Here are video footage and photos I took this morning at the 62nd annual Del Mar National Horse Show, in San Diego County, California. The show finishes up this coming weekend, on May 6, 2007. For more   more...information on the show, here’s a website:

http://www.sdfair.com/horseshow/index.html

As you will see, the horse in the first video clip did NOT want to behave itself, and start the jumping course!! The IRONY is that the horse and rider not only managed to start the course JUST before the team was penalized for delay, but the duo finished the course WITHIN the allotted time limit, AND it didn’t knock down any jump poles either, so the horse and rider got to advance to the competitors’ “jump off round”!!

The song is “Up!” by Shania Twain.  less

Here are some video clips of some OHHHHH so cute baby elephants and their parents, that live at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in California.

The song is “Baby Elephant Walk” by Henry Mancini, which was   more...the song made famous by the John Wayne/Red Buttons movie “Hatari” that was released in 1962, and the scene in the movie that uses this song is HILARIOUS, as a baby elephant runs amok. Although I was only eleven when I saw the movie in ‘62 on the big screen at a drive-in theater, I had SUCH a crush on female wildlife photographer “Anna” in the movie, played by BEAUUUTIFUL Italian actress Elsa Martinelli . . . the “minor” point being that she was 27!!! in 1962, so there was a HUGE age difference, but that didn’t seem to MATTER to me at the time! LOL (NOR did the age difference topic seem to matter to the producers and director of the movie, when they cast John Wayne as Elsa’s potential love interest “Sean Mercer” in the movie, considering that John was 55!! at the time! LOL).  less

Here is "Part Two" of video footage and photos I took yesterday morning at the 62nd annual Del Mar National Horse Show, in San Diego County, California. The show finishes up this coming weekend,   more...on May 6, 2007. For more information on the show, here’s a website:

http://www.sdfair.com/horseshow/index.html

The song is "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi.  less

It's Harbor Seal Pupping Season in San Diego, California, so here are some video clips I took yesterday.

The song is "Trip Around The Sun" by Jimmy Buffett and Martina McBride

I took my camcorder along on one of my typical bicycle rides today, just to see how the ride would look when sped up . . . yep, that's the sole purpose of why I made the vid :) . . . I hope the frenetic   more...nature of the resulting video, doesn't make anybody get a headache or make his/her eyes start twitching!

The bike paths I was riding on are in the Pacific Beach and Mission Beach areas of San Diego, California. The "real time" speed I was riding was usually around 18mph, so the sped up version is around 72mph LOL, and the video footage here covers about a 5 mile portion of some of the great bike paths in the area . . .

The song is "Don't Worry Be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin. This song was one of THE biggest hits of 1988 . . . I got to thinkin' 'bout it tho' and realized that you'd have to be around 25 years old NOW!!!, to even REMEMBER hearing that song when it first came out!!!! . . . GEEZ, I'm gettin' old!!!! LOL  less

The vid title pretty much says it all :) :) . . . and yeah . . . . . I'm EASILY entertained!! LOL

Photos I took at an Elite Horse Jumping Competition in England . . . OH!, people have been asking me about this . . . the rider whose picture is shown 46 seconds into the video, was launched off his horse   more...when the horse stopped, and the rider ended up WAYYYYY beyond the jump, but thankfully was just shaken up . . . the horse was fine too, and stopped without even touching the jump . . .  less

My friends and I went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park today, so here are some video clips of this great looking lion we saw. (I guess you COULD say this is SORT of a continuation of my "Lion"   more...series, since my last video was about SEA Lions! LOL)

The song is “The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)” by The Tokens, which came out WAYYYY back when I was eleven LOL (I SOOOOO remember when this song came out!). Here is some interesting bio on the song and the group, that I found on Amazon.com:

“The song, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," was based on an South African Zulu folk song "Wimoweh" made popular by the classic folk group the Weavers in the 1950s. However, the Weavers were political in the best sense of the folk tradition, and fell out of favor among the common folk who thought them Communist sympathizers of varying hues along the spectrum of the color red. However, younger music listeners might remember Robert John's version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which made it to #3 on the Pop charts in 1972 and was included on the soundtrack for "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective."

