Ams - Fin Trip Day 3 Huskies and injury

We woke up early and saw the sunrise.

Right back ground has some colors like a rainbow. Is that aurora in day time?

Another green lights behind of us!

Breakfast buffet!

Husky ride time! We rented the snow wear!

So far so good!

Let's go!

Easy start on the flat ground.

To maneuver the sleigh, pull and lean to left to go left and right to go right. It is kinda difficult. Funny thing is that huskies pooped while running

. 4 of 6 huskies did it!

This is where we changed drivers.

My turn! I am the driver, but the break didn't work because I am too light. Snow walls on both sides are getting higher and I had a difficult time driving. Plus Ken put his leg left which made the sleigh go left and I had to tilt it to right with a lot of effort on the straight way. It took a long time for me to figure out what was wrong

I think there was lack of information provided. I almost flipped the sleigh. In order to save it, I had to get off and got dragged by the sleigh. We were still safe, but I gave up on driving. Ken said they added another dog after seeing Ken lol. He looks bigger than other travelers. So our dogs were extremely powerful! Soon after Ken started driving again, he flipped the sleigh! I fell and my left shoulder got out of the socket

My shoulder occasionally goes out. It started when I was a six grader, playing basketball. Last time when it happened was in Hawaii. We were eaten by the big wave. I was holding on the turtle floater and didn't let it go. Immediately I laid on my back flat and the shoulder went back in. This time snow was too soft, and laying on my back didn't help. I was carried on the snowmobile back to the cabin. I tried almost an hour to put my joint in the right place. Nothing helped. We were in the middle of nowhere. There is only one doctor in the town and was out of the office hours. I was told to go back to Ivalo by a taxi to see a doctor, who might not help anything. We were informed that doctors in Finland don't do much adjustment because they are afraid of messing it up. We didn't buy a travel insurance. I thought it would be ok with my credit card benefit, which comes with the accident insurance. After so many attempts, Heidi, the instructor lady made me lay on my belly on the higher stools flat and pulled my arm downwards. She learned it because her mom's joint goes out occasionally, too. The click! It went back in whew

Good that we didn't have any activities booked later the day. I didn't hold other tour participants from their next activities either. Ironically I got the free snowmobile ride with my shoulder out of the socket

Originally I booked a snowmobile activity, but I canceled because we didn't want to bring the international drivers license. Even though my arm and shoulder got more pain later, we walked around in this arctic resort and took some pictures before the dinner. This tower will be open sometime this year.

This reminds me of Moomin's house.

Later we found out this is the Santa's house. Smaller than I thought. Kinda I regret that we didn't go closer. It wasn't open anyway and I didn't want to get hurt again. The stairs looked slippery.

In the reception area and the restaurant.

Tonight the menu was reindeer meat!

Aurora appeared little after midnight. More activities compared to last night

However I couldn't take good pictures due to the injury. All blur

I got some purple

I don't blame on Ken for flipping the sleigh. I was the one who wanted to do this activity and he just did it for me. I was so thankful to Heidi for putting my arm back. If the proper instructions were given before the activity, it might have helped to prevent it.

Ams- Fin Trip Day 2 Northern Lights

We are in Finland! Dr. Lilja's country

Helsinki airport looks more modern than Amsterdam airport. Catching a connecting flight, I was rushing to buy Moomin stuff

. I saw the sleeping place in the airport. There are plugs for phones, too. Pretty cool! We didn't have a chance to use them though.

Ready to fly for Ivalo!

Here we are! Clouds are lower and mostly clear sky! Good chance of northern lights

After the shuttle ride about half an hour, we are at our hotel, Kakslauttanen! I read bad reviews, but people are very nice here. I like it

We bring our own laggages on the slead to our glass igloo!

Our room is #36!

Warm and looking great!

Kenny is complaining being too cold

He wears his hood like South Park's Kenny, but not orange

Dinner time! It's a fixed menu.

European meal is always full of cheese and rich

We heard aurora might show up around 10:30pm

waiting waiting ....While waiting, we saw shooting stars, but more often some lights were moving like airplane speed. Many of them. Why they are flying in the middle of nowhere? We suspect they are not planes.

It is subtle, but is that aurora? Let's go outside!

Yes it is!

It was so dark that I couldn't tell the color of the northern lights, but my iPhone 7 captured them! People are setting nice cameras in slow shutter speeds. We have only iPhones. All sky was covered by the aurora, moving like layers of veils. Fast! iPhone video was too dark to record the movements.

