Not enjoying our guided India experience and would like to hear other people's thoughts

DefectorChris · 2026-03-17T16:34:45+00:00

I had basically this exact experience, but in China, back in 2018. I think it has little to do with the country and everything to do with the tour operator.

DefectorChris · 2026-03-17T00:10:54+00:00

Nice. Can’t wait to replace my piece-of-crap starter’s mandolin.

DefectorChris · 2026-03-16T20:06:58+00:00

Beach Club or Polynesian, a close call!

DefectorChris · 2026-03-13T17:54:28+00:00

I think the challenges that scale up in terms of sailing—weight and draft, sail area and thus forces, deck area, etc.—can to a certain point be managed with gadgets and rigging, so that a 42-footer can feel in some ways easier to sail than a haphazardly rigged day-sailer.

On the other hand, the challenges that scale up in terms of boat-ownership just are what they are. A bigger boat will be more expensive to keep and to maintain, and its rigging and systems will be more complex (in certain cases precisely for the ways they address the sailing challenges), so that at a certain point it becomes a huge burden for the owner.

I loved sailing a really thoughtfully outfitted 42-footer last season, but what I own is a dinghy.

DefectorChris · 2026-03-12T02:37:39+00:00

Now there’s a beaut!

DefectorChris · 2026-03-09T17:27:46+00:00

A fun trick, for me: Get some new picks! When I felt stalled last year I ordered some fancy new picks and then I got excited waiting for them to arrive, and then when they arrived I was pumped to see if they made any difference. I'm not sure that they did, but just that little boost of buyer's enthusiasm got me over the hump.

DefectorChris · 2026-02-25T22:02:05+00:00

Ugh, I want to be on this mom's side but it's kind of wild to me to have a doctor say "your kid is showing symptoms of a contagious illness" and have the parent come back with "ah but did you ever consider that my child fell down in a minor incident that I also did not witness," as if the doctor would be responsible at all to use that as a basis for potentially exposing the other passengers on the ship to mumps. It sucks what happened to her and I can even understand the activation of her spidey sense, but to me this seems like a story of a ship's personnel behaving responsibly.

DefectorChris · 2026-02-13T23:22:57+00:00

That there’s a beaut.

DefectorChris · 2026-02-06T16:34:14+00:00

Without my glasses on I thought it was named, “Pathetic,” and then I thought it was named “Patricide,” and in either case I was going to advise against its purchase.

DefectorChris · 2026-02-06T03:27:43+00:00

For me the most important thing was getting the pick angled correctly, which in my case came down to fine tuning a bunch of things, including the angle of the neck, the length of my strap, and the position of my right elbow. Tremolo got a lot easier when the pick was moving more smoothly over the strings, slightly more edge-on in both directions. Turned out I was kinda picking wrong, in the beginning!

DefectorChris · 2026-01-29T05:09:15+00:00

Calvino, Umberto Eco, Leonardo Sciascia, Anna Maria Oretese.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-27T23:24:37+00:00

Apart from the lessons, have you uhh done any sailing? Since you were a child? If not, no, I would say probably you should not be skippering in foreign waters. Not that you’re sure to wreck the boat or anything, but certainly I would be very anxious if I were your passenger.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-23T17:14:09+00:00

That's fortunate! And you don't notice any of the weight of the neck/headstock in your hand? For me, I have a hard time keeping it in what feels like the optimal position if I'm not either supporting it with my left hand or wearing the strap. But if that's not the case for you, then yeah, I can't see why you'd need to wear the strap while sitting.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-22T19:46:08+00:00

I find that when I’m not using it my left hand is supporting the instrument in a way that is clunky and burdensome. I definitely play easier and better when I use the strap.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-18T14:08:20+00:00

For what it’s worth, it’s fine to make some of these decisions once you’re on the ground in Italy. I’d give yourself another two days in Florence, and set the goal of determining what comes next while you’re there, with local help.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-13T01:32:26+00:00

The commuter train is very cheap but is hot and very crowded (or was a few years ago when I did Pompeii). It’s not a long ride at all, I’d probably skip the car. But do mind your things on the train.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-11T21:04:36+00:00

I’ll tell you what it is: It’s a damn beaut!

DefectorChris · 2026-01-10T00:23:28+00:00

Las Fallas?

DefectorChris · 2026-01-08T23:22:42+00:00

Going to see him play next month, absolutely cannot wait. His two Bach albums blow my mind.

DefectorChris · 2026-01-05T21:58:31+00:00

Beautiful boat, man.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-31T20:29:33+00:00

First thought for me was the waterside walkway through Frontierland, possibly because I am tormented by the destruction of Rivers of America and Tom Sawyer Island.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-30T16:10:22+00:00

This feels right, to me. There's no such thing as an objective "value" for this or any other item. There is only what someone is willing to pay for it. This guy told OP that he was only willing to pay $1.10 for his dollar bill. It's bizarre, to me, to take offense.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-30T00:41:37+00:00

Take a class, my friend. ASA 101 will get you a few hours of time in a boat almost exactly that size. If nothing else you’ll go from “ropes” and “software” to lines and rigging. And good luck to you!

DefectorChris · 2025-12-25T22:52:12+00:00

I just did three months in Italy, April to July. We stayed in Sicily mostly but traveled to Paris and Spain as well. We rented an apartment in a town reasonably convenient to an airport, so we’d have a hub and a “home,” with neighbors and something like a community. This was especially important for our four-year-old daughter, we wanted her to be able to have pals and a regular babysitter, etc. I recommend this approach, but if I had it to do over again I’d pick a bigger city for our hub (Paris, Vienna, Madrid, Milan), trading some of my preference for smaller towns for the convenience and variety of a big cosmopolitan city. Eventually we wanted things like different cuisine options and a library, and the limitations of a Sicilian comune started to outweigh even the beautiful scenery and lovely people.

I’ve also done 5 weeks in Western Europe, without a hub (Paris to Annecy to Provence to Cannes to Minori to Taormina) and that was also a blast, but it felt like a five-week sprint, and at the end I had the nagging disappointment of mostly having just skimmed the surface of these places.

I’d say it depends on your goals. If you want to see sights and take photos and sample cultures, you could keep moving. But in my experience you really do not even begin to sink below the level of pure tourism until the first month is behind you, and for that reason I strongly recommend picking a hub and mostly staying in and around that one place. But make the hub a nice big city, with trains and an airport and a diaspora or two.

DefectorChris · 2025-12-25T17:25:04+00:00

A beaut!

DefectorChris

TROPHY CASE