“The group, The Tokens, was a doo wop group out of Brooklyn, who originally included Neil Sedaka when they were known as the Linc-Tones (they were students at Lincoln High School). In the early 1960s the group was reformed by Hank Medress with Phil Margo, Mitch Margo, Joe Venneri, and Jay Siegel as The Tokens. In 1962, The Tokens recorded "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which hit #1 on the Billboard Pop charts. It was far and away the biggest hit The Tokens ever had, and this CD-Single basically includes the two songs that are arguably the best of the rest of their inventory. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and "La Bamba" were both off of The Token's debut album.”  less

San Diego is home to the USS Midway Aircraft Carrier. The engines total 212,000 horsepower; the ship weighs in at 69,000 tons, has 2,000 compartments, 18 decks, four 18 foot high propellers (with each   more...propeller shaft over 400 feet long), 12 boilers, and the ship holds 3.4 million gallons of fuel. The normal ship crew for this ship was 600 men in engineering, 225 cooks, 200 pilots, 40 corpsmen, 2 physicians, and 1 dentist, and, AND, you get a great view of downtown San Diego and the harbor from the flight deck and from the superstructure above!

The song is “Where the Stars and Stripes and Eagles Fly” by Aaron Tippin.  less

Here's a video of some of the many critters I was caretaker for recently at a ranch in Northern California, while my friend, who is the ranch manager, was away on vacation with her family. I was caretaking   more...for a herd of cattle, 7 horses, 2 house cats, 2 barn cats, 2 dogs, 3 goats, and, last but not least . . . 6 turtles. Sooooo . . . what do ya get when you mix most of those critters together? . . . YEP!!! . . . another LiveVideo of course!! LOL The huge black Rottweiler in the video is "Gunner"; this is his second appearance on LiveVideo LOL . . . he's the dog who's with me in my channel profile pic :) :) . . . doin' all the daily chores while caretaking a ranch is much like painting the Golden Gate Bridge . . . you start painting the bridge at one end and just as you finish painting at the other end of the bridge, you realize it's time to start painting at the beginning all over again!! LOL . . .so yeah, feed critters, move various horses to pastures from their stalls/paddocks, fill water troughs, clean stalls/paddocks, put in fresh wood shavings as needed, sweep barn aisles, clean cat litter boxes, walk dogs, ride the quadrunner ATV out to the big cattle pasture in the hills, to check for any new calf births, make sure no coyotes killed or maimed any newborn calves overnight, move horses back to stalls/paddocks, feed them again, blanket certain horses, recheck animals just before going to sleep, then go to bed, and YEP!! . . sure enuf! . . . it's time to start the process all over again the NEXT day! LOL

The song in the video is "Down Home" by Alabama.  less

One of the professional photographers for sports magazines was standing next to me as I used my camcorder at one of the prime viewing areas at the Boat Regatta, so he was telling me a lot about the racing   more...classes that I didn’t know before; the “cracker box” boats shown in this video have some REALLY interesting history (see below). These flat bottomed boats have the engine set AHEAD of the boat racers!, and you get some REALLY outrageous boat hops during the race with this type of boat! It would be a BLAST drivin’ these things!! LOL Here’s the info from Wikipedia.org:

“The California Cracker Box is a racing runabout design popularized on the American west coast shortly after the Second World War. The design places a 283 ci. small-block Chevy engine (originally cannibalized from wrecked Corvettes) in the middle of a flat-bottomed boat, with driver and engine man sitting behind it with their backs almost against the transom. Power hits the water by way of a straight propeller shaft exiting the bottom of the boat. As the class developed, boats got faster, and presently race in the 80 to 90 mph range. In recent years the Cracker Box hull has become a favorite with radio-controlled boat modellers, powering 1/4 scale versions with grass trimmer engines.”

The song is “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood  less

I often hang out backstage at the killer whale pools at SeaWorld, in order to watch them interact with each other, and watch the games they play in their free time when the human trainers are off doing   more...other things, so on this particular day, the killer whales decided they felt like body surfing onto the smooth surface at the back of the pool, so time after time they’d do this. It reminded me of watching skateboarders practicing their sport, as they hop their skateboards time and time again, up onto the edge of low walls and slide along.

