A few clips of Sea World, Orlando - January 2010. This is a playlist with several video clips -- you can skip using the left and right arrows.

Over the holidays, we sang some Bob Dylan.

The granola bar shop with too many flavors. Written and performed by the kids.

Our family was at Sea World and Discovery Cove this week in Orlando. It was chilly in the 50s - some of the roller coasters were actually down in the morning until the sun heated things up a bit. Our day in Discovery Cove was fortunately the warmest of the week. The water in the lazy river is heated to 85 degrees, so we didn't notice the cold until it was time to get out (or run to the snack shop or bathroom).

Here are some clips of us snorkeling. Video and photos were taken with my oldish Canon Powershot A510 in a DiCAPac waterproof case my wife got me for Christmas. Stayed bone dry! In a couple of shots you can see the lens cover making a black edge, but other than that it worked great.

There are lots of free music offers this season. Let me know if you're aware of others.

Amazon 25 Days of Free

Ryan Shupe - 2 free songs

Vanguard Records Holiday Sampler, including the amazing Brandi Carlile!

iTunes Holiday Sampler

A few clips of us with cobras in Jaipur and New Delhi, India. Dumb tourists. The cobra around my neck cost me 200 rupees for "very good picture. No bite, no bite."

To get to Amber Fort in Jaipur, you can walk or rent a jeep or ride an elephant. We picked the elephant ride. It's not a comortable thing - very bumpy and sometimes smelly.

We asked our driver if tourists ever got hurt. He said there was an incident where two elephants started fighting and it resulted in some sort of injury. He also said it's his responsibility to risk his life to protect us, but I'm not sure what a person can do about it once an elephant decides he's angry. I used iMovie's image stabilization on some of this and left it bumpy in other parts.

A few of the photos at the end are of nearby Jaighar Fort, which we visited later in the day. Enjoy:

We rode camels for 10 rupees (25 cents) each at a place called Chokhi Dhani outside the city of Jaipur in the state of Rajasthan, India. The place reminds me of the Polynesian Cultural Center on a smaller scale -- a village feel with activities representative of the culture in that state. I was talked into dancing twice. The very end of the video is Bob the Builder in Hindi:

It's impossible to capture the frenzy of India traffic on film, but that didn't stop me from holding my camera out the car window for minutes on end:

The phrase at the end is from a sign I saw along some of the roads - no one followed its advice.

I was in India for the first two weeks of October on business. My dad and uncle joined me for a week of it as tourists. I'm finally wading through all the photos and video and trying out iMovie for the first time, so the next few posts will probably be about the trip. When you get sick of it, go visit tvtropes.org. It has nothing to do with India, but is a strangely entertaining site.

We spent a 3-day weekend in Jaipur and visited the holy monkey temple called Galta. It's pretty well hidden with no signs to indicate you're on the right path. It was raining and a man on a motorcycle led us the last couple of miles there. We (unintentionally) timed this visit perfectly. We tried to feed a few monkeys some peanuts, but they were all running past us -- dozens of them descending the hill like fire ants after the mound is disturbed.

They were headed to a guy on the stairs cutting up cucumbers, zucchini, and tomatoes. We worked our way through the crowds of monkeys to the top of the stairs where a man beckoned for us to crawl into a small temple and leave a tip in exchange for a blessing.

Once the fresh food was gone, the monkeys regained interest in the peanuts we had purchased at the front gate. While I was distracted, a large monkey knocked the bag out of my hand and the peanuts spilled down the steps. Some of the aggressive ones would pull on your pant leg for a peanut. And if you held two or three peanuts in your hand, they would pry open your fingers to get them all at once. We were warned to not try this with monkeys you find elsewhere in the area -- these ones were accustomed to tourists.

These are rhesus monkeys. Photos of the more impressive (but not as friendly) langur monkeys coming in a later post.