Howdy!

I love my job. Sometimes it gets really fun. But sometimes it gets mega-fun, like today…

It’s been high time to replenish the arsenal of corporate photos for a while now, so we thought we’d do it properly – and where else but in a remote corner of Arizona, of course! It was out here on the landing strip of Sedona Airport – up on a hill surrounded by desert – that we had a real-pro photo session… which lasted a whopping six hours! We decided to let photographer-to-the-stars Jonas Fredwall Karlson do the shooting, after he did such a great job with the pic for an article in Vanity Fair some time back. He really knows his stuff!

Sedona’s a popular place with the New Age lot, apparently. Nice place. Super views. Unusual place! More familiar to us in these unfamiliar surroundings was the jet we flew in on: we’ve flown on it quite a few times already, but to an airport atop a hill in desolate wilds like this – that’s a first.

Let me go over the last few days in order.

It all started off with a bit of time travel – Dr. Who or Back to the Future style (take your pick). On November 1 at around 5pm Tokyo time we flew out of the Japanese capital and traversed Pacific Ocean to land in Los Angeles, California – at 11am on the same day, November 1. Doctorin’ the Tardis or what?

But after that nice bit of time gain it pains me to say that it all went downhill from there. From touching down to leaving the airport we had two (TWO!) hours waiting around in various lines – passport control, customs… and to make matters way worse, all the waiting around was topped off with killer dose of I-truly-couldn’t-care-less American “service” at every turn. I guess our negative first impressions this time were made worse for just having just been – later that day! – in Japan. What a contrast!

Anyway, getting on with business… in LA we had a (surprise!) busy schedule. First I spoke at the UCLA; then we got together with our regional partners and partied; and next morning we were on the plane and heading for Sedona.

UCLA campus

Here’s a view of the airport’s runway on approach. We landed not long after.

And some more shots of the surrounding landscape…

Not our plane!

That one’s ours! It’s not all work, work, work, you know :)

Hi all!

Well it’s back on the road again for me, off on another crazy trip around the planet. First stop – Japan, for the Nikkei Global Management Forum. I won’t go into the details of the event, but here are a few photos:

More: But the most interesting bit came in Tokyo Disneyland!

Hi all!

Now, if you’re not too hot on geography, I’m writing this from Washington, D.C., with the D.C. standing for District of Columbia, don’t you know. There’s another Washington – Washington state – on the other side of the American continent, but without the D.C. There’s a Colombia – the South American country; then there’s Columbia University in New York; there’s Columbo – the TV detective fond of beige sack-like raincoats; and to add to the confusion, round the other side of the globe there’s Colombo – the largest city of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), which is where we’re headed today.

Our three days in Washington whizzed past like a film on fast-forward: As per, we were whizzing about all over the place getting to event after event. And I really mean whizzing – just like a (non-D.C.) squirrel in a wheel – unlike the local squirrels here, which royally, haughtily and languidly stroll about parks as if they own them – not the easily-startled beasts I’m used to.

I won’t tell you all about all the events we took part in here – there’s not much point and it’d probably be pretty dull reading! (Note to event organizers/participants – your events were not dull to me :) I’ll just share with you one comment about the Billington Cybersecurity Summit where I got to speak about cyber threats, more info on which you can read here.

I really enjoyed personally meeting a whole lotta highly placed officials at the event and discussing with them in some detail the topic of cybersecurity and fighting computer maliciousness around the world. I was pleasantly surprised by how much these ladies and gentlemen – on whom a lot of US policy and thus security depends – know about the subject, and especially pleased to discover that their positions are very much like mine. Phew.

Work done, come Saturday we were able to get a bit of sightseeing in. We even managed to visit a couple of museums. The National Museum of Natural History we didn’t think too much of – all those dug-up mastodons and dinosaur bones look kind of unconvincing. While the Air and Space Museum… oh yes – that was more like it. All sorts of interesting stuff to see there, from the Wright brothers’ first airplane to the very latest drone. There are Messerschmitts, an SS-20, a Pershing, copies of Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz, and so on and so on. I decided against taking photos – there are plenty on the Internet. But it’s best to see it all in the flesh, of course.

More: Columbia-Doha-Colombo …

Days 20-22 (6-8). Rafting.

Kamchatka’s hardly known for its rafting: none of the rivers are all that lengthy – only long enough for three or four days rafting at the most. Calm rapids, calm swells. Almost all the rivers I know about here are pensioner-level! Therefore, rafting on Kamchatka is recommended only as an addition to other activities, as a wind-down exercise to allow those blisters a brief respite, and of course to get one’s fill of fresh fish!

