A Tag

5 comments Posted by vagabond dreamer at 11:21 PM

A tag, which I picked up from tales of a lone wolf
1. Pick out a scar you have, and explain how you got it.
Ok 35 stitches on my back ......... fell of a rock formation called a balcony while trying to climb the cliff. have one stitch for every feet i fell, was paralysed and bed ridden for a year, had to learn all those things that we do when we are one year old all over again. twelve across my chest on the right side when while mountain bikin on my cycle the fron wheel came off and the handle bar twisted round and the brake lever went in thru the front of my chest and come out the side
and about a dozen or so inside my nose for the times when i break it and my friends dad , an amazing ENT surgeon has to set it right again so that it does wahts it is meant to do namely breath

2. What does your phone look like?
moto slivr L6 silver color screen and handy tuff

3. What is on the walls of your bedroom?
Nothing ...............

4. What is your current desktop picture?
oner of my graphics art works ........ that i made for friend on photoshop

5. Do you believe in gay marriage?
Why not. to each his own

6. What do you want more than anything right now?
I want to chase sunsets ........... and race across the world


7. Last person who made you cry?
don’t remember, people don’t usually make me cry. well some one did but dont want to talk about it. but learnt one thing don't give some one so much power over you that they can hurt u

9. What is your favorite perfume/cologne?
Addidas sport

10. What are you listening to?
Golden Earrings, Bon jovi, Gratefull dead, moby, jesse mccartney

11. Do you get scared of the dark?
nope

12. Do you like pain killers?
hate when im forced to take them . but the help reing in the cronic back pains i suffer when the weather changes

13. Are you too shy to ask someone out?
Nope nada neyt

14. If you could eat anything right now, what would it be?
hm........ what about Caramel rum and raisins cake my moms recipe

15. Who was the last person who made you mad?
Stupid clients

16. Who was the last person who made you smile?
Vishuruti

17. Is someone in love with you?
No idea and i hope to god that, that isnt the case

A Tribute To a Hero

1 comments Posted by vagabond dreamer at 10:52 PM

Jeremy Clarkson's tribute to Steve Fosset

I spent some of my summer holiday on a small Caribbean island. Created by a volcanic burp at some point in our ever-changing world's past, it was what most people would consider to be paradise.

Surrounded entirely by the sort of sea you normally find in airbrushed travel brochures, it was ringed by an uninterrupted
sliver of perfectly white, perfectly deserted beach and, further out,
a tropical reef blah blah Jacques Cousteau blah blah etc.

There were no hotels and the only other house I could see from ours belonged to Bruce Willis.

Hopefully, you have a mental picture of the scene because now we move onto the meat and potatoes. You see, the island in question was only a few miles long and a few miles wide. So how do you get about?

It's too far to walk from the one shop to the little dock where people keep their boats. But it would be ridiculous to drive. And so, while there is one pick-up truck - used to pull boats out of the water when a hurricane is coming - the residents move around in a collection of communal golf buggies.

It's all very communist. You help yourself to a cart and then, if you're the last to use it at night, you have to plug it into the mains and charge it up.

Brilliant. No noise, no fumes, no pollution, no jams, no sense that Bruce's golf cart is bigger than mine and I must respond. And of course, absolutely no chance of anyone being even slightly killed...

You'd think. But that ain't necessarily so because, you see, sticking its oar into this Liberal Democrat's idea of heaven comes something called youthful exuberance. Mix that with a T-junction and someone's going to need the flying doctor.

If the golf buggy had had an engine, the person going the other way would have heard it coming. But it didn't. So he came round the bush, and bang. Of course, you may argue that a golf buggy can only do 15mph and that no harm can come to a driver at this speed. True enough.

But when it has a head-on with another buggy, also travelling at 15mph you have a 30mph impact. Doesn't sound like much? Really? Well try running face first into a wall and then send me an email explaining how things turned out.

Did the accident bring everyone to their senses? Yes... we thought. But wait, what's this? Why, it's a teenager attempting to do a donut in his buggy. And over there, there's an 11-year-old trying to jump his over an iguana.

This is the problem, the concept that our friends in the yellow and green parties just can't seem to understand. That for some, taking risks is fun.Of course, they'll say that the people I'm talking about are yobs. They'll point to someone called Darren in a Nova, doing handbrake turns in a Tesco car park. But me?
Well I'll point to Steve Fossett.

