jgentle@cox.net

My day job is professor of computational statistics at George Mason University.

My favorite person is María

• climbing Mt Fuji (in time to see the sunrise -- unfortunately, it was cloudy!) The Japanese say climbing it once makes you wise, but only a fool does it more than once.
• walking a long way (I don't know how far) on the Great Wall of China
• seeing Machu Picchu
• flying from Talkeetna in a small plane with skis attached to the landing gear to Mt McKinley and landing on a mountain glacier (and, oh yes, taking off from the glacier and returning to Talkeetna!)
• seeing Mt Everest up close and personal from the cockpit of a DC-3 (I wasn't flying it!)
• seeing Iguassú Falls (I also saw Iguazú Falls -- that's what they call them on the Argentine side, and I saw them from both sides, as well as from above in a helicopter)
• seeing the great U.S. National Parks -- I've been to almost all of them, but my favorites are Yellowstone, Yosemite, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon, Crater Lake, Mt Ranier, Denali, Olympic, Mt Lassen, Redwoods, Mammoth Cave, and Great Smoky Mountains (unfortunately, these are favorites of lots of people, and they're all overcrowded, except Lassen)
• seeing the Taj Mahal (both by day and in moonlight)
• hanggliding from a mountain just south of Rio onto Leblon Beach (which is the one just south of Ipanema, which is the one just south of Copacabana)
• climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge (that's the subject of the photo above)
• seeing a million monarch butterflies starting their hibernation on the oyamel fir trees in some mountains of central Mexico

• from Skagway over the Pass to Bennett, on the White Pass & Yukon Route Railway
• from Chihuahua to El Fuerte and back, on the Chihuahua al Pacifico Railroad
• from Simla to Kalka, on the Kalka-Simla Railway
• from New Delhi to Calcutta, on the Indian Railways
• from Shin-fuji to Tokyo, on the Tokaido Shinkansen
• from Cusco (at 10.8K feet) to Machu Picchu (7.9K feet) and back, on PeruRail
• from Napa to St. Helena and back, on the Napa Valley Wine Train (kitschy, but very enjoyable -- we've done it several times)
• from Johnstown to Altoona and back (the Horseshoe Curve) during fall color, on Amtrak

I have a wine cellar with a 1,000 bottle capacity. It's usually about two-thirds full. Some bottles are old, but I generally like young wine much better than old.

I also like to know where the wine comes from.

I eat at all the good restaurants. Some really memorable restaurants include Tetsuya's in Sydney, Lucas Carton (when it was really 3*, Michelin) and La Tour D'Argent in Paris, Gordon Ramsay (Hospital Road, before he became a TV personality) in London, Alain Ducasse (when it was 4*, Times), Jean-Georges, Daniel and Per Se in New York, Vadrozsa in Budapest, Enoteca Pinchiorri in Florence, the Buckhead Dining Room in Atlanta, Patrick Guilbaud in Dublin, Gary Danko in SF, the French Laundry in Yountville, and Charlie Trotter's in Chicago.

The DC area is a great restaurant place. A local favorite is Peking Gourmet, where we always have Peking duck and Opus One. They only have one vintage, currently the 05, which even for my taste is a little young. Peking duck with Opus One is a marriage made in heaven. If you think the Peking Gourmet is crowded, touristy, or whatever, just call ahead and ask for Wang (the young Mr. Wang), and then when you're there, tell him Jim and María sent you, and that you want a meal like they always have.

I cook, and I like hanging out with chefs, wine makers, and other foodies and wineaux.
Here I am with some famous chefs and wine people (plus some students --- who will someday be famous --- in the Bocuse kitchen at Escoffier at the Hyde Park CIA).

I'm a bibliophile -- actually a biblioholic. I have over 7,000 books; mostly nonfiction, on all kinds of topics. I have some old books, but I'm much more interested in what's in the book than whether it's old or rare.

Recently, while having breakfast and reading a cookbook, I counted 11 different species outside my window. A little later, while smoking a cigar on the deck, I counted 17 different species.