All things considered I'm a big fan of Uber. They engage in some shady tactics to enter new markets and no doubt have growing pains, but the concept of an on demand car service is brilliant, and they're the most dedicated to making that happen (even if their $41 billion valuation leaves me scratching my head).
Anyway, Uber just sent out an email indicating that their UberBLACK flat rate airport pricing to JFK and EWR are increasing as of today (there's no flat rate pricing to LGA):
"Two weeks ago we introduced new quality standards on UberBLACK in order to enhance the experience for riders and increase earnings for partners."
The post UberBLACK NYC Airport Flat Rate Prices Increase Today appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
Last week the LoungeBuddy iPhone App offered readers a chance for free credit towards lounge day passes. And anyone that didn’t win? Still start off with a free $10 credit towards your first pur purchase with code viewftwing (you get all the credit, no referral benefit to me). I’m not a part of the Apple […]
The post Free and Discounted Lounge Access appeared first on View from the Wing.
It's a good thing I'm homeless and have never owned a home, or else I'd probably spend more furnishing it than the place itself costs. Not with luxury stuff, but rather with airline goodies. I've always wanted a galley cart, for example.
All Nippon Airways (ANA), the Japanese Airline, retired their last 747 in March of this year. And from December 25, 2014, through February 28, 2015, they'll be selling seats. Via CNN:
The post Perfect Christmas Gift For Aviation Nuts appeared first on One Mile at a Time.
A combination free-standing tower and guyed mast, the Gerbrandy Tower is the tallest broadcasting tower in the Netherlands. More impressive, though, is what the tower becomes during the holiday season. Every year around Christmas, workers turn this 366.8-meter-tall tower into the world's tallest Christmas tree.
Visible from over 50 km away, the Christmas tree tower is made by stringing white lamps along the cables that support the tallest reaches of the structure. An expensive decorating procedure, it was thought that the world's tallest Christmas tree could only be installed every five years, but sponsors have allowed this seasonal lighting to continue annually.
Built in 1961, the Gerbrandy Tower was the tallest man-made object anywhere in Europe at the time, measuring 382.5 meters. But 26 years later, in 1987, its height was reduced to 375 meters, a number that fell again in 2007, when it was modified to its current height; the new digital antenna didn't require as much length as the old analog antenna it replaced. The lower section, standing 100 meters tall, is a concrete tower. The upper parts of the structure consists of a steel mast guyed to the ground. Towers of this construction are very rare; only a few dozen exist in the world, with most of them found in Hungary and Norway.
The Gerbrandy Tower is used for directional radio services and for FM and TV broadcasting. It is named after Peter Gerbrandy, prime minister of the Netherlands during World War II. Like the Netherlands throughout the war that Gerbrandy saw them through, the Gerbrandy Tower is quite resilient. In mid-2011, a small fire caused the transmitters to shut down, but the tower remained stable. A similar tower nearby caught fire only hours later and collapsed to the ground, but the Gerbrandy Tower didn't falter.
Sure, putting a Christmas tree in your house seems pretty arbitrary considering the true religious context of the holiday. But beating a smiling, hollowed-out Christmas log until it “defecates” in your fireplace takes the celebration in Catalonia to a whole new level.
In Catalan, Tió de Nadal is roughly translated to Christmas Log and is a widespread tradition in many parts of Spain. According to Catalan mythology, the Christmas Log brings small presents on Christmas (big presents come from the Three Wise Men) in the same way presents are placed under Christmas trees in United States. Originally, the Tió de Nadal was just a piece of dead wood, but now the log is often given a face with an attached nose and two little legs, along with a little red hat similar to a barretina.
If it stopped right there, it wouldn’t be that strange. Just another present-delivering vehicle adopted by a different culture. But it doesn’t stop there, that’s only the beginning. It all starts on the Day of the Immaculate Conception, December 8. Tradition states that households begin to “feed” the log every night starting then. The log is also usually given a small blanket during this time to keep it warm during the chilly weeks before Christmas.
After weeks of feeding, it is finally Christmas Eve and the log is placed in the fireplace, little face and beret staring up from the ground. Members of the house then take turns bashing the little log person with a stick and commanding it to defecate out presents, candies and wafers and not to defecate stinky herring. This is where the tradition got its other name, Caga tió, or shit log.
The bashing continues while traditional songs about the log are sung. Christmas is then celebrated to the delight of everyone in the house as they reach below the tió’s blanket to pull out their “gifts” of defecated candy and presents.
Positioned deep in Siberia, the village of Oymyakon holds the distinction of being the coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth.
Just a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle and reaching record lows of -96.16 degrees, one is forced to ponder not only why, but also how the villagers of this remotest of remote locations survive.
With a day that varies from 3 hours in the winter to 21 hours in the summer and permanently frozen ground due to the extreme subarctic climate, the roughly 500 residents of Oymyakon are mostly unable to grow crops, therefore their diet basically consists of reindeer and horse meat. While spoiled kids to the south get out of school for snow days, the children of Oymyakon are stuck in class unless the temperature falls below –52C. If you were to go outside naked on an average day, it would take approximately one minute for you to freeze to death.
Besides the obvious issues of remoteness, the cold itself forces this village to be a simple place with few conveniences. Cars are hard to start with frozen axle grease and fuel tanks, unused pipes can freeze within 5 hours, batteries lose life at an alarming speed. Pen ink freezes, anything less than fur fails at keeping the chill off, and electronics are all but useless.
Perhaps one of the most difficult challenges facing these rugged people existing within "Stalin's Death Ring" is the burial of their dead. With the ground in a state of permafrost, it takes several days to dig a grave, a strenuous task of lighting a bonfire for a few hours, then pushing the coals aside to dig a few inches, then starting another fire, and so on and so forth, until the hole is big enough to hold a coffin.
While its appeal may be mostly due to the novelty of being in such a bizarre climate as there is very little to do in Oymyakon, it has a relatively successful tourism market. Area-specific activities such as reindeer hunts, ice fishing and the juxtaposition of enjoying the hot springs when the temperatures are in the minus-fiftes are available to those who would like to experience this opposite of a tropical vacation spot.
