travel Category Archives
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The following entries in the travel category are show in reverse chronological order. You can click on additional categories or tags within each entry to see their archives.
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Kawaguchiko

It's been a while since I've been in a car with the lovely Risapie (in fact, I believe the last time was some 7 years ago!!) but last weekend we found ourselves in a car headed to a very rainy Kawaguchiko (Lake Kawaguchi) for a lovely overnight trip to the beautiful Fujigoko area out west of Tokyo. It's the middle of the rainy season here and as luck would have it, it ra...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: cloudy, flowers, friends, herb festival, kawaguchiko, mountains, mt. fuji, rainy, risa, roadtrip, travel
07.05.10

Tokyo B&W

I woke up at 5:20 AM this morning and decided to take the day off to attend to the huge pile of things I had to do that have built up over the past month. I started out making some pretty decent progress but then when lunch rolled around I took a break to surf the net whilst stuffing my face and sort of lost my momentum. One of the things I've been meaning to do is up...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, photography, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: black and white, cityscapes, ebisu, ikebukuro, kichijoji, photography, shibuya, street scenes, tokyo, urban
06.02.10

Takao-san

I did however, decided to take a quick little trip over to Takao-san, a beautiful mountain in western Tokyo. It's a popular destination amongst Tokyo-ites due to its proximity and also relative accessiblity - unlike Fuji-san, you can easily tackle it in a day without even having to get up early and you don't need any extra gear. Its popularity is a double-edged sword...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: crowded, friends, golden week, kaka, mountains, nature, sunshine, takao san, tokyo, travel
05.11.10

Capybara Time

I suppose, however, that an update is long overdue, so here then, are a few pictures from my recent visit to the Ichihara Zo no Kuni ("Elephant Kingdom"). Now you may recall that I trekked off to the remote countryside of Saitama prefecture just last month for some Capybara Onsen adventures. So what brings me to the remote countryside of Chiba prefecture...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, ramblings, travel
Tagged as: animals, capybara, cute, friends, ichihara zo no kuni, starbucks girl, travel, zoos
04.29.10

Capybara Onsen

So anyway, that's how I found myself in a minivan rolling across the urban expanses of the greater Tokyo area with two friends, two kids and Ne-Yo music videos (don't ask) playing on the monitor, headed over to the Saitama Children's Animal Nature Park to check out their recently built capybara onsen. I'll tell you what, whoever came up with the idea of building that on...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, travel
Tagged as: animals, ayako, capybara, capybara onsen, cute, friends, japan, mika, onsen, saitama, travel, yasu, zoos
04.08.10

Kawagoe

Kawagoe is actually not such a famous place, and even if you find yourself hankering for a brief escape from the urban jungle that is Tokyo (but really, why would you ever want that? I love it...), there are probably better choices out there: Hakone, Yokohama, Nikko and Kamakura, just to name a few. So why did we end up going to Kawagoe? Well, for one, I've already been pret...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: candy, cloudy, friends, kanto, kashiyayokocho, kawagoe, saitama, starbucks girl, travel
03.27.10

Fuji-Q Highland

The problem with being Japan's most awesome roller coaster park is that in general, Fuji-Q is expensive and crowded. So you know, that kind of sucks. The thing about that though, is this is Japan. And people like to do things according to the "seasons." "Roller coaster season" is usually considered to be summer for some reason which means that if you're us</e...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, travel
Tagged as: amusement, bethann, blue skies, calvin, friends, fuji-q highlands, japan, mt. fuji, roller coasters, tami
01.31.10

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part X

As the saying goes, "all good things must come to an end." This is true in many things in life, including road trips. And in this case, and in this road trip, "the end" meant a small sleepy backwater town in Fukui prefecture on the backside of Japan that up until a couple years was famous (and I use the term lightly) for little more than fishing and making cho...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, friends, fukui, japan, obama, roadtrip, starbucks girl, yes we can
12.31.09

