Renewal of such important sponsorships demonstrates that these large players in the travel and tourism industry have confidence in both the technical capabilities and the business model behind LACIME 2006.

We want to give local and international buyers a chance to take part in a large-scale event like LACIME on a carefully planned basis. They will be able to choose the presentations that most interest them in advance and know exactly what business meetings have been scheduled for each day of the show.

That's why the sponsors see this partnership as a customer retention and business development opportunity as well. In addition to their enhanced exposure during the exhibition, the hotels accommodate visitors and the airlines transport hundreds of buyers from various parts of the world.

I like to see a guy ride with confidence. … He is competitive, and he has shown the ability to travel and compete everywhere he goes. And probably the guy I respected as a rider the most over the years -- Bailey -- told me he is the best young rider out there.

Making it easier for people to travel throughout the metropolitan region includes giving them confidence about knowing how to use mass transit. And because thousands of people travel in and out of New York City every day to the Hudson Valley, Connecticut and New Jersey, it makes perfect sense for us to take a broad, regional approach.

In the Blue Room, Cora Cash was trying to concentrate on her book. Cora found most novels hard to sympathise with -- all those plain governesses -- but this one had much to recommend it. The heroine was 'handsome, clever, and rich', rather like Cora herself. Cora knew she was handsome -- wasn't she always referred to in the papers as 'the divine Miss Cash'? She was clever -- she could speak three languages and could handle calculus. And as to rich, well, she was undoubtedly that. Emma Woodhouse was not rich in the way that she, Cora Cash, was rich. Emma Woodhouse did not lie on a lit à la polonaise once owned by Madame du Barry in a room which was, but for the lingering smell of paint, an exact replica of Marie Antoinette's bedchamber at le petit Trianon. Emma Woodhouse went to dances at the Assembly Rooms, not fancy dress spectaculars in specially built ballrooms. But Emma Woodhouse was motherless which meant, thought Cora, that she was handsome, clever, rich and free.