Fun

Whether by necessity or choice, a quarter of Americans take at least one vacation by themselves each year. Some solo travelers are single. Some have partners who dislike travel or have different interests or can't get away. Some just crave freedom. But all face the same question: What's the best trip for the person traveling alone? "The key is to know yourself," said Beth Whitman, author of a guide for women traveling alone and founder of Wanderlustandlipstick.com , a website devoted to advice and tours for women on the go. "There are times when you just need to get away, to recuperate.

Action sports and high fashion may not seem like the most likely of companions, but in the past decade designers have done more than dip a toe into surf culture; they have embraced the easygoing, sun-drenched lifestyle common to Southern California and found plenty of inspiration. The fashion industry's love affair with surfing became most apparent about 11 years ago, when Karl Lagerfeld sent models clutching Chanel-logoed surfboards down the runway as they modeled clothes for spring 2003.

Keegan Bradley had no thoughts about a course record, or the possibility of a 59, after consecutive bogeys in the middle of his opening round in the Byron Nelson Championship at Irving, Texas. Until his 136-yard wedge shot on his final hole Thursday. "It was going right at it. [A 59] crossed my mind for a second, and it would be unbelievable if I buried this," Bradley said. "But I had three feet to shoot 60. I was actually very nervous, uncomfortable over it and thank God I made it. " Bradley shot 10-under-par 60, completed by that short birdie at the 428-yard ninth hole, to break the TPC Four Seasons course record and match the best round ever at the Nelson.

Beneath the massive trees of the Malibu mountains, four small groups of people clad head-to-toe in red, green, yellow or blue stand around several long tables playing a heated game of flip cup. "Get it, blue!" a young woman shouts into a bullhorn. "You got this, green!" hollers another. It looks a little like a frat house basement dragged into the light of day, but this competition is much more innocent. It's part of Adult Color Wars, a weekend designed to give adults a chance to relive their days at camp.

It's all crossovers these days. From the polo grounds of Malibu to the campgrounds of Maine, nearly a fifth of all vehicles sold in the U.S. last year resided somewhere in this netherworld between a car and an SUV. So the stakes were high for Toyota's overdue redesign of the RAV4, a pioneer of the segment in the mid-1990s that had grown stale in comparison with competitors. Often resembling small sport utility vehicles, crossovers are truck-like vehicles built on front-drive car platforms.

In these troubled economic times, it's not hard to understand why people might want to protect their life savings by purchasing a hard asset like gold or silver. At least, that's the pitch of Monex, the big Newport Beach investment firm, which bills itself as "America's trusted name in precious metals investments" and assures clients that it's "committed to customer service. " So let's take a look at the experiences of some customers who say their trust in Monex was misplaced.

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

You can do a lot with smartphones these days, but unless you're downloading the best apps for your device, you aren't really using it to its full potential. So if you aren't sure what to download, just make sure you have these 10 apps on your iPhone or Android device. Google Maps This app comes preinstalled on Android devices and should be the first app downloaded on iPhones. Besides top-notch design, the app is the best free voice navigation app for driving directions.

Here's how to get the most from your vacation: Enjoy the planning stages. Studies show they bring the most happiness. Choose a vacation that emphasizes relaxation, in whatever form that means for you. These produce the longest aftereffect. Give yourself a few days off after you get back before you return to work. Carefully think through your choice in travel companions. Conflict with travel companions accounts for a great deal of vacation stress. Take shorter, more frequent, well-spaced vacations to maximize your happiness factor.

Thank you for your wonderful article "The Sitcom Elders Have the Floor" (March 2). For anyone over 35, these pioneers of television comedy are dear to our hearts. I don't know a living, breathing soul who can't sing about the "Tale of a Tiny Ship"! I did, however, take pause at the gentlemen's observation that they don't "sense the fun on the sets or behind the scenes" in sitcoms these days. As a guest actress on sitcoms from "Friends" to "Frasier" and "According to Jim" to "Murphy Brown," I beg to differ: My experiences on each of these quality shows were filled with fun, humor and a wonderful feeling of camaraderie and collective creativity among the actors and all those working behind the camera.

INDIO - Just a few hours into the annual three-day country-music jamboree Stagecoach, Nashville veteran Connie Smith introduced what she described as "one of my favorite country-gospel songs. " The small but attentive Friday afternoon crowd listened as she sang "Peace in the Valley," a song popularized in the '50s by Red Foley. She struck a tone of steadfast piety as she declared, "There'll be no sadness, no sorrow, no trouble I see. " The line felt like a bulwark against the gloom that might've settled in at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival after the death Friday morning of the great country singer George Jones.