This is my favorite shot like a half heart

Kenny says it looks like an ear

Northern lights were there all night. When the sky was covered in thin layer, the sky looked white and not really exciting. When the white layers gathered and concentrated in the narrower lines, it gets more exciting look. I am sleepy. Almost all night I kinda kept my eyes on the sky. Too bad that my camera didn't capture the way we saw. It was huge and so amazing, sugoi! We are lucky that we saw the aurora on our first day

Ams Fin Trip Day 1

Wifi works well yay! We are in Amsterdam! I planned this trip after our last year's trip to Greece, which was our 15 year anniversary trip. I was gonna wait another 5 years to do a big trip, but less than a year later, we are in the same airport ( connecting flight was here). I love this modern and big airport! Anyway why two years in the row? Because I want to see northern lights! It's been my dream since my childhood. I heard a good chance of appearing aurora is decreasing another 5-6 years. We have to see now! Also we should do this activity when we are still young. It's really really cold there. Ken is already eligible to apply for old folks community housing lol. Everything went smoothly except the airline leaked water from the air conditioner and we got wet a little bit. We checked in this hotel by the airport. Minimal and efficient. Check in is almost like self check in on the computer. Even the temperature adjustment is done by iPad

Tiny, but we are used to share the size of Dormy inn Japan

Still bigger than that. Very comfortable and quiet. Originally we planned to go to the tulip field today, but we got tired with jet lag and slept til night. We could go to red light district, but it's kinda too late for that, too. We have to leave for Finland tomorrow. Save our energy. We decided to eat at our hotel.

Stew bar buffet. Soups tasted like home made food with the accent of olives. Their tiramisu was super good! It is worth paying just for the tiramisu

. The hotel offered a complimentary beverage per guest. Ken always gets my portion in addition to his free drink. He had a nice time getting all free drinks through out the day ( in the airplane, too). I tried Netherlands' products : the cold press juice and the water melon bar. We had a nice time.

Photographers War

After gigging two nights in the row plus regular work exhausted me and I had been unstable mentally and physically. Because of exhaustion, I made so many mistakes and was losing confident in playing guitar. However so many musician friends gave me kind advice and I was able to enjoy last gig

We have been so lucky to get free awesome photos from professional photographers. Some of them were used for a female guitar player community site, so they are so excited and keep tagging me their works one after another! It is like they are competing each other. The pictures are like art. Here I store my fav shots

Photographer 1 at Great American Music Hall

Photographer 2

Photographer 3 at Vinnie's

Photographer 4

Photographer 5 at Slim's

There are more to come

Three Big Gigs in February

I can't sleep! I drunk too much cold brew coffee

It's 3:35AM two nights in the row I am awake around this time. Last night was a big gig, which gathered about 500 people! We were hired as opening acts. Quite experiences on recent three gigs. I started blogs in order to store my pictures, so I am just gonna paste my favorite photos here. Luckily our fans take really nice pictures. At the old Catalyst Club:

We were surprised so many people showed up!

One before last gig was at House of Rock, which has Marshall stacks background, two big screens and the catwalk! The owners of the venue demanded us to use the catwalk. Taking solos while walking was difficult and I messed up my solos

But picturous stage!

Smoking!

I didn't know it was live broadcasted on Internet. Here are the pictures that were taken from Internet screen:

And the MC was a famous guy

My favorite pictures are these three. Hair Metal \m/ haha!

The beginning of February was at the old famous club, Slim's! The stage was high and too close, most of my pictures turned out to have double chins

Here are some shots which look upwards so no double chin

In two weeks, we will play at another big venue, Great American Music Hall! Hope I make no more mistakes

Sometimes Ameba blogs mess up the order of pictures. I reloaded. I hope they show in the right order here.

Namm Day 3

We got up early to catch the performance of Allan Holdsworth, but it was just an autograph signing. Years ago I stopped collecting autographs because I lose them

. In stead we walked around and happened to catch Yvette. She is a very talented new artist just got a record out from Steve Vai's label. She is my coworker's daughter

Listen to her beautiful creation!

It seems like we were walking back and forth. Octopus lady!

Going back to ISP booth. Finally we caught Ethan 's demonstration. I was officially blown away by his playing. I heard his song years ago and it was a nice work, but he improved WAY more! It is not too exaggerated to say my favorite guitar player of the year is him!

Later he used my photo below on his FB posting

Chris Broaderick is another young monster guitarist. Last summer my friend opened up for him and we got to know how great he was.

Zakk

Every year we catch Frank Gambale's performance, but we didn't this year. He was next to me talking to somebody while we were watching Yvette.

Later we got tired of all the noise in Namm so we drove to What's Up Men, a ramen restaurant. It was so delicious! Everything we ordered was great! Japanese quality! We always want to live in LA (we used to).

Namm Day 1 & 2

Waking up 5AM and got ready. I hate traveling the same day, but I couldn't take many days off. Still right on schedule! I turned in my guitar for the repair in Hollywood and had some time to stop by Torrance to eat good Japanese food

This year we chose to stay in Mariott, which has smaller rooms compared to Hilton, but the balcony helps.

