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Your comment about having your hands on it is best.  The sound is critically important to a guitar bringing you pleasure, but so is the shape and feel and ease of playing.  Those are things you just can't tell without having hands on.

A couple weeks ago we had a jamm session at a friend's house.  I played on a buddy's $500 Ibanez AE.  I loved it.  It sounded good plugged in and unplugged.  There was a built in tuner, the set up was terrific, I really liked the width and shape of the neck.  Just picking up that guitar, my fingerpicking speed and accuracy improved about 30% over my own guitar. 

A few days later, another buddy let me play on his custom koa wood Taylor A/E.  It was also a delight.  He picked his up at a bargain price of just under $2,000. 

Between the two, there is no question but that the Taylor was a better guitar.  But was it four times better?  Now, that's the question.  Would it bring four times as much pleasure?  Hard to say.  Perhaps so.  (It really was sweet!) 

These are questions you just can't answer over the internet is my opinion.  You've got to put your hands on them. 

- Zurf

If I were to be forced to move to Canada but could have my wish of locations, it would definitely be coastal British Columbia.  There's the Cascade mountains, more salmon than you can shake a stick at (and I would very much enjoy shaking a particular 9' 6wt Temple Fork Outfitters stick at them), and sea kayaking with whales, plus it never gets terribly hot or terribly cold.  Hard to beat. 

- Zurf

Pandora is free and legal.  You "seed" it with an artist or song, and several more to fine tune it if you like.  Then it figures out the basic elements of that artist or song - like major tonality, 3/4 timing, cajun beat, etc. - and it plays songs from artists that have similar elements.  You can tell it that you really like certain songs and that you do not like certain other songs and it continues to fine tune it over time.  It's a great way to hear new artists.  They have links from the songs being played to let you purchase them from iTunes or Amazon.  They make no secret about it, they are selling music.  Nevertheless, it's good music in a style selected by the listener, free (until you decide to purchase), and legal.

- Zurf

Yeah, but we've got Pandora here in the U.S.  Spotify is the UK's revenge.

Check out "Cash Unearthed."  It's a retrospective box set of his ten years with America records.  All produced by Rick Rubin.  Next time I've got $80 sitting around doing nothing, I'm likely to buy it.  He did four albums, each with the usual twelve or fifteen songs.  However, they recorded 80 or so songs for each.  Cash Unearthed includes many of the songs that weren't put on albums.  It was wrapped up and on its way to Johnny Cash for final approval, but he died while it was on its way.  They've finally released it. 

The only song I've heard off of it is "Heart of Gold", and that song alone is worth the $80 to have the album.  (Of course I could by that song alone as an MP3 for $1, but what's the fun in that?).

- Zurf

I will be in the outback portions some.  I will not be dropped and ignored.  We are using a lodge with an excellent reputation.  I am a good shot, but a slow one.  I would be a greater liability with a sidearm than not.  However, I will likely pick up pepper spray, which has actually been shown to be significantly more effective at deterring bear attacks than has a handgun.  Even a .44 will just further upset an angry bear.  Many charges are charges to get you to back away.  Put a slug into a bear that's doing a warning charge, and all you've done is tick him off and turn it into a killing charge (yes, even a .44).  In a rather long study of bear behavior, pepper spray has been shown to be effective at stopping a charge 98% of the time, while firearms are somewhere around 80%.  Strange but true.  Plus, if I accidentally pepper spray a buddy, I won't have to explain it to his widow. 

All told though, the bears are there for the salmon, not the fishermen. 

The Clarion River is beautiful.  I haven't seen it since I was a teenager and am hoping to get back some day. 

- Zurf

Thanks for the advice NELA.  We're going at what we hope will be the right time for king salmon in the rivers.  We're going to an inland lodge.  Only ten fishermen are permitted per week.  They have several planes.  Each pair of fishermen gets a guide.  We sit down with the guide at dinner each night and figure out where we're going to fish the next day.  The guide works it out with a pilot (if he's not a pilot himself) and then they fly you there for the day of fishing.  The lodge is right on a river, so I'm hoping that I can get a van shuttle upriver a bit and paddle down to the lodge at some point during the trip.  It's pretty much 24 hour sun then, with the middle of the night being no darker than twilight gets in my neck of the woods.  Or so I hear.  Given that, there should be plenty of time to work in some canoeing, if I'm not exhausted from catching large trout and salmon. 

Lena, no worries on the pictures.  My wife gave me a new digital SLR camera outfit for Christmas so that I'll be able to take a bazillion photographs.  I'll be happy to share. 

- Zurf

Yes.  I often have state freshwater licenses from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.  Some years I also get a Maryland.  In-state Freshwater License in Virginia is about $12.50, add another $12.50 for a trout stamp if planning to fish stocked water (I usually don't).  There's another stamp to purchase for fishing in a National Forest, but I don't recall the value.  Out of state licenses for Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia are a bit more expensive but still affordable.  In the $30 range, I think.  I'll often buy a five-day pass rather than an annual pass, which is a lot less expensive.  For West Virginia, there's an initial cost of $12 or $15/year for an out-of-state, but then you can pay just $3/day for the days you actually fish (advance payment of course, you have to have the valid license on you when fishing). 

