Tourists Gawk at Lehman Bros. HQ

New York skyscraper draws tourists -- like the Bear Stearns and Enron buildings before it

I must say that I was surprised to read a Reuters news story that began: "Welcome to New York's latest tourist attraction: Lehman Brothers' headquarters (Reuters photo at right). It may be ghoulish, but as Lehman edges closer to a sale or outright failure, its currency as a tourist draw is rising. While regulators and bankers flocked to the New York Federal Reserve in lower Manhattan on Sunday to decide Lehman's fate, shutterbugs descended on the bank's midtown Manhattan headquarters to catch a piece of history before it disappears."

Call it schadenfreude tourism when people want to see a place where a felled giant once ruled. They're the sort who photogaphed the Enron building when that Texas scam operation came crashing down and more recently when Bear Stearns failed. Their latest target is Lehman Brothers' headquarters at 745 Seventh Avenue (between 49th and 50th Streets), conveniently close to Times Square. Lehman Brothers.

"The company's name is affixed in gray, metal letters to glossy black walls flanking the doors.
The nameplates, usually ignored in favor of the massive screens touting swirling, colorful videos, became an object of curiosity on a humid, sunny Sunday morning as people gawked at the home of the latest financial giant to face ruin," Reuters reported in the story called "Lehman Office Joins the New York Tourist Circuit."

Sidewalk gawkers who know the faces of some of the financial world's movers and shakers might have recognized some Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, JPMorgan's Steven Black and others emerging from limousines to deal with the crisis. "Several people posed and smiled next to the nameplates before a security guard shooed them away," the unnamed Reuters reporter added.

Colorado Ski Resort News 2008-09

Tens of millions invested in lifts, base villages and terrain for 2008-09

It's been snowing above 10,000 feet (Copper Mountain shown at right on September 12), which is a visual cue that Colorado's ski season kicks off in less than seven weeks. The biggest recent investments have gone into Snowmass ($35 million) and Steamboat ($30 million), but season pass prices for resorts that attract both vacationers and locals remain shockingly low. Competition is good for customers.

Here's what is and isn't new in Colorado. Click on the resort or ski area name for more info, including season pass info) and my comments appear in italics.

Arapahoe Basin opens in October as snow permits, perhaps the first in the state

A-Basin adds 300 much-needed parking spaces and connects them to the base via a pedestrian tunnel under U.S. 6. A new south-facing deck made of recycled materials is added to the year-old Black Mountain Lodge. Snowmaking now serves Sundance beginner trail. Early to open, late to close and sensational all winter long.

Aspen Highlands opens December 13

Canopy Cruiser is a new name on the trail map for 18 additional acres between Hyde Park and Mushroom Chutes in the Deep Temerity section of the mountain. More steep. More deep.

Aspen Mountain opens November 27

Improvements to the plaza at the base of the Silver Queen gondola mean fewer steps to climb with ski boots. Hooray!

Beaver Creek opens November 26

The Ranch, a huge new on-mountain children's center, is next to the easy-access kid's gondola that was added last year to the beginner area. Snowmaking improvements at key areas on the mountain. The Osprey, a RockResort, is the new name for the older Inn at Beaver Creek, and the Westin Riverfront, with direct gondola access to Beaver Creek, in Avon below the resort. The Ranch makes the Beave even more appealing for well-heeled families.

Breckenridge opens November 7

Peak 7 base development, the first all-new area since Peak 9 opened in 1971, spotlights the new Crystal Peak Lodge, new skier services (ski school, ticket sales, rentals) and Sevens, a new sit-down restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner (Mediterranean-inspired menu), plus pizza bar and quick-service window. The BreckConnect gondola from town adds a stop at the Peak 7 provides more direct access to high terrain at Peak 7 and Peak 8. BreckConnect now enchanced as mass transit as well as a ski lift.

Buttermilk (Aspen) opens December 13

Four feet added to each wall of the Olympic halfpipe for a total of 22 feet. Awesome -- and ready for the Winter X-Games

Copper Mountain opens November 14

The Woodward at Copper, located in The Barn, is a new year-round indoor training facility for snowboarders and skiing tricksters. State-of-the-art facility for safe and serious training.

Crested Butte opens November 26

Camp CB is the totally redesigned and remodeled replacement for Kids World. Terrain expansion off the Headwall lift into Teocalli Bowl's Teo-2 and Teo-2.5 areas. The Treasury Center at the base adds Spellbound Pizza as the old ski and snowboard shop is relocated to slope-side. The nearby Outpost becomes a day lodge. User-friendly tweaks.

Echo Mountain Park (Idaho Springs) opens in December

Westwide Glades are expanded, the Magic Carpet learning area is redesigned and terrain features are improved, but the big deal is dollars. The $129 season pass price is right.