Arriving at Namm little earier than the appointment time, we checked what was happening first. Funny thing is that the first rock celebrity we ran into was Marty (we just saw his show). He was busy talking, so we left

I ran into my Facebook friend who I had never met before. He recognized me and talked to me. We had to catch his demonstration booth later

Then we saw Michael Angelo. He wasn't very friendly but it's ok because I wasn't 100% sure it was him LOL.

Still made it to my first business appointment

Later we had to go back to Hollywood to catch Paul Gilbert show. My keyboardist friend, Skylar, was opening up, so we had to be there early. Again right on schedule! We found a great parking spot!

Her father took me to the back stage. Some day we want to play this famous rock club and get paid. Hollywood is still pay to play.

The place was packed. Paul likes to play so he did a long show! Paul is like the King of Namm show. Amazing techniques all night with variety of songs. I have a lot of licks to copy

Bravo Paul Gilbert!

Day 2 at Namm. Facebook is amazing. I friend requested to Ethan Brosh, the brother of Nili who is my favorite female guitar player. I am already FB friend with her. Ethan messaged me wow

It was a personal message. We couldn't get up early enough to check his demonstrations, but we ran into him. He is so skinny! I hate taking a picture with skinny young people

I look like his mom! I think I am his mother's age anyway

Then we saw Mr. Alan Holdsworth. He squeezed me!

We tried to catch our favorite Greg Howe, but we were little late. All the headphones were taken, so we couldn't hear him play. They start using headphones in the booth this year for the demonstrations. It sucks because we can't video tape their playing.

Ken's friend playing after Greg. He is still on the side signing autographs.

I think I should copy Jennifer Batten. Her playing is physically playable with my extra tiny hands.

Then Skylar's dad was hanging out with Don Airey who took over keyboard of Deep Purple after John Lord. We were invited to a cocktail party by my work relation so we took him with us and brought white wine for him. It was a quite experience hanging out with a keyboard player of Deep Purple

Marty Friedman

Tonight we are at this venue to see Marty Friedman. I wasn't crazy about him in 80s, but now I really like him because he speaks perfect Japanese

Of course I like his guitar playing, but I like his melodious side and not too much about shredding side. I like Beautiful Chaser written for a Japanese band. Before the show, we had an hour. We dined at the next door, called The Fat Lady. The outside looks nice, so does inside! This used to be a whore house. This lady on the painting was outside calling customers in. Now it is a beautiful restaurant.

Ceiling is decorated with music. It reminds me of Alice in Wonderland.

Because I just got out of diet, I ordered a grass fed beef steak. It was good with a lot of garlic. I smell at the concert

On the way to the bathroom.

I was seriously scared in the bathroom. When I opened the lady's room door, I was greeted by him! This stature is huge! I am not easily scared by western monsters, but being by myself in the bathroom with him was quite uncomfortable

Oh Japanese girl bass player

OMG! Her stage performance was awesome! I have never seen a Japanese girl moves this much on a stage! Little scary reminding me of the Japanese horror movie . Black hair

It is because the stature in the bathroom!

It was my first time to see Marty live. They are head bangers

HAIR METAL Lol

Amazing hair!!! And stage actions are freaking awesome! No wonder he is skinny

Moves this much! Hard to take a picture of his face

Got to hear nice melodies of Japanese Enka, too.

I already know Marty is an incredible guitar player and he was amazing all night.

The second guitar player was awesome also and cute. He must be 20 years old! Young and beautiful like a prince on a white horse lol.

Oops! I forgot to mention about the drummer. I think he is a Japanese also. Very agile

Yes he was great!

After the show, we walked to the train track where Tower of Power's members got hit by the train. The train tracks are widened and almost the whole road was covered by the tracks.

Mark and David are my hub's playmates. Hope they get better soon.

NYE

Wow I continue writing my blog Lol. I feel like a professional musician because we got an offer to play on NYE. That's when most of musicians make the most

I caught another cold from Las Vegas. Arriving at the venue 5 hours before the show, rushing to wait. I always go to Ken's gig on NYE and they feed us very good. This year is my own gig. There is no fancy dinner at Rock club

Sitting in my car doing Facebook. I found the guitar player of Rock of Ages. Since I have five mutual friends, what the heck send the friend request! After long wait, our gig finally started

Agwww last song of 2016, I made a mistake on my solo

Happy New Year! I played a short version of Auld Lang Syne after the host sound guy finished his talking, which was kinda too long

How nice the first thing I did this year was playing rock on the stage. Hope we get bigger this year! I think I made many stupid mistakes because my brain was foggy. I was tired and old

I messed up a lot, but fans took great pictures of us! These pictures will stay my favorites for many years to come. I appreciate our fans for choosing us to party together on their special occasion.