Nikko

I did manage to work in a quick trip to Nikko as a sort of consolation prize, which was nice. By the time we made it to Nikko (in the first week of December), most of the Autumn leaves had already fallen, which was kind of sad. Nikko is really beautiful in the Autumn, if you can survive the jaw dropping crowds, so I kind of regret that we didn't make it there during the prime...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: autumn, autumn leaves, friends, japan, lanterns, nikko, shrines, starbucks girl, temples, tochigi
12.14.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part IX

If you want to know more about Amanohashidate, you can feel freeto read about it online , which is something we probably should have done ourselves instead of just rolling up at 6 AM and being like "sooo... uhh, where and umm, how do we see it?" - without even a clear idea of what exactly it was (it's a long sand bar in a bay, by the way) let alone w...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, 3 great sights, amanohashidate, autumn, bicycles, japan, kyoto, roadtrip, sightseeing, skies, starbucks girl
11.17.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part VIII

So when I last left off (last month...), our fearless duo had just finished stuffing themselves full of momiji manju and grilled eel bentos and decided to head into Hiroshima city proper to do a little bit of sightseeing. Now, besides Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, the other two cities in Japan that probably most people in America have heard of are Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for obv...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, atomic dome, buildings, genbaku dome, hiroshima, peace memorial, peace park, roadtrip, ruins
10.17.09

Yokohama Birthday Bash - Part I

It was my birthday the other day, and slightly depressed over slowly inching towards "old old panda" status (not yet, but it's coming...), I decided to go to Yokohama with some friends to celebrate and take my mind off the ever-present press of time. As frequent readers of the pandablog may know, I love roller coasters with a passion. I've been to most of the...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews, sky worship, travel
Tagged as: amusement, bethann, blue skies, buildings, friends, kasie, minatomirai, roller coasters, sarah, summer, sunshine, terrapin, urban, yin, yokohama, zach
09.23.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part VII

Okay, I have been putting this off long enough, but seeing as how it's already the beginning of Autumn, 2009, I probably ought finish the Autumn 2008 road trip series ASAP. Part of the reason that I've been delaying this post for so long is that in this particular installment, nothing particularly shocking, funny or crazy happened. Oh well. I guess I can't end up floating...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, animals, autumn, bento, capybara, deer, eel, hiroshima, itsukushima, japan, miyajima, roadtrip, starbucks girl
09.02.09

Tanabata Matsuri

As somewhat of a consolation prize, I decided to pop over to a neighboring prefecture to catch a Tanabata festival in a smaller town. Continuing the streak of amazing summer weather we've been having recently, the skies were just a stellar mix of rich blue hues, interspersed with fantastic white clouds and the whole affair dramatically lit from up above by a sum...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: colorful, countryside, festivals, lanterns, summer, sunshine, tanabata, tanabata matsuri
08.09.09

Summer Sunshine Redux

>Being half-panda, I'm not normally a huge fan of the sweltering summer heat (we have a tendency to melt into little quivering heaps on the floor). However, every once in a while I find myself venturing out despite the heat and usually when I do I'm rewarded with some great scenery, generally of Tokyo's gorgeous blue skies and concrete. This past week however, I thoug...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, miscellaneous, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: bethann, countryside, friends, japan, ricefields, summer, sunshine, tambo
07.19.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part VI

My exertion - which flung my donut-lion modesty towel from my body and set it floating about in the current towards an old man near me who instinctively recoiled in shock (whether due to its ratty cuteness or the obvious result its loss had on my modesty at the moment of maximum floating panda-outstretchedness) - proved to be successful (thank god) and I managed to secure a b...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autum, bathing, dogo onsen, funny, japan, matsuyama, mountains, nature, onsen, pon de lion, shikoku, starbucks girl, uchiko
07.01.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part V

Japanese occasionally describe clean, fresh air by saying "空気が美味しい" (kuuki ga oishii) which literally means "the air is delicious." I never understood that, because you know, you want to eat delicious things, and who wants to eat air? Well. After driving up into the mountains for about an hour, it suddenly began to make sense. Because my friends, the air up there...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autumn, iya valley, japan, mountains, nature, shikoku, starbucks girl, vine bridges
05.12.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part IV