Eldora Mountain Resort (Nederland) opens on November 21

Best prices for Eldorables, Trek, Womens Days and Friday Afternoon Club lessons and season passes through October 12. An easy ride (drive or take the RTD bus #N) from Boulder.

Howelsen Hill (Steamboat) opens December 6

Tough little ski hill, owned by the city of Steamboat Springs, was the training ground for Ski Town USA's 64 Alpine and Nordic Olympians, 15 members of the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame and six members of the National Ski Hall of fame. Legendary ski hill doesn't need to do anything new!

Keystone opens November 7

The River Run gondola has been lengthened and the loading area moved to the middle of River Run Village. A new mid-station enables users to load and unload at mid-mountain, and new big-windowed cabins improve the views. Third time's the charm for third version of this base-to-summit gondola.

Loveland opens in October, as snow permits, perhaps the first in the state

Season pass again includes three unrestricted days at Monarch Mountain. No news is no news at this close-to Denver ski area.

Monarch opens November 26

Two hundred acres added to snowcat-served terrain. New kids' terrain park called Tilt. Sleepy Hollow run widened. Children's ski school and rentals housed in new facility. How about that 200-acre snowcat expansion!

Powderhorn (Grand Mesa) opens December 11

New trails are supposedly being added, but no details are available. Why such secrecy?

Purgatory at Durango Mountain Resort opens November 26

First phase of the $100 million Purgatory Lodge and village revitalization opens, including upgraded skier services, slopeside lodging and new Purgy's Day Lodge. Village development brings welcome evening activity to the mountain, but downtown Durango remains prime for evening.

Silverton opens November 29

Unguided season pass ($699) includes four free ski days at A-Basin and five at Monarch. Go guided or not in Colorado's capital of ungroomed super-steeps.

Ski Cooper (Leadville) opens November 27 (weekends) and December 19 (daily)

Season pass holders may purchase a $25 discounted “Buddy Ticket” valid Monday through Friday (except holidays) during the 2008-09 season. Friendly ski area makes it easy to bring a friend along.

Snowmass opens November 27

The Sheer Bliss lift is converted to a high-speed quad and lengthened by 155 feet. The Sam's Knob restaurant at the top of the Village sixpack express has been renewed with floor-to-ceiling windows, new table serve for 175, outdoor seating and a barbecue-style smokehouse menu. Base Village nearer completion with the new Hayden Peak and Capitol Peak Lodges. Ready to bid farewell to those construction cranes.

SolVista Basin (Granby) opens December 19

Base Camp Lodge completed (but perhaps that was last winter; the website isn't clear). Small, family-friendly resort continuing to develop lodging.

Steamboat opens November 26

Following $30 million in improvements last year, 4 million have gone into additional base area improvements, regrading, upgraded snowmaking and grooming equipment, and a new retail outlet in downtown Steamboat Springs. Champagne powder? Priceless.

Sunlight Mountain Resort (Glenwood Springs) opens December 5

News is in the future, as Sunlight tries to expand into a full four-season resort. For now, it's still a low-key ski area.

Telluride opens November 26

Revelation Bowl, a 400-acre expansion off the backside of Gold Hill and Chair 14, offers new European-style above-the-treeline open-bowl terrain served by a quad chairlift. New advanced and expert terrain.

Winter Park opens November 19

The Village Cabriolet is a new $5.8 million open-air transit gondola linking the free parking lot to the expanding base village featuring new restaurants, shops, real estate, parking garage and ice skating pond. Convenience for day skiers and more amenities for vacationers.

Wolf Creek opens November 7, or as conditions permit

For the third year, Wolf Creek is purchasing 100% of its power from a wind-power supplier, and is now adding a pilot ride-share program by linking to an AlternateRides, a free online carpool matching service. Cheers for the green and white.

Chunnel Shut Down; Eurostar Services Halted

London-Paris-Brussels rail connection uncoupled

"Indefinitely" is a word that has been in the news lately. Tiger Woods is suspending participation on the PGA tour "indefinitely, and now the Eurostar train between London and Paris has suspended service "indefinitely" too -- at least through Monday, at last report. On Friday, five trains carrying some 2,000 passengers were standed in the Chunnel, the tunnel under the English Channel. Some passengers reportedly were stuck underground for more than 15 hours without food or water. Also, it was reported that there was little or no communication to passengers explaining what was happening. Reports didn't cover how bad those passenger cars must have smelled after 15 hours.