One summer night before the killer whale show, I was watching backstage, and one particular killer whale saw me and then he (she?) stopped swimming and rose up vertically so his eyes were out of the water, as the other whales kept swimming, and this one killer whale just stared back at me for the longest time. It was an amazing experience . . . particularly since nobody else was backstage at that time, so it was just the whale and me :)

Anyway, the song for this video is “Surfin’ Safari” by The Beach Boys.  less

Here are more video clips taken during one of my motorcycle trips through Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. The Giant Sequoias, located in both of these national parks, are the world's largest   more...trees, the world’s fastest growing trees, and the oldest known Giant Sequoia is approximately 3,500 years old. Sequoia bark can sometimes reach 4 feet in thickness. Even standing right next to these magnificent trees, it’s still difficult to fully grasp the sheer ENORMITY of these trees.

The video includes scenes of the two largest Giant Sequoias. General Sherman, the world’s largest tree, is 276 feet tall, 32 feet in diameter, has a circumference of 103 feet, with an estimated wood volume of over 52,500 cubic feet, and finally, the tree weighs approximately 1,385 tons. General Grant is the world’s second largest tree, at 270 feet tall, 34 feet in diameter, and an estimated volume of almost 47,000 cubic feet. The tallest redwood tree is around 367 feet tall, which is higher than the Giant Sequoias, but the wood volume within the tall redwood trees is dwarfed by that within the Giant Sequoias.

In the video sequence showing the vehicles going through a fallen tree trunk, you’ll probably notice a pronounced jiggle of the camcorder in the middle of that video segment . . . . that’s because I was swatting away a very large, VERY annoying bumblebee at that exact moment! LOL, but I managed to keep filming anyway (and who says “guys can’t multitask”!?? LOL)


The song for the video is “Colors of the Wind”, sung by Vanessa Williams.  less

Here are some of the drag races for the IHBA (International Hot Boat Association) drag boats! The event is the Thunderboat Regatta, held this past weekend in Mission Bay in San Diego, California. Thanks   more...for watching! :)

The song is “Gimme All Your Lovin’” by ZZ Top.  less

Here is video footage I took during the Championship Off Road Racing competition in the Chula Vista area of San Diego, California . . . I hung around the pits hopin' SOMEBODY would let me take one of   more...these 850 HP monsters for a test drive, but no luck! LOL  less

This video is dedicated to anybody who loves trains as much as I do, and the video includes various trains I saw and/or rode on durin’ my recent wonderful motorcycle trip around the Southwest. As a kid   more...my family and I rode on trains cross country quite a bit, and the trips were always magical journeys for kids. I particularly loved waking up while it was still dark outside and then gradually watching as the approaching sunlight slowly began to light up the beautiful desert scenes outside the windows :) We also knew that at that point, pancakes in the dining car were going to be served in the not TOO distant future LOL.

Trains included in the video are a long freight train along Route 66 in Arizona; two of the Amtrak Coast Starlight trains that often times meet each other in San Luis Obispo, California; the new “FrontRunner” just recently opened between Salt Lake City and Ogden Utah; one of the old locomotives, which is one of the various engines on display at the Ogden Railroad Museum; the Grand Canyon Railway train as it departs Williams, Arizona for Grand Canyon Village at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (I also have vid footage of the train AT Grand Canyon Village, but this YouTube video is ALREADY 9.5 minutes long so I didn’t add that footage as well! LOL); and finally, the video shows the Sacramento Southern Railroad train that visitors to Old Town Sacramento can ride on. That train is typically pulled by a steam locomotive, but unfortunately that engine is down for repairs at the moment, so the train is pulled by a more modern engine for now. As I get older it’s funny to me that the old “vintage railroad cars” on that train are some of the type I remember riding in as a kid when they were still in service on various railroad lines around the USA, so yeah “Tempus Fugits”!! When I was a kid, in the days before the “safetycrats” destroyed much of the FUN!! of life, I vividly remember being allowed to ride for HOURS at a time on the open platforms of such cars at the rear of the train, as the train raced across the deserts at high speeds. Now on most “new” trains, you can’t even open a window, let alone stand out where you might get hurt if you’re dumb enough not to hold on, and it’s become almost impossible to walk around the inside of modern train cars without finding LOTS of safety warning stickers plastered everywhere, with a seemingly never-ending dissertation of the Dos and Don’ts while you’re on board! I miss the old days, when you still got credit for having a brain and common sense! LOL