After was seemed an eternity of sitting in the unforgiving darkness, a disembodied voice floated out over the intercom, announcing the end of business hours and instructing anybody stupid enough to pay 500 yen to see these imaginary non-whirlpools to come to the front of the gate, or else face being locked in for the night and forced to ponder over their gullibili...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autumn, awajishima, castles, himeji, japan, naruto uzushio, roadtrip, starbucks girl, whirlpools
04.25.09

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Part III

...aaaand we're back. So when we last left our intrepid heros, exhausted from their desperate attempts to deflect police (well, postal) attention to our secret money transfers to support the North Korean nuclear program, they had fallen asleep early in their ryokan, dreaming the fitful dreams of the falsely accused....
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, blue skies, fushimi inaritaishi, japan, kyoto, roadtrip, starbucks girl, tofukuji
02.15.09

2008 Autumn Road Trip - Part II

When I last left off, I had just covered the first day of our trip, spent merrily walking along the quiet streets of Kyoto at night. That night we retired to our ryokan and slept well, as we had a plan to wake up early the next morning and make it over to the Arashiyama area of Kyoto....
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, arashiyama, autumn, blue skies, kyoto, roadtrip, ryokan, starbucks girl
01.18.09

2008 Autumn Road Trip - Part I

Okay, so I know it's been forever and a year since I updated but I have a reason - I've been hard at work on the site redesign I keep talking about - it's about 70% of the way done and I hope to have it live in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned. But you're not here to hear about that - you're here to read about the great 2008 Autumn Road Trip, right? So...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autumn, kyoto, nightshots, roadtrip, starbucks girl
12.28.08

2008 Autumn Roadtrip - Introduction

So I'm back from my road trip. It was an amazing and fun time. Seeing Japan in all its Autumnal splendor is really something. I have tons of pictures (like, thousands) to go through, so I'll be posting them little by little over the course of the next few weeks. But for now, alas, I have to go deal with my strangely musty-sm...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, autumn
12.01.08

Showa Memorial Park

It's Autumn! And on top of that, only 4 more days until I set off on the great Western-Japan Autumn Road Trip 2008! I guess I should probably start thinking about packing and stuff, huh? Until then, to tide you over, here are some pictures from a recent trip out to Showa Memorial Park just west of Tokyo. I love this park - it's so huge and you would...
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: autumn, photography, showa memorial park, tachikawa, tokyo
11.16.08

The Great Western Japan Road Trip 2008 - Planning

Another year, another road trip. As I start winding down what my be my last year in Japan, I decided I very much wished to have one trip through the country in all its stunning, beautiful Autumnal glory (the only season to travel in Japan, my friends)....
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, technology, travel
Tagged as: 2008 autumn road trip, camera equipment, geekery, japan, photography, roadtrip
09.01.08

Mashiko

A bit out of chronological order, but a few weeks ago a friend and I went up to Mashiko in Tochigi prefecture on a day trip package offered through JR. Tochigi itself is famous for several things, not least of......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.13.08

Snow Panda

Haha, in all the years I've kept this blog, I don't think I've posted as many photos of myself as I have in this entry (and the previous one). Is the panda blog turning into a venue for indulging my......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, japan - the good, pandas, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.09.08

Farmlife

I actually have been slacking a little bit when it comes to posting, not because I have a dearth of things to write about (quite the opposite, actually) but because a) I had a big test to study for earlier......
Category Info: featured entry, general, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
12.26.07

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Part II

After our unsettling experience putzing around the smelly Gates of Hell, we cracked open the guide book and tried to figure out where to go next. "Hey panda, I've got an idea." piped up KC as we headed away from......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the funny, japan - the general, japan - the good, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
09.02.07

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Interlude

Yes, yes I know, you all want to know (omg hi2u mistar presumptious panda!) what happened next after we left the stinky sulfurous gates of hell. I'm working on part II but at the moment have writers block and a......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.29.07

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Part I

If there is one thing that KC and I have learned from our past adventures, it's that neither of us are much of "planners" when it comes to travel. Our general philosophy is to tack down the intended time of......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.15.07

