When you travel abroad, it can be hard to meet locals, especially if you don’t know the language. But if you play a sport — soccer, swimming, football, even ultimate frisbee — then you have a head start.
Before you go, search the internet for a tournament or scheduled practice. Chances are you’ll find a welcoming crowd, whether you’re traveling to Bogata, Prague, or Morocco. Join a friendly game of soccer. Show up for a master’s swim practice. Find a frisbee tournament in the town you’re visiting. Almost every large city internationally has a Hash House Harriers club. Jumping in will give you a workout — and an instant link to local culture.
Skiing, like polo and yachting, is a rich man’s(or woman’s) sport. The equipment is expensive, and in order to participate, you need to go to a specific place. In the case of skiing, this means paying ski lift fees and traveling to a pricey ski resort. The costs can add up and make it prohibitively expensive for less affluent ski enthusiasts.
But there are some less expensive ski resorts. Ski.com has put together a list of the top ten affordable ski spots in North America.
Keystone, near Denver, makes the list because of the many extras it offers, such as night skiing included with a lift ticket on the day of arrival, plus access to nearby resorts like Vail and Breckenridge. Steamboat in Colorado is on the list thanks to affordable ski-in/ski-out lodging and convenient shuttle services. And Winter Park, also in Colorado, is praised as catering to a “moderate demographic, no luxury properties.”
Whistler-Blackcomb, near Vancouver, is normally a very pricey destination. But in an attempt to lure visitors before the Olympics, it is offering some fantastic deals right now. Airfare to Vancouver can be expensive, depending on where you fly from, but you can save money by flying into Seattle and taking a train to Vancouver.
Jackson Hole (Wyoming), Banff(Alberta, Canada), and Lake Tahoe round out the western top ten with plentiful deals, discounts, and special offers that help keep prices low. On the east coast, Stowe(Vermont) and Lake Placid in New York offer excellent mid-week prices.
We’ve written about Zorbing a few times at Gadling, the crazy extreme sport where you jump inside of an enomous plastic ball and bounce around as it rolls down a hill. Think of yourself as the rodent inside of a giant, cushioned hamster ball. It’s hard to resist.
Various iterations of the sport have been around for a few years now, including an official franchise in Tennessee and a whole host of copycats, but the technology was born in Rotorua, New Zealand, a small, adventure-centric town three hours south of Auckland.
Here, you can get your Zorb in a few different flavors: alone, with water, with a friend, down a zig zag path, or combinations therein. Since I was with another guy and wanted the “ultimate experience,” I chose to take the zig zag path with water.
So what’s it like?
Well, at the bottom of the hill you first change into swim trunks, then they shuttle you to the top and you jump in line. Once it’s your turn, they ask if you want water (highly recommended) then they toss a bucket full of warm water into the waiting Zorb. Draping a slippery rug into the entry, the attendant asks you to dive in, then they zip closed the inner sphere. On three, you kick back towards the bottom of the hill, and off you go.
The whole thing lasts about 45 seconds, but it’s the most disorienting, wonderful, happy experience of your life. The Zorb spins below you as you try to maintain some sense of location and focus, then as it changes directions you bounce back and forth inside of the inner sphere. It’s fun in a wholly wild, new way.
Worth the $35 to ride? Sure, at least once. Check out a video of the experience after the jump.
There’s a modern ghost town in Kansas City. Efforts to attract a major league basketball or hockey team came up empty, and the Sprint Center stands empty. Then NBA and NHL have been looking to smaller cities for expansion opportunities, according to an article in The Atlantic, because they won’t have to compete with local baseball or football teams for fan dollars. Since Kansas City has both, filling the Sprint Center has become quite a chore.
Since it doesn’t have the 200 events a year that were expected, the Kansas City Sprint Center is just hanging around and operating at a loss. One hopes this does not splash over to the surrounding businesses – such as restaurants – that were opened in anticipation of 18,500 asses in seats for hockey games, concerts and whatever else they can drag into town.
The arena is an architectural marvel but, for now, a commercial disaster. How else would you describe an attraction that there’s no reason to visit?
Talk to anyone from India and if you can’t comment on the Twenty20Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament that just kicked off, odds are that you’ll be made redundant for any further communication.
The tournament is the latest craze that has hit the country, and has left people bedazzled with illusion of what will be over 7-weeks of dance, music, and sport “hungama” (madness). This is of no surprise as it involves the two things that practically run the country: Bollywood and cricket.
This is the first time that international cricketers will put aside national loyalties to play in a private tournament wherein the players were selected by a multi-million-dollar auction earlier this year. Over 100 national and international players have been offered bundles of cash to participate in the 44-day, 59-match, 8-city, cricket league in India.
The 8 teams, named after main cities in India, were also bought in an auction by Indian business moguls like Mukesh Ambani and Vijay Mallya, and Bollywood stars like Sharukh Khan and Priti Zinta.
The opening ceremony last Friday in Bangalore was a 45-minute Bollywood-style extravaganza with music, fireworks, light-shows and acrobats flown in from the Washington Redskins cheerleaders group, and attended by 55,000 people. You can watch bits of it here.
Unfortunately, it looks like this event of such hype and hysteria will not be covered by world news agencies because of a brawl over event photo distribution rights.
In India, Bollywood and cricket are as embedded in our culture as chai and squat toilets. You have to understand them to understand us. I have no doubt that this tournament will be a roaring success and I wish I could be in India for some of the matches! Living abroad has its cons. Sigh.