NEW YORK - Enthroned on her couch in Beverly Hills, Hollywood superagent Sue Mengers did not go gentle into that good night but, instead, gossiped and tattled against the dying of the light. Well, she's back holding court in her modest (by neighborhood standards, anyway) palace, which has been relocated to Broadway's Booth Theatre. Here Bette Midler, draped in a turquoise caftan like a sedentary 1980s queen too tired even for browsing on Rodeo Drive, delivers Mengers' ribald wit and agentry wisdom in John Logan's "I'll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers.

NORTH DARTMOUTH, Mass. - If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is responsible for setting off pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon, as authorities allege, he displayed a remarkable poker face at his college campus in southeastern Massachusetts. The 19-year-old sophomore studied engineering, played soccer and became known for party-hopping and smoking marijuana. When he talked to his friends, it was usually about one subject - girls. As a freshman, he decorated his dorm room wall with two posters: one of Einstein, the other of 12 bikini-clad women on a beach.

Angelenos taking to car-free streets along CicLAvia's 15-mile route say they came out to have fun, enjoy family and give back to the community. One volunteer, who rode in the past, said she wanted to help Sunday because it was important to let people know that biking can be fun, and family-friendly, particularly when you don't have to worry about potential danger from cars. But some came to the streets with other means of transportation, For Spencer Knight a skateboard was the way to go. What made him want to skateboard the entire route?

I've tumbled down another rabbit hole, wound up in Long Beach, which isn't a worst-case scenario, though close. The cars here all need mufflers, the young fans need more clothes. What kind of sordid little event is this? Indy car racing had always been pretty much a mystery to me, then it split off into two separate circuits, then NASCAR got huge (overwhelming it), then suddenly the big names aged out of the sport. Or worse, died. Sure, more pretty-boy drivers came along, but they seemed like robots.

There are a lot of people in this world, and it seems as if most of them were at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival last weekend. A logistical puzzle, certainly, and one that requires feedback in order to improve. The festival continues next weekend in Indio, so now's a good time for a mid-festival debriefing. What didn't work? What could be better? What follows are 10 modest proposals for promoter Goldenvoice that could add more sparkle to the festival. Expand the Yuma tent.

The day before the Letters to The Times were expressing views on "Making War for Fun" a new hazard presented itself. My son was shot in the back by one of these "fun"-loving war makers on a public street in Canoga Park while he was attempting to put something in the trunk of his car. Their "toy" splattered red dye over his shirt and pants, and put a painful hole, the size of a quarter, in his back, that still needed to be bandaged three days...

I was sleeping over at Lorna's house when all of a sudden there was a big rumbling sound that woke me up. At first I thought it was Lorna trying to wake me up but it did not stop. Then I was convinced that it was a real earthquake. It was kind of scary and kind of fun. The scary part was that things were falling down. But the fun part about it was that me and Lorna were jumping up and down without jumping. RUTH E. CHEADLE Moorpark Ruth Cheadle is 8 years old.

On the first night of the rest of their season, the Lakers without Kobe Bryant looked like Steve Blake's bright purple low-cut sneakers. They were ungodly ugly, but delightfully fun. It's impossible to imagine them taking more than a few steps before splitting apart at their bubble gum seams, but it's going to be interesting to watch. "Hey, you're talking about them, right?" said a smiling Blake. He was referring to the shoes, but he could have been talking about the team, which defeated somnolent San Antonio, 91-86, Sunday to move within a breath of the playoffs.

Like its title character, "Da Vinci's Demons" prefers to flaunt rather than follow, flagrantly borrowing from film, television and video games to create something new, inarguably flawed, possibly revolutionary and certainly fun to watch. For several years, Starz has been flailing around in search of a show that would satisfy the youthful proclivities of its "Spartacus" audience while lending the network a bit more artistic heft. With its "Assassin's Creed" overtones and "Game of Thrones" top notes, "Demons" should satisfy the former, and even a story that too often turns Leonardo da Vinci into a Florentine Sherlock Holmes can't diminish the artistic heft of the original Renaissance man. After a quasi-mystical "Leonardo liked to get stoned" opener, creator David S. Goyer flamboyantly uses "Downton Abbey's" Hugh Bonneville to quickly establish the show's premium cable status: Bonneville's Duke of Milan greets the morn by first urinating, naked and on-camera (when did this become the new hallmark of cable's hard R?