The Great 2007 Tohoku Road Trip

As mentioned in my last entry, after expedia "you haven't got prayer of making your flight" dot com decided to (yoghurt) poop all over our carefully planned Mongolia expedition, my friend and I decided to make the best of a......
Category Info: photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
08.06.07

How Expedia.com made me hate Yoghurt

So as I had posted about a month and a half ago, I was supposed - supposed being the operative phrase here - to be leaving for Mongolia with my erstwhile travel companion this Friday. In a clear example of......
Category Info: featured entry, general, ramblings, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
07.25.07

Mongolia Panda

So one of my lovely Kiwi readers (have I told yow how sexy I think the New Zealand accent is?) from the Land of the Long White Cloud left the following comment on my previous blog poast: this isn't really......
Category Info: featured entry, general, miscellaneous, pandas, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
06.01.07

Hakone

So the weather here in Kanto has been slowly sputtering and lurching towards balmier conditions week by week. The fact that it has been an unusually warm winter - it didn't snow even once! - means that we can enjoy......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
03.24.07

A Panda in London (France Pt. II)

As you may recall from my last entry, the French have somewhat of a laissez-faire attitude towards things like immigration or knowing who's in their country at any given time. In their opinion, procedures such as "passport control" or "customs" are really nothing more than minor irritants impinging upon their cigar-smoking, cheese-consuming time, not to be taken seriously, or perhaps even done away with all together...
Category Info: featured entry, photography, recentnews, travel
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02.04.07

France Adventure Pt. I

Okay. So I should probably just change the name of this blog to "Watch Panda take pictures of shit at night", because once again this poast is sporting a bunch of night pictures - and it won't be the last......
Category Info: featured entry, photography, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
01.24.07

Narita-san Temple

Wow, so the first post of 2007, huh? I suppose it's a bit cheap that it's gonna be primarily a photo entry, but as previously mentioned I'm heading off to Paris this Thursday - Thursday people - and I've not......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
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01.02.07

Kamakura

We finally stopped to ask a kindly mechanic who looked quite busy doing some sort of power drilling/water cooled saw-milling thing which in retrospect we probably shouldn't have interrupted. He looked at our map for a second, then put to light all our confusion with one simple phrase: mechanic: "You're on the completely opposite side of this map" me: "Now by 'completely opposite side' you mean…?" mechanic: (pointing the way we just...
Category Info: japan - the good, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
10.17.06

Leaving on a jet plane...

Hard to imagine, but in about 24 hours I'm going to be smelling the fertile farm fields of Wisconsin for the first time in three years. It's just for a short time, then back to Japan before it even has......
Category Info: featured entry, recentnews, travel
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07.26.06

Sunny Road Trip!

On the way back we passed by this random 35 foot tall statue of a Tyrannosaurs Rex growling fearsomely at a curve in the road, apparently as an enticement to come visit the nearby dinosaur museum. What is mildly amusing about this picture is the sign beneath the T-Rex's feet. It reads: "Are you driving safely?" And all I could think was "No, man, a goddamn dinosaur that just scared the shit out of me when I rounded the blind curve here! What do you expect!!?"...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, technology, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
05.06.06

Great Takayama Road Trip II

After our adventures frolicking in the "downtown" area of Takayama (population like 200) and running away in screaming terror from the stuffed knife wielding animatronic denzins of the "Eco TeddyBear Village", we looked at our cheesy tourist map and realized we still hadn't been to the "Hida Folk Village". The "Hida Folk Village" is basically a small enclave of old traditional Japanese houses which have been carefully preserved in their (more or less) original state. They are gathere...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the general, photography, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.22.06

Rocking out...