As I write, the American adventurer is missing in the Nevada desert. There are fears that he's crashed his plane and that he's dead. It'll be a terrible shame if it is true, because Steve to me is what the baby Jesus is to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I met him once many years ago and he didn't really fit the profile. I knew, from reading his biography, that he'd made a fortune on Wall Street and since retiring had raced at Le Mans, swum the Channel and beaten the world speed record for crossing the Pacific in a sail boat.

So I was expecting him to be a cross between Gordon Gekko, Thomas Crown and the Terminator. I was expecting him to break every bone in my fingers when we shook hands and for him to slap me on the back with such force that my spine was shattered.

This turned out to be wrong. "Can you tell me where Steve Fossett is?" I said to a man in tatty combat trousers, sweeping the floor in a big aeroplane hanger. "That's me," he said quietly.

He was a rubbish interview, stammering and not quite being able to enunciate what drove him. But when the cameras were off and we were just chatting, he was funny, extremely kind and driven by a quest for adventure so powerful that if you took out his soul, it could be used to light the world.

Since our meeting, he's gone properly berserk, setting 23 world sailing records and nine distance race records. And when he breaks a record, he doesn't do things by halves: when he crossed the Atlantic in 113 hours, he shattered the previous record by nearly two days.

Most people would have had their work cut out keeping ahead of the game in the world of sailing. But not Steve. Because during this time, he set a new record for crossing America in a non military jet. His average speed was 726mph.

And then he turned round, went back to the West coast and set a Transcontinental record for turbo props. Then he broke the record for crossing Australia. And then he broke one for flying round the world. Of seven world records for fixed-wing aircraft, Steve has three.

I have nowhere near finished.On top of this, he's broken 10 of the 21 world records for gliding. He's gone further than anyone else and he's been higher. 50, 727 feet. And then, just last year, he got back into a powered plane and flew round the world again without refuelling in 76 hours and 45 minutes. The longest flight in history.

He has competed in several triathlons, is one of only eight men to have done all of the world's 10 toughest ski races, he has done the 1,165-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska and he has piloted an airship at 71.5mph. Another absolute world record.

And I haven't even got to the ballooning yet. He was the first to cross the Pacific in a balloon and, after six attempts, the first to go all the way round the world. You get the impression he's circumnavigated the globe more often than most 747 pilots. Oh, and he's climbed six of the world's seven highest mountains.

He disappeared while on a flight looking for somewhere in Nevada where he could break the land-speed record. He had the car, 47-feet long and powered by an afterburning jet engine from a Phantom F4. He just needed somewhere to drive it.

A menace? A one-man carbon snowshoe? I don't think so. I dislike using the word 'hero' because I think it should be mainly reserved for soldiers. Or at the very least, people who risk their lives to help others. But in a way, that's exactly what Steve Fossett did. He risked his life to show that there's still some hope in the Liberal Democrat's stupid vision of a perfect golf-buggy-and-cotton-wool world.

At the very least, that makes him an inspiration.

F1's new star - and it's not the champ

1 comments Posted by vagabond dreamer at 2:01 AM


F1's new star - and it's not the champ
By Andrew Benson

Hamilton's good looks only added to his wide appealHe did not win the world title, in the most heart-breaking of fashions, but Lewis Hamilton has changed the face of Formula One this year. In fact, it is fair to say he has become it.
For a driver in his first year in the sport, that is an incredible feat. But then there seems to be nothing about the 22-year-old English phenomenon that is not incredible.
As the former world champion Damon Hill has said, no-one has ever seen a rookie like Hamilton. And if that sounds like hyperbole given the drivers who have come before Hamilton, it is not. It is a simple statement of fact.
First of all, there is the world championship. No driver in his first year had even come close before.
And although Hamilton did not win it, many will argue he deserved it more than anyone, even in a year when there were three worthy champions.
Part of that is obviously down to the fact that he has had the car to do it, but it is not just about the car.
The weird thing was when we got there there were all these celebrities - and yet I seemed to be the main attraction
Lewis Hamilton on attending a party with rap star P DiddyThere were two McLarens at each race this season, and the other one was being driven by Fernando Alonso, double world champion, the youngest champion ever, the man who unseated Michael Schumacher, and undoubtedly an all-time great.
Hamilton did not just beat Alonso; he got under his skin.
The battle between the two men was close - and it may even have been closer had the Spaniard been able to separate his emotions from his profession more effectively.
The reason he could not was that he was unable to cope with the fact that, more often than not, he was simply not as fast as the man in the other car.
No-one had been faster than Alonso before - and this guy was a rookie.
No wonder he found it hard to deal with. No wonder, as he sought to protect his position, he ended up in a dispute with his McLaren bosses that seems to have made his position at the team untenable.
That is as stark a demonstration of the level of Hamilton's talent as any.
And it is his ability that accounts for a lot of his appeal.