Chesapeake Bay licenses are curious.  They are sold for the boat, and are valid for all persons aboard the boat up to the Coast Guard approved maximum occupancy.  This is very convenient for the charter captains, because they license their boat for the year.   That way when their daily customers come aboard, the captain doesn't have to worry about whether the customers are individually licensed.  His boat license covers the customers.  Pretty slick.  The Chesapeake is partly Virginia water and partly Maryland water.  Each state licenses, so captains have to be careful about where they are fishing.  GPS units and marine maps save them a ton of money each year in fines.  It's real easy to drift from one state to the other unawares without them. 

I don't know if there's a saltwater license to fish in Virginia.  I mostly fish salt in North Carolina, and that's been a while.  They were speaking of instituting a license, but I don't know if they ever did.  If so, I'm sure it's affordable.  That's big business for them down there, and they're not going to do anything to interfere. 

- Zurf

I'm a fisherman.  I live nearby the upper Potomac River, which is my normal spot for my favorite quarry of smallmouth bass.  My favorite "can get to it at least once a year" location is the New River in West Virginia.  My favorite kind of fishing is whatever I can do at the time, but I do surf fishing, small stream fly fishing for native trout, big river "full contact fishing" for smallmouth bass or trout from a kayak or raft in up to class 3 whitewater, paddle easy around a lake tossing lures to lily pads largemouth bass fishing, and sit on the bank soaking worms and sipping beer while passing the time conversing with a friend and wondering if there are actually any catfish in the region fishing.  You name it, I like it.  I'm not good at it.  But I like it. 

I live in northern Virginia, and we are blessed with outdoor opportunities.  Within a two hour drive I can be at famous freestone native trout streams like Yellow Breeches, the Potomac River (actually in fifteen minutes), the beautiful and rocky Shenandoah River which was just MADE for canoeing, the Chesapeake Bay, big, big, big river water of the tidal Potomac or the Susquehanna (which in parts is huge, wide and flat like the tidal Potomac and in other parts is like a karst limestone strong current river nearly a mile wide, essentially a Shenandoah River on steroids), little spring creeks in the Shenandoah and George Washington National Forests, great big impoundments like Lake Anna, and any of dozens of hundred to two hundred acre placid lakes.   If I want to go a little further for a weekend, I can get to the world-famous Delaware, open Atlantic beaches like Dewey or Atlantic City, MD (or NJ), or barrier island beaches like Assateague, MD or the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  The longest I'd have to spend in the car for any of this is five hours. 

Here's some pictures from a trout trip I took on the Colorado River headwaters in the summer of 2007.  Awesome day.  Probably my best ever day of fishing.  I broke my previous personal best trout record five times that day.  There's nothing like a big brown trout born and raised in a big, strong river.  I fought one on a fly rod while standing on the front of a cataraft that was going down a long class 2 rapid - laughing the whole time.  The fish was still strong when netted and released back to the river to go make more fish just like it. 

http://picasaweb.google.com/HalfFastPad … utFishing# 

There are a few other fishing and outdoor related albums on my site.  You're welcome to browse around.  Ignore the family wedding and kid birthday albums as they would be boring to anyone not in our family. 

- Zurf

I'd mix one.

More Johnny Cash than anything, because they're easy, recognizable, and have good lyrics. 

However, I *like* playing Jimmy Buffett songs best.  Thus far, I've only got three that I cover, but will work on more.  Of course, I don't play anything like a cover - meaning to reproduce exactly.  I do whatever I do in my own style (meaning, I'm not good enough to play it like the pros).  Changes in Lattitudes, Changes in Attitudes; Distantly In Love (actually a Steve Goodman song, but Jimmy made it famous); A Pirate Looks at 40.  All of these are works in progress. Not ready even for campfire strumming yet, though Distantly in Love is getting close.  I suppose I'll have to learn Margaritaville eventually, though that is far from my favorite Buffett tune.  And people will get ticked when I do it fingerpick bluegrass style or whatever I do to it, so I'll actually have to learn that one as a cover to avoid stoning (which is very different from getting stoned). 

- Zurf

I used to sell electronics, and the shop where I worked sold Sharp TV's.  I would usually try to steer folks away from them as they had a lot of problems.  The ones that worked, worked well for a long time.  But there were too many that didn't work well right out of the box.  We'd always exchange a bad one for another one new out of the box and get Sharp to make good (for a reasonable time period), but it wasn't right to keep chasing customers around like that.  One guy I felt so bad about, on his third time back to the store with a defective TV I went to the store manager and asked if I could give the guy something extra for all his trouble.  There was a TV stand the guy had taken a fancy to.  It was a nice looking stand and well made, but for some reason it didn't move well.  So we gave him one.  I switched him to a Magnavox with the same features too.  They sold for a few dollars more (maybe an extra $40), but I thought it was the right thing to do.  That made him happy again.  The store manager agreed that it was the right thing to do and over-rode the hit to my commission.  I've never bought a Sharp TV since.  That was more than twenty years ago, so there's been plenty of opportunity for them to improve their products.  I hear their LCD TV's are pretty good. 

- Zurf