If you watch the video carefully, you'll notice that several times I accidentally cross into the oncoming lane of traffic. Fortunately there weren't many cars on the road, or else I'm sure we would have died. You may also notice that we very clearly don't know the words to the song. But that doesn't stop us, since if there's one thing living in a country where karaoke is the national past time has taught us, it's that even if you don't know the lyrics to a song, as long as you sing...
Category Info: miscellaneous, recentnews, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.20.06

Yokohama Chinatown

....until I saw these. Oh my god!! This was the first of what would soon spin into an incredibly propitious string of Yokohama Chinatown panda spottings! These are steamed dumplings with are stamped in the shape of cute little panda faces! I squealed like a school girl when I saw them and ran over to purchase one. They were pretty steep (like $3USD each) but I was all set to plop down for them, when I saw to my disappointment that they were filled with chocolate and bean paste instead of...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, pandas, photography, travel
Tagged as: (no tags at this time).
04.10.06

Great Takayama Road Trip Part I

It's spring break! With no big plans in the works, my ever faithful travel companion and I decided that a quickie road trip up to Takayama in nearby Gifu Prefecture would be the perfect way to spend a Saturday. What's......
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
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04.03.06

Kyoto Road Trip

This picture was taken atop the mountain at Iwatayama Monkey Park (see below) by a man carrying a broom and a slingshot. We were actually just looking at the monkeys when he snatched the camera from our hands and shoved us over towards the couple of fanged screaming simians you see on the branch behind us. "You stand there. I take picture." "...b...but, those monkeys have fangs...!" we pro...
Category Info: featured entry, japan - the good, photography, recentnews, travel
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02.28.06

Eiheiji and the Depressed Panda

Monk central command. As mentioned above, taking pictures of the monks was strictly off limits, but we just couldn't resist a single furtive shot as we headed out the door of the "front office", one of the most surreal scenes I have seen since coming to Japan. Behind the counter lay a fully equipped business office with one major exception - it was staffed entirely by Zen Buddhist monks dressed in flowing black robes from head to toe. As we walked by, Yasu started giggling uncontrollably a...
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12.31.05

Tokyo

Made it to Tokyo and back in one piece. The presentation went well, which was good since I was afraid I was going to bore everyone to death! Will write more later on in the weekend. Sightseeing in Harajuku...! Monkah......
Category Info: travel
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06.11.05

Spring Break

The sight that greeted me this Monday on my way to work... So winter still hasn't decided to release its icy death grip on the poor inhabitants of our prefecture, smack dab in the middle of what Japanese like......
Category Info: travel
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03.27.05

Panda travel adventures

[Lots of photos in this one, so it'll be a while if you're on dialup] 7 cities.  3 hemispheres.  58 hours travel time (that's 2 1/2 days) 4 trains.  8 planes.  2 buses.  countless taxis, cars and seemingly eternal hoofing.  Several thousand dollars US. ......
Category Info: travel
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10.30.04

Off to Osaka

The Umeda Sky Building Off to Osaka for 10 days to study Japanese. Hopefully my Japanese will improve. We'll see. Don't have much time to write, so enjoy the random pictars from this past weekend: Panda doing his best......
Category Info: travel
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07.19.04

Panda Cereal

Boy is panda sleepy! It's 2:30 am, and how have I spent my Friday night? Ironing. Look what my folks sent me from the US - THE GREATEST CEREAL IN THE WORLD.!! Yes. Ironing. Actually, not just any sort......
Category Info: travel
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06.11.04

Sorry.

i'm sorry for the lack of recent updates. a lot has been going on lately - i've had a lot of extra responsibilities dropped in my lap, as well as some personal drama that needed to be dealt with. Anyway,......
Category Info: travel
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03.17.04

Business trip

Back by popular demand - Mr.Handpanda belts out another karaoke hit! The JET midyear conference is tomorrow, which means I should a) be sleeping already b) have dealt with the fact that I have no clean clothes already c) probably......
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01.28.04

Off to Tokyo

First of, a big thank you to all the loyal supporters of the House of Panda (HOP) (or would "tHoP" be better? it sounds funnier, at least to me...) for your suport. I am happy to report that I am......
Category Info: travel
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12.10.03

Moving Melodies

I made the mistake of heading out of town without checking to see if I had a full complement of CDs in the car. When I was about 10 miles out of town, I reached in the back seat,......
Category Info: travel
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06.04.03

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