The song for the video is “Catch That Train” by Billy Ray Hatley and The Show Dogs.  less

I took the camcorder out again to record more of the bike paths in the area, so these paths go along Mission Bay. I've got five bikes in my home in San Diego, and another bike at a friend's house in   more...England, and this is my favorite bike (the one shown in the first two photos). It's a Trek triathlon/time trial type bike, and the most aerodynamic bike I've ever owned. It's soooo effortless to ride :) :) The video speed is sped up as well, 'cause I LOVE seein' things in fast motion LOL. Part 1 in this two part San Diego bike path series was my video "Don't Worry . . Be Happy".

The song is "Ray of Light" by Madonna (whose real name is "Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone" . . . bet you didn't know that huh? . . . well, neither did I 'til I just Googled it! LOL)  less

Thank you LiveVideo for deciding to "feature" this video!! . . . .NEVER expected that! . . . on to my video notes . . . .

During my life, I've written down many, many philosophical things that   more...I've heard, or read in novels or in letters and emails friends wrote to me, or even seen as graffiti on urban city walls, so I wanted to share some of the thoughts with you. This is "Part Two" in a series.

I took this video footage near my home in La Jolla, San Diego, California.

The music for the video is the song "Believe" by the AMAZINGLY talented & inspiring singer Faith Rivera (YouTube account name: "FaithRivera") . . . stop by her YouTube channel and check out her videos and say "Hi"!! She's a wonderful person. You can also say "Hi" at http://www.myspace.com/faithrivera

Thank you Faith SOOOOO much for giving me permission to use your beautiful song in my video!!!  less

I always enjoy the thrill of jets taking off, so yep, that's the entire purpose of this vid!

The song is "I Can't Drive 55" by Sammy Hagar

It was another warm, sunny summer’s . . . err. . WINTER’S day yesterday here in San Diego (it’s always hard to remember it’s winter with this great weather we almost always have here LOL), so I went over   more...to the Maritime Museum of San Diego, and wandered around inside the 300 foot long “B-39”, which is a Russian, Soviet era “Foxtrot” class (its NATO designation) or “Project 641” (Soviet Navy designation) diesel-electric powered attack submarine. She was constructed at the Sudomekh shipyards near Leningrad and commissioned in 1974. The irony is that the B-39 almost certainly spent part of her career stalking many of the of the U.S. Navy ships that are now her neighbors on San Diego Bay! (the above info is taken from the Maritime Museum brochure).

The two songs for this video are “Yellow Submarine” by The Beatles, and, AND, since I have a REALLY droll, dry, warped sense of humor, I also used a bizarre song (more of a “surreal, story telling narrative”) called “The Submarine”, by 2NU, which is a group out of Seattle, Washington. The eeriness of the song seems to go really well with the eerie, solitary journey thru’ the pipe and wiring filled “intestines”, within the confines of the belly of the sub. (I’m over 6 feet tall, so it was quite a stunt to continue filming while squeezin’ thru’ the small openings inside the sub!! . . . luckily I do a lot of Yoga, so I'm USED to bendin' my body into the shape of a PRETZEL!! LOL)  less

Here is another of my all time favorite romantic songs . . . Eva Cassidy's version of "Fields of Gold". The world lost this beautiful singer when she died WAYYY before her time at the age of   more...33 from cancer in 1996. (It's why I truly believe that you have to focus on each day of your life . . . you never know when your "personal time clock" will stop ticking.) The other sad thing is that Eva, during her life, was almost totally unknown outside her home area of Washington D.C. and became famous only after her death. The British newspaper "The Guardian" later went on to describe her as "one of the greatest voices of her generation." Her posthumously released recordings have since sold in excess of four million copies, and in early 2001 the compilation album Songbird reached #1 on the UK album charts. It's so sad she never lived to see the recognition she deserved . . . I hope you enjoy her music as much as I do!