More: The fish menu …

More: Kamchatka-2012: Tolbachik and the Northern Fissure.. . .

Greetings all!

Here we are again. September. The holiday month of August over, and it’s back to work – which for me means back on the road or, rather, in the plane. This season is set to see me doing my usual globetrotting thing, but with the itinerary including some new countries and new events. Goodo, gotta keep some novelty in there! The schedule needs to stay real flexible as plans can easily change real quick, as experience has shown many times. This year I may even break my previous record – or maybe better put, dubious record – of 100 flights made in a year. This year I’ve already notched up 59… (I keep careful count of them, just in case).

But between Kamchatka and the next whirlwind tour, I really wanted to “lay low in MOW” for a few weeks, get my bearings, regroup, ground myself, and all that – and re-familiarize myself with the abode and city I – on paper – reside in. I figured this necessary as I’d started forgetting which switch is for the kitchen and which for the hall! Thus, today – a story and pics about a trip to a really interesting place in the Moscow Region – the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. This place is really something – I highly recommend a visit. A day excursion can be arranged where they show and tell you all, let you poke and prod the various exhibits and climb inside the spaceships in which they train cosmonauts (who keep appearing in the hall walking about to and fro, to the delight of the excursioners).

You can clamber inside the reentry capsule of Soyuz in which cosmonauts return back to earth. The guides go into all sorts of detail about space missions and the landing back on earth, about particular cases, and so on and on and on… I won’t tell you it all here. Best see it and hear it all for yourselves in the flesh.

More: centrifuges, hydro-pool, planetarium and MIR space station …

Day 15 (for the second group – day 1). Heading north.

If you ever happen to one day find yourself in Kamchatka, specifically in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and you have a free day on which the weather is good and the wallet is sufficiently bulging, then it’s perfectly feasible to have yourself a fantastic day to remember. What you do is organize a helicopter excursion and head north – to Klyuchevskaya Sopka and back. Such a day-excursion comes highly recommended – a total mind… flip – is guaranteed!

As mentioned – you need to sort yourself a helicopter, which really should be ordered in advance. After having done so, you pray for fine weather on the day of your trip. It’s a good idea to take spare batteries with you for your cameras and similar kit, as you’ll find you use them pretty much non-stop.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been on numerous helicopter excursions all over the planet – but in terms of the sheer overload of impressions, Kamchatka leads by a mile.

En route we flew over several volcanoes (including an erupting one, but which by next season may die down), the hissing caldera of the Uzon volcano (with a touchdown and excursion), the Valley of the Geysers (touchdown & excursion), the Kluchevskaya group of volcanoes, and the Northern Fissure (where we walked along the peaks of red hills). Unforgettable!

// For those in need of more details re all the below-listed, click here, or search the net.

1. Karymsky, 1536m – a permanently active volcano:

More: An unforgettable day …

Mutnovsky volcano and environs (locally known simply as Mutnovka) are made up – handily – of three birds (killed with one stone) and a bonus track.

First, there’s Mutnovka itself – an active volcano of indescribable beauty, a canyon, ice cap, craters, streams, steam vents, sulfuric springs, and so on and so forth. Second, there’s Gorely – also a volcano, but nothing like Mutnovka, so also very interesting and visit-worthy. (By the way, right before our last trip here, in 2010, Gorely suddenly started to hiss and gurgle – so we gave it a miss then, just in case.) Third, amazing lava fields, caves and tunnels. And the bonus track? I’ll get to that a bit later…

The great thing about the place is that all four sights are close together: you can walk among all four quite easily in minutes, not hours.

More: The weather takes a sharp turn …

Days 6, 7 and 8: The hike to Khodutka.

Farewell Ksudach. We’re heading out on a 50-kilometer “walk in the country” over to Khodutka volcano! In the pic below Khodutka is the volcano on the horizon. A mere stone’s throw…

More: What

Days 3-4-5. Ksudach.

We flew from Kurile Lake to Ksudach by helicopter. We could have got there by foot of course, but, first, no one knew the way; second, we couldn’t find a crazy enough guide; and third, no one really fancied battling through the dense undergrowth. Oh, and fourth: the whole route is cut with bears. Maybe next time we should prepare beforehand and work out a passable route – one that would also take in Kambalny volcano. From Google Maps it looks rather tempting.

More: Building the paddling pools inside the volcano…