain:
Sneezing Mountain with Extra Phlegm:
And this combination sign focused pretty much entirely on scaring the hell out of whoever approaches:
You’re welcome, I guess:
They do strictly enforce the speed limits here, which I discovered the hard way. The more I think about it I’m amazed that I could actually get the rental car we had up as fast as I was clocked (118 km/h or ~74mph) but I was definitely going that fast and the constable was pretty clear that there would be a mandatory fine issued. And there was. So now NZ Transit has ZND120 of my money, and I know not to speed (as much on roads that are highly patrolled). The speed limit is 100 across most of the highways here, and that is completely unreasonable in much of the south island. The roads are narrow and wind through the mountains and around rivers and lakes, so actually getting up to 100 most of the time is almost impossible. Google’s driving directions seem to just use the speed limit as how they calculate drive time, so depending on that isn’t particularly useful – a lesson we learned the hard way.
There are also a range of rental car companies, from “known” names like Hertz, Avis and Budget, to local brands like Jucy and Apex. With a significant cost savings we went with Apex. And we got a car that basically had no brakes. I’m not a mechanic, but I’m pretty sure that there aren’t supposed to be gouges in the brake pads like these:
It took us a couple hours in the repair depot waiting around while they sorted it all out, but they eventually gave us a replacement car instead of insisting that we wait for the repairs to be completed. The replacement car has been fine and I really have no complaints of note now that we got working brakes, but be careful and make sure that the car is actually functional before heading out on the road.
And that brings me to the title of this post. There are a few levels of road here in New Zealand, with State Highways being roughly the equivalent of the US highways (main roads but not limited access like interstates) and the most pervasive roads in the country. At every single crossing of a body of water there is a sign naming the crossing. And there are a lot of them, and they’re all named uniquely. Some of the names are fun (Stinky Creek), some are rather misleading (Blackwater Creek – the water was crystal clear) and some describe the area they’re in (Hairpin Culvert). I think that NZ Transit may employ the same folks who name paints to come up with the names for all the creeks, streams, culverts and other trickles of water that a road might cross. The significant bridges (mostly over rivers, but not always) are almost all one lane. So each time you come up on a bridge there is a chance that someone else is already on it, coming right at you. Some of the time there is a passing bay halfway down the bridge to allow you to pull aside and let the other cars pass, but much of the time you basically just sit there and wait to see if the other car is going to stop or not and then you get to pass. Suffice it to say that it adds some excitement to the travel process. And if you happen to come across a bridge that also has railroad tracks in the middle of the road, the train ALWAYS gets the right of way.
There are also scenic overlooks every few kilometers. There are so many that eventually we stopped checking what the view was at each turn off. Of course, we did still stop at a few, including this one on the highway to Arthur’s Pass (one of the more photographed viaducts there is):
And these few along the highway between Te Anau and Queenstown:
Finally, be careful when stopping, as the Kea (a local parrot) has a habit of getting close to cars. Very close. This guy was actually walking around on the hood of the car for a while and didn’t seem all that concerned when I opened the window to snap this shot:
Overall, a pretty easy country to get around in if you’re comfortable on the road with a bunch of camper vans driven by folks who don’t seem that used to driving large, top heavy vehicles on narrow, winding roads where everyone is trying to go faster than they should be given the conditions and is distracted by the amazing views!
Posted by Seth on December 30, 2007 under Trip Reports |
And it was phenomenal!
We spent a full day on Franz Joseph glacier with Franz Joseph Glacier Guides, with about 7 hours of time on the ice. For anyone interested, absolutely do the full day – the half day stops well before the fun stuff really starts. They outfitted us with crampons (spikes to go on the bottom of our shoes) and rain coats, as well as ice axes about half-way into the trip to help us keep our balance in the less well groomed sections of the ice. Our guide (a crazy, crazy man) actually found a very, very small crevasse on the ice that no one had every transited previously. He took that on as a challenge for the rest of us. I don’t have any pictures of us inside the crevasse because it was too small for me to get my hands into my pockets to pull out my camera. And many of you know how far I’ll go to use my camera. It was incredibly tight. I had to help the guy in front of me back out at one point because his feet got stuck. Probably no more than 10-12″ wide – definitely not for the claustrophobic. This is the view from outside:
The scale of glaciers is pretty hard to understand until you’re actually on one. Even just looking at it from the ground you can tell that it is big, but until you get out onto the ice it is difficult to fathom just how huge they really are. We hiked up along side Exit Glacier in Seward, Alaska, and up to the face of Fox Glacier here in New Zealand, and we could tell that they were big, but getting on to one and hiking up for 5 hours to look up
and down
and realize just how little of it you’ve managed to cover is rather awe inspiring. And you definitely don’t want to slip into one of the crevasses 
or holes
though our guide offered some comfort with his observation that most of them are narrow enough that we’d just get stuck and make him have to pull us out, not that we’d actually have real injuries or death – very motivating he was.
If you have the opportunity and the inclination, I highly recommend finding one to hike at some point.
Posted by Seth on December 28, 2007 under Trip Reports |
Some posts are going to be a bit out of order for a while since internet access is intermittent here and half the time I’m posting from my BlackBerry instead of the stuff I’ve written already on the laptop.