The media loved Hamilton - and he cleverly used them to his endsHe is fast, aggressive, confident, unfazed. People know the real deal when they see it - and Hamilton is definitely that. He has also demonstrated an almost boyish enthusiasm for driving a racing car on the limit.
But that is not the only reason Hamilton's appeal has transcended F1's traditional fan base.
He is young, cool, strikingly good-looking, and the first driver of Afro-Caribbean origin in a traditionally very conservative sporting environment.
These attributes have taken Hamilton himself - and by extension F1 - into unfamiliar territory.
Hamilton's potential to cut through F1's traditional demographic into new areas was apparent by early summer, by which time he was already leading the championship.
Before the British Grand Prix in July, he was playing golf when he got a call on his mobile phone inviting him to a party with the rap mogul P Diddy.
"The weird thing was," Hamilton recalls, "when we got there there were all these celebrities - and yet I seemed to be the main attraction."
He has also become friends with the pop singer Beyonce, and another rap star, Pharrell Williams.
Despite his entry into the world of celebrity, Hamilton's appeal is that he is clearly not the son of privilege.
He grew up, as he puts it, "in a one-bedroomed flat in Hatfield [in Hertfordshire] and in a council flat in Stevenage".
His grandparents emigrated from Grenada. And while his father, Anthony, now runs a successful IT business, he started out as a humble British Rail employee, who took redundancy so he could spend more time helping his son's burgeoning career.
That career started, as do those of so many Grand Prix drivers, in karting, where Hamilton's incredible ability was spotted from a very early age.

Alonso and Hamilton were closely matched as driversBut ability only takes you so far in sport - you have to have the determination, ambition, application and confidence to maximise it.
Hamilton has those qualities in abundance, too.
In an incident that has already passed into sporting folklore, at the age of 10 he introduced himself at an awards ceremony to Ron Dennis, the boss of the McLaren team, and said he wanted to drive for him one day.
Impressed, Dennis kept an eye on this precocious little boy, and within two years had signed him up.
Dennis's decision has paid dividends for Hamilton.
He has had the best equipment on his way up the motor racing ladder, and providing it cost McLaren millions. But the deal was two-way. They would continue funding him only as long as he delivered - and he has never stopped.
In three years' time, he'll have his own place in Monaco and be on his fifth supermodel girlfriend, but they'll be distractions
David CoulthardRed Bull Formula One driverThat tutelage by McLaren meant Hamilton arrived in F1, as Jackie Stewart pointed out, as the best prepared driver in history. And the legendary Scot was not just talking about in the cockpit.
Some of Hamilton's remarks this year about the way his life has changed make him appear like a wide-eyed ingénue, and there is something of the choirboy about his image.
Yet the reality is somewhat different. Hamilton is no angel.
On the track, he has been as ruthless as anyone. And off it, even at the age of 22, he has proved adept at navigating the murky political waters of a sport that Dennis famously described as "The Piranha Club".
Hamilton has been anything but an innocent in the unravelling of Alonso's public image. In fact, before his win in the Japanese Grand Prix, Hamilton seemed to be carrying out a carefully calculated campaign to totally discredit his team-mate's personality.
It seemed to work when Hamilton won masterfully in the rain at Fuji while Alonso crashed out, putting the new-boy on the brink of the world title.

Hamilton was not flawless, as this off in China provedBut it backfired when Hamilton himself made a crucial mistake a week later in China, to put Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen right back into the title picture.
As a result, it is already too late for Hamilton to maintain a squeaky-clean image, which is probably just as well.
F1 is, after all, a hard sport, full of hard men. Its demands tease out the extremes of all its participants' characters, and maintaining the impression of angelic innocence is impossible.
But Hamilton will have to think carefully about how he wants to be perceived before he continues making similar remarks - or he risks being tarred with the same brush he was using to paint Alonso.
Hamilton has also talked about his belief in God, saying: "I feel quite safe on the track. I know He's always looking after me."
And he has added: "I never think about being killed on the track at all. I don't have any fear out there."
I feel quite safe on the track. I know He's always looking after me
Lewis Hamilton discusses his faithRemarks like this are unusual for a racing driver, most of whom are strongly aware of the risks of what they do, even if they like not to think about them too much.
And they make Hamilton sound like a cross between Ayrton Senna, whose religious beliefs were combined with a strong sense of his own mortality, and Gilles Villeneuve, the daredevil Ferrari driver, who used to say he "had no fear of a crash".
Villeneuve and Senna were both extremely brave and skilful, and their total commitment to their craft won them millions of fans. But they both died at the wheel of a Formula One car, and no-one wants the same fate to befall Hamilton.
It is not just an attitude that Hamilton shares with Villeneuve and Senna, though, for already it is clear his talent is from the same bracket. He is so good that already it is clear he is likely to dominate F1 for years to come.
Assuming a competitive car - and when you are as good as Hamilton, that sort of thing more or less takes care of itself - the only thing that could stop him is dealing with the trappings of fame.

Hamilton and Alonso had a difficult relationship this yearAs David Coulthard puts it: "Three years from now, the penny will drop and he'll say: 'God, I didn't realise how easy it was in that first season.'
"By then, he'll have his own place in Monaco and be on his fifth supermodel girlfriend, but they'll be distractions. The key to his success will be how he reacts to those diversions and difficulties."
So far, though, Hamilton appears to be in control.
In fact, one of the most impressive aspects of him has been his coolness during a rookie season in which he has beaten the best driver in the world in equal cars at the same time as watching his team become embroiled in a spying scandal that threatened not only his title bid, but that team's very existence.
And if he can handle everything that has thrown at him, there seems little reason to believe he will not be able to handle everything else.
He might not have won the title - and for now that will be painful indeed. But there is little doubt that Lewis Hamilton will be Formula One world champion in the future.

Review Hamilton part 1

1 comments Posted by vagabond dreamer at 10:36 AM

The 2007 formula one season began very much like any other. The teams had done their pre-season showing off of their new cars and announced their new driver lineup, however one team stood out. McLaren Mercedes announced their number two driver was a young Englishman by the name of Lewis Hamilton. Few people had heard of him until now and fewer expected what was to come.


Australia


The first race of the season and Lewis Hamilton qualifies 4th on in debut grand prix. Finishing only three tenths of a second behind team mate and reigning world champion Fernando Alonso he expressed his delight:


"I'm overwhelmed to be on the second row for my first Grand Prix," said Hamilton. "This weekend is what I have been preparing myself for during the past 13 years and I'm enjoying every moment. I think we are in with a good chance in the race."


The relationship between the two McLaren drivers began on a high note with Alonso quoted as saying "I'm pleased that Lewis is right up there with me which puts us both in the best position to score points for ourselves and the team, I can't wait for the race."


Living up to the massive hype surround Lewis Hamilton's entry into Formula one he managed to pull off a podium finish in his first race, finishing third behind Ferrari's Kimi Raikonnen and team mate Alonso.


Malaysia


Having qualified fourth on the grid Lewis finished in a respectable second place, managing to keep the Ferraris at bay and help team mate Alonso secure a race win and also completing McLarens first one-two since the Brazilian GP in 2005.


"That was the most difficult race I have ever had...I had Kimi hunting me down for most of the race. I can't explain how tough that was, it was getting hotter but I had to keep pushing and I made no mistakes."


Bahrain


LH qualified second between the two Ferraris with Alonso starting from fourth place. Hamilton pressured Massa for most of the race and eventually finished in second place to become the first man to take podiums in his first three grand prix.


Spain


Another second place in Spain mean't Lewis Hamilton was now leading the championship, just four races into his F1 career. He managed to keep team mate Alonso behind him to go two points clear in the title chase. Lewis was quoted as saying "Things just keep getting better and I continue living my dream" while things are not going so well for the reigning champion as the chance of winning his home GP disappeared as he tried to overtake Massa in the first corner, damaging his car.


Monaco


Things start to go right for Alonso as he manages to beat team mate and win the Monaco GP for the second year in a row. Hamilton settles for second place, saying "I knew we were both extremely quick, so I could only apply pressure, but he's a two-time world champion and he doesn't really make mistakes".


Canada


Lewis dominated qualifying and took his first pole position. In only his sixth race Hamilton drives his way to his first GP win after a race full of drama and incidents. Confidently Hamilton says "I've been ready for this for quite some time, ready for the win - it was just a matter of where and when". Meanwhile things weren't going so well for Alonso, finishing only 7th USA.