Eurostar blamed "acute weather conditions" for electrical problems that plagued their trains. Three test trains seem to have used the Chunnel without incident on Sunday, but the test runs also indicated that heavy snow in northern France was somehow being sucked into the trains' power cars. The incident was unprecented and unexpected in Eurostar's 15 years of service. The rail fleet is reportedly being modified and further test runs are to be made early in the week. According to the latest BBC report, there will be no Eurostar service on Monday.

With peak holiday travel beginning, 31,000 people in Britain, France and Belgium had canceled their train travel plans on Saturday, and another 26,000 were expected to cancel by the end of Sunday. Eurostar chief executive Richard Brown warned that services might not return to normal for days. Cross-channel travelers had few options. Nearly half of all flights out of Paris's Charles de Gaulle and Orly asrports were cut on Sunday, and air service in Brussels also was impacted. And does anyone take a terry anymore?

Travel Tumbnail: Clear Creek Historic Park in Downtown Golden

Outdoor museum a short stroll from Golden's quaint downtown

Close to Denver and closer to Boulder, Golden is an appealing destination with plenty to do and to see. I have taken visitors to the town's three guidebook-variety attractions: the free tour of the enormous Coors Brewery, Colorado Railroad Museum and Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, which recently installed a new permanent exhibition.

Still, it has been a while since I spent any time in downtown Golden, which nurtures its small-town, Old West ambience -- street-spanning arch and all. Turns out that Golden has a total of eight museums. Over the years, I have been to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum, the historic Astor House Museum,  the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum which means I have a lot more to explore in the future. This week, the local chapter of the Society of American Travel Writers held its holiday party at the Golden Hotel, and a handful of us arrived early to take a brief walking tour.

Clear Creek runs through the heart of Golden, and like many communities in Colorado, the town has reclaimed its banks. There are now parks, recration paths and a well thought-out vehicular and pedestrian bridge. Interpretive signs and seating make this a pedestrian-friendly bridge.

Volunteer and staff historians unlocked some of the pioneer buildings that have been relocated to Clear Creek History Park. This creekside park is open year-round, but in winter, the one-room schoolhouse and cabins are normally opened just for school groups -- or groups like ours. In summer, heritage vegetables are grown in a small kitchen garden, a beehive produces honey and chickens peck around in their little fneced-in yard.

Looking from a bridge across Clear Creek toward the west is Mt. Zion. It is emblazoned with a distinctive M, a mountain monogram for the Colorado School of Mines that's difficult to see on the snow-dusted hillside.

We walked back to the main street along the creekside path, passing bronze sculptures that dot the downtown and trees decorated with holiday lights that went on as the sun set but were beyond my camera's ability to capture.

Golden was Colorado's territorial capital, but with statehood, it was moved to Denver. Golden hasn't quite forgotten or forgiven. The Old Capitol Grill, the building where the territorial legislature met, is named in its honor. It was badly damaged in a fire a few years ago. It has been rebuilt and remains a warm, welcoming Cheers-style bar, but without the patina that once existed.

For information on all the attractions, shops, restaurants and more, stop at the GoldenVisitors Center, 1010 Washington Avenue (on the north side of Clear Creek).

Flight Attendant's View of Life in the Air

Air travel is hard on passengers these days -- and on flight attendants too

What's the quotation about not judging a man until you have walked a thousand miles in his shoes? Michelle Higgins, who writes "The Practical Traveler" column for the New York Times, did just that. "In a behind-the-scenes look at the other side of air travel, I donned a navy suit and starched white shirt earlier this summer and became a flight attendant for two days," she wrote. "With the cooperation of American Airlines, I first went to flight attendant training school at the company’s Flagship University in Fort Worth, Tex....I then flew three legs in two days: a round-trip journey between Dallas and New York, and then back to New York the next day. And though the other flight attendants knew I was a ringer, the passengers did not. Thus I got a crash course in what airline personnel have to put up with these days — and, after just one day on the job, began to wonder why the phrase 'air rage' is only applied to passengers."

Her piece is called "Flying the Unfriendly Skies," a title many of us writers have used in many ways but not with such grueling,in-the-trenches research. One of the cabin crews that she flew with comprised three veteran flight attendants with some 70 years of experience among them. "Is there a less-enviable, more-stressful occupation these days than that of a flight attendant? Just the look on their faces as they walk down the aisle — telling passengers that no matter how many times they try to squeeze them in, their suitcases are not going to fit into the overhead bin, or explaining yet again that they will not get a single morsel of decent food on this three-hour flight — tells you all you need to know of their misery," she continued.

The decisions made by airline executives that have resulted in increasingly crowded airplanes, usurious surcharges for everything from peanuts to pillows to pets in the cargo hold are not the flight attendants' fault, and neither is an air traffic control system, congested airports or weather that results in delayed or canceled flights. Imagine the air-travel mess today with Hurricane Ike slamming into the Texas Gulf Coast, including Houston, the seventh-busiest airport in the US and Continental's main hub.