Anyways, we did a couple nights in Te Anau a couple of nights ago. We used it as a launching point for our tour of Milford Sound, which is actually a fjord, not a sound, but apparently noone wants to correct Captain Cook, so the name stuck. We tried to book in to a kayaking trip on the sound but everything was sold out for 3 days. We contented ourselves with a cruise on a boat powered by something other than our arms. It would seem that the full booking was something of divine providence, as it rained all day while we were on the sound. A lot of rain. So much that a number of waterfalls spontaneously established themselves on the cliff faces as there was nowhere else for the water to go. More on the Milford Sound trip later when I can add some pictures to a post.
Back to the idea of a Lake View” room in Te Anau. It turns out that the lake has trees lining it pretty much the whole length of town, and the trees are taller than all the buildings. So we could see the lake a little bit between the trees, but really only barely. And that was from our upstairs room. The downstairs rooms had nice little patios, and a view of the road and the trees, but not really the lake. And most of the other hotels along the strip seemed to be the same way. Long story short, don’t pay extra for the view – you likely won’t get your money’s worth.
Posted by Seth on December 25, 2007 under Trip Reports |
Sitting in the Koru Club at the domestic terminal of the Auckland airport right now and I have to say that this is definitely the nicest domestic lounge I’ve ever seen. There is a full spread of hot and cold breakfast foods out on buffet, as well as coolers full of drinks available for self-service. Free WiFi, plenty of room to spread out in comfy chairs, a massage chair, a business center with free computer/internet use and probably some other cool things I’ve not seen yet. They’re actually announcing the flights, and the entire staff is supremely friendly, though I’m pretty sure that in at least one case it is just the guy flirting with the passenger.
Yesterday was spent walking around Auckland in the morning, getting to see one of the oldest cemeteries in the city (if not the oldest) on Symmonds road, as well as meandering through the Auckland Domain, their version of Central Park.
Then another park and on to lunch at Hammerheads, a great seafood place overlooking the harbor and downtown Auckland. I managed to be an hour off in my recollection of when our reservation was, so we had time for an extra drink at the bar. And despite the rain showers throughout the afternoon we still had some pretty impressive views.
We had some rain this morning, but the skies are clearing up now and it looks like it’s going to be a great day.
Posted by Seth on December 23, 2007 under Trip Reports |
I suppose it depends on which 12 hours you’re looking at. Our day started at 6am EST with a wakeup and ride to Newark to catch our first flight on the way to Auckland – Newark to San Francisco. For the Saturday before Christmas the airport was pretty much what I expected, which is to say bedlam. Seriously, it was pretty ridiculous. Even the Presidents Club was overrun with kids, all families on their way to somewhere warm for the holiday week. So a quick 5.5 hour flight to San Francisco and then we headed downtown to meet up with a former co-worker for lunch and a drink. The trip downtown got us up and moving around and helped to break up the 10 hour layover into something somewhat reasonable. As we headed to the BART station to go back to the airport we were treated to a nice view of moonrise and sunset over the Bay Bridge.
The other first 12 hours – that of the flight to Sydney were pretty good as well. We got on the plane in San Francisco around 10pm PST now having been awake for about 20 hours, but still determined to make it through the dinner and enjoy the service that we would receive in Business Class. Dinner was served very quickly, very much in contrast to the Alitalia flight we took last year for our New Years trip where dinner consumed about three of the eight hours in the air. This one was done in just under two hours, including dessert. And then it was time to put the seat into the sleep position and zonk out.
I’ve been in business class on a few airlines now (5, I think) and I have to say that the seats on United are the only ones I’ve ever experienced where all the adjustments are manual. There’s a “switch” but it serves more as a lock than anything else. So to recline you just lift the switch and lean back. No big deal for reclining, but when it comes time to sit up and eat the process involves some contortion as you lift the switch with one hand and reach behind yourself with the other in an effort to pull the seat forward to the desired position. Ditto for extending the leg rest, which involved reaching down and physically pulling the seat into position. I understand that there are a number of savings, including weight and mechanical difficulties in not having the electronics in the seats, but I still wouldn’t make that choice if I was running the airline.
After about 6-7 hours of sleep I came out of my slumber and noticed that the full moon was illuminating the clouds below in a rather surreal way. I tried to get a couple pictures but that didn’t work so well. Shortly thereafter sunrise came about. I’ve posted before about the glory of sunrise from the air, and I have to say that today’s flight was no exception. Scattered clouds add to the effect, and having the huge wing of the 747-400 and the two engines in the shot is pretty much the icing on the cake for me.
Out the other side of the plane the moon was still high in the sky, though working on setting. With both of these going on at the same time it was hard to choose which way to look.
It was right around hour 12 that things started to go badly. It was breakfast time and the flight attendants were working the cabin quickly to make sure that they could serve everyone and get everything cleaned up and packed away in time for our arrival. And they were rushing. So it wasn’t all that surprising to see the FA spill a glass of juice in the row in front of us. Even worse, it was right in to the guy’s laptop on which he was watching a movie, so that put her in a pretty frantic mood, and I’m pretty sure that she still hasn’t recovered. She got snippy with us because we were still watching a movie (Live free or Die Hard) and that was clearly interrupting her efforts to do whatever it is that she was trying to do. And then she gave us a lecture on manners and being polite. I actually managed not to attack her, which I think shows a lot of maturity.
We’re about an hour out from arrival now and then a 3 hour layover and another 3 hour flight to get to Auckland. It has been a pretty long day, and I’m sure there will be another nap at some point to help deal with that problem, but we’ll be at the hotel before too long and then on to more adventure.