Here are the links to a wonderful three part series about Eva and her music that was on the American TV show "Nightline"; the series reconfirms the incredible impact her music had, and STILL has on the world:

Part One
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sd9pWLrjyUg

Part Two
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6EelwKYLEU

Part Three
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWbTi66Fvj0

The photos for this video are ones I took in England on various trips and from when I used to live over there. The primary castle shown in the video is Arundel Castle, in Arundel, West Sussex, England . . . I love wandering around old castles in Europe and visualizing the dozens of generations of people who have lived & died in them . . . it's amazing to look at stone steps in the castles that have been worn down simply from the thousands of people who have used them over the centures . . . it's also always eerie to visualize the battles that were fought at the castles and contrast those battles with the peaceful tranquility around these castles today . . . The Arundel castle was "remodeled" and expanded around 1300AD, and the initial castle built around 1100AD . . . it's always interesting to me how castles were often times remodeled WELL before the United States was even in EXISTENCE! :)

For more info on Arundel Castle (one of my favorite castles for wandering around :) ) please check out:

http://www.arundelcastle.org/_pages/01_castle.htm

In addition to the castle (which also has a restaurant), the grounds include a beautiful old chapel, and gardens, and the town of Arundel is the quintessential old English town, so yeah, I highly recommend this beautiful place if you ever get to this part of England :)

and for castle history buffs, this website has lots of detailed info on the Arundel Castle:

http://www.castles-abbeys.co.uk/Arundel-Castle.html  less

I've noticed when I fly into San Diego, that the approach to the airport requires planes to fly in just over the tops of many, many buildings on the downward slope of a hill in the flight path, so here's   more...how it looks from various views on the ground. It's fun watchin' pedestrians stop in their tracks as the planes unexpectedly skim by low over their heads! I was ALSO going to film from the top of one of the high rise parking structures in the flight path, but the people running the parking garage said that customers aren't allowed to stand on the top floor, because the pilots don't want any extra distractions as they glide over the buildings on their approach to the runway!, and OH! . . . the sounds of the planes in this video are set at only 74% of the actual jet volume (so you can still hear the song lyrics during the flyovers), so there's a lot of NOISE when the planes fly over too!, makin' it a VERY visceral, entertaining experience! LOL

The song is "Watching Airplanes" by Gary Allan, which was suggested by one of my longtime friends.

and, AND!! . . . if you want to see a place where planes land REALLLLLLLLY low, check out THIS video of a Boeing 747 landing at St. Maarten:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAfQwDizpRo  less

During my life, I've written down many philosophical things that I've heard, read in novels, in letters and emails that friends wrote to me, or even seen as graffiti on urban city walls, so I wanted to   more...share some of the thoughts with you. If you like this video, I’ve got Parts 2,3, & 4 in this series over on my YouTube channel (same “LifeJourneyGuy” user name).

I took this video footage at Waikiki, Oahu, Hawaii in the predawn hours when there are almost no other people at the beach . . . a REALLY special, tranquil time of day that most people rarely ever experience. Diamondhead is in the background.

The music for the video is the song "Wonder" by the AMAZINGLY talented & inspiring singer Faith Rivera (YouTube user name: "FaithRivera") . . . stop by her YouTube channel, check out her videos, and say "Hi"!! She's a wonderful, kind, caring person. You can also say "Hi" at http://www.myspace.com/faithrivera.

Thank you Faith SOOOOO much for giving me permission to use your beautiful song in my video!!!

You can watch Faith sing her song in her music video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_YfgZyO5bk  less

This is the second video from the October 21, 2007 Hunter Trial at the cross-country course at Tweseldown, in Southern England. The jumps for this competition were 2'-9" high.

The song is "Love   more...Today" by Mika.  less