So next time you fly, don't take your frustration out on the flight attendants, or the gate agents for that matter. They are coping with the same air-travel mess you are -- day after wearying day. The article is a good read, and it's a good reminder to display a bit of empathy next time you travel.

Big British Tour Operator Goes Belly-Up

Moral: Read the fine print and buy travel insurance before you travel

Percentagewise, British travelers are more likely to book their vacations (or holidays, in UK-speak) through tour operators than are American travelers. Still, it was quite a shock to travel interests on both sides of the Atlantic when XL Leisure Group, reportedly the Britain's third-largest tour operator, became a casualty of high fuel prices and a looming recession in the UK.

The company canceled all of its flights and stranded what Britain's Civil Aviation Authority estimated were between 85,000 and 90,000 travelers somewhere on the planet. Of these, some 50,000 travelers were abroad on trips booked through one XL's tour companies, 10,000 had simply flown on XL Airways and 25,000 had booked though tour operators that used XL Airways flights. XL's failure also threw into turmoil the plans of something on the order of 200,000 travelers who had booked upcoming trips.

XL Leisure's operated under such names as Kosmar Holidays, Cruise City, Excel Holidays, The Florida Skytrain, Transatlantic Vacations, Travel City Direct, Travel City Direct, Freedom Flights, Aspire Holidays and medlifehotels.com -- and XL Airlways. The company's home page currently includes instructions on what stranded travelers with various of these companies should do now. Meanwhile, Straumur-Burdaras Investment Bank of Iceland acquired XL's French and German subsidiaries, which will continue to operate.

American travelers planning booking package tours -- for value, convenience or both -- might want to check the U.S. Tour Operators Association website for some general advice on the protections they should expect if they are traveling with a tour operator that fails. The website states, "From the association's inception in 1972, chief among USTOA's goals has been to help protect you, the consumer, against loss arising from bankruptcy, insolvency or cessation of business of an Active Member tour operator. To help provide travelers with a solid financial safety net that protects their vacation investment, the USTOA has always maintained a consumer protection program, in which every USTOA Active Member must participate." The site details USTOA's $1 Million Travelers Assistance Program.

And, in these unsure times for travelers, you might consider purchasing travel insurance.

Temple of Isis Pylon Raised from Sea Floor

Alexandria retrieves a centuries-old treasure from the days of Cleopatra

Having visited Egypt earlier this year, I felt a connection when I read today's wire service report datelined Alexandria about archaeologists who raised a nine-ton, 7-foot-tall pylon from the bottom of the Mediterranean (AP photo below). The massive quarried stone once was at the entrance to a Temple of Isis that is believed to have fallen into the sea following fourth-century earthquakes that also destroyed the famous Alexandria Lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Divers have discovered the remnants of a city beneath the waves. 

Egypt has planned an ambitious underwater museum to showcase the sunken city.The temple and also Cleopatra's palace complex are part of this underwater realm. The pylon was part of a Ptolemaic palace where Queen Cleopatra courted wooed the Roman general Marc Antony  in the first century. The lovers committed suicide after they were defeated by Augustus Caesar. Remember the asp?

The palace complex as next to the Temple Isis, a goddess of fertility and magic. These buildings are believed to have been built is at least 2,050 years ago -- perhaps much earlier. Archaeologists believe the pylon came from red granite quarried in Aswan, some 700 miles to the south. A single standing column is Alexandria also came from the Aswan area.

Some 6,000 artifacts lie beneath the sea in the harbor, with another 20,000 are elsewhere off the coastaccording to Ibrahim Darwish, who head Alexandria's underwater archaeology department. These inlcude sphinxes and pieces of what is believed to be the Alexandria Lighthouse. The pylon is the first major artifact extracted from the harbor since 2002 when removal operations were halted to prevent damage to the antiquities.

This retrieval was done with painstaking care. Dr. Zahi Hawass, who heads the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the media, "The tower is unique among Alexandria's antiquities. We believe it was part of the complex surrounding Cleopatra's palace. This is an important part of Alexandria's history and it brings us closer to knowing more about the ancient city." Next April, Dr. Hawass hopes to find the long-lost tomb of Antony and Cleopatra, which he believes it might be inside a temple of Osiris about 30 miles west of Alexandria.

An underwater museum, currently in the planning stages, would enable visitors to walk through underwater tunnels to see sunken artifacts. Similar underwater tunnels to view marine life exist in several cities, including San Francisco and Victoria. Such an underwater museum would be a joint project between Egypt and UNESCO. Until that happens, the Cairo Museum's display of the project gives visitors a notion